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...

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...

It has been just over two months since my post  rounding up a running-focused training block, which culminated in a PB at Hastings Half Marathon. I then had a duathlon on the Sunday, where I came third!, took a few days off/easy, then my training for Land’s End to John O’Groats began on April Fools’ Day. (Make of that what you will!) Check out the average speed... Having set a marker of where my fitness on the bike lay, after months of predominantly focusing on running and only cycling a few times a week, the plan was essentially to cycle as many miles as I could in preparation for Lejog. My second-ever 200 mile week! There were a few long and/or hard rides in this four-week period, but none that I am more proud of than this: 20mph for almost four hours! Averaging 20mph has been in my mind since I started cycling. There are a boatload of factors that affect average speed, but 20mph can be thought as a great intermediate goal; initially it was ...

Doping in sport is black and white, isn’t it? The people that use drugs that aren’t allowed are bad, and the people that don’t are good. Right? I used to be of this opinion but now I’m starting to see why there’s such a huge grey area. I should say that I am completely against doping in sport, and it frustrates me that the majority of sports (snooker?) have a problem with doping. In some it’s common knowledge, in others heads are well and truly buried in the sand. I’m not going to even try to speculate on how sport can clean itself up. Take athletics – a sport with a huge problem. I saw a statistic recently that only nine of the top thirty 100m times have been run by clean athletes – all were run by Usain Bolt. I have absolutely nothing to go on other than intuition (pls don’t sue me) but that’s suspicious, isn’t it? Consider the can of worms well and truly opened. At the beginning of this decade I got quite into weightlifting, regularly going to the gym, lifting hea...

CBA to search for anything better I have been thinking about comfort recently, specifically getting out of my comfort zone during exercise, and how that has a knock-on effect in other aspects of my life. This past 18 months has been one long experiment of asking my body to do things it was either previously incapable, or I didn't believe I was. It doesn't matter which. Now lectures have finished I have more free time to ride my bike. I have also been running considerably less, though that was always the plan. This poses new challenges: getting my backside used to the discomforts of long periods/successive days in the saddle, motivation to ride in all conditions, accustoming myself to the new, and different, training stress. I love cycling -- it's definitely type one fun -- but there's always a part of me that wants to rebel against my plan. While running 5-6 days a week I wanted to cycle more. Now I am riding lots I want to run more. Rather than suppress my ...

I wrote a blog post at the end of last year talking about New Year’s Resolutions and goals, among other things. One of the goals I set for 2017 was to run 1,000 miles, the idea being that such a target would lead me to running consistently throughout the year. It was also part of a larger experiment to try to breed a new sense of consistency in my life; something that I feel has eluded me. At the same time as setting that annual mileage goal, having been inspired by the thousands of people running Hastings Half Marathon, I signed up for the 2018 version and set my sights on a sub-90 minute finishing time. I’m not entirely sure why I decided on 90 minutes (my previous best was 1 hour 56 minutes in 2011!) but, clearly, there would have been something to do with it being a nice, round number. I imagine there’s something inside me that thought it would put me into the category of “runner” rather than a person that occasionally runs. After some Internet research I real...

With Valentines’ Day just past I’ve been thinking a lot about marital duty. Sophie and I have only been married for almost sixteen months, but I don’t think this is one of those subjects that only those with a letter from the Queen should discuss. Rather it is a discussion that I think everybody should get involved in. What does marital duty mean to you? Is it putting your significant other first? Is it making sacrifices for your husband/wife? Is it, simply, being faithful? For me, marital duty is putting yourself in your partner’s situation, and doing what you feel is the right thing . It’s seeing them as an extension of yourself – hurting them hurts you, helping them helps you – and approaching everything with that in mind; you’re no longer just a ‘you’, you are now a ‘we’. I can hear the cries of cry claustrophobia – what of independence? Aren’t I still my own person? Of course you are. Don’t ever lose sight of your individuality and the importance of doing your own thi...