Blog About Sam's Thoughts And Riting Diary

In less than 72 hours I will be on my bike traversing Cornwall. Today, however, I have been crossing the t's and dotting the i's in preparation. Before I leave I want to round up the second half of my training. Let's see what happened. I posted the  first part  of my training around six weeks ago. The second part is much the same but with bigger numbers. Churning out 200 mile weeks for fun As with pretty much any endeavour ever, consistency is key. On the face of it the mileage looks monstrous, particularly when my cycling experience is taken into account, and well it is, but I got into a groove and everything fell into place. The highlight of those three weeks was undoubtedly the 25 mile time trial (the red circle in the upper right corner of the picture above). A full 84 seconds quicker than my last, and first, TT! The westerly wind (coming from  the west) was probably advantageous, due to the finish line being to the east of the start. Still, a lot o

There is nothing quite like the drama of watching England during a tournament knockout match. France '98 was my earliest memory, and there's been little to celebrate since. Last night, however, was more than a victory; it was an exorcism of so many penalty shootout heartbreaks. I can remember losing to Argentina in '98, Portugal in '04 and '06, and Italy in 2012, and I still can't quite believe we beat Colombia last night, especially after Henderson's telegraphed pen was saved. The England football team provides me with so much hope and optimism every other summer (except for 2008) that always leads to despair. Looking back as an adult I wonder whether the nation's inflated expectations, encouraged by the cruel media, are partly to blame. Reaching the quarter-finals, while apparently not good enough, was probably about par for how good we were in relation to the rest of the teams. How ridiculous that I, as a seven-year-old, saw this in