DNF – Did Not Finish is available to order now… https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09KTCL3G6

The book is is our story of 20 years spent swimming, biking and running. Every one of our results tells a story, even the races we did not finish.

It is a story about finding the joy in racing whether you come first or last.

The book contains tales such as ….

To get better we needed to improve – and the fastest way to do that, we thought, was to join a gym.

Andrew and I were both member of the same gym. It was a corporate shed in a posh suburb of Glasgow. The people who went were so rich the car park looked like a Range Rover showroom.

The gym had every facility two ‘world class cyclists’ could possibly need – state of the art gym, state of the art weights and a state-of-the-art pool. Everything was state of the art, except the art – that came from Ikea.

Unfortunately, the only thing we were world class at was our ability to use a jacuzzi.

Some people say there’s nothing better than jumping in a jacuzzi after a hard gym session. They’re wrong. It’s even better if you’ve not used the gym! Why work up a sweat and get tired when you could have spent that time floating in soapy bubbles?

We’d head in and spend ten minutes in the jacuzzi but then we’d get out and get in the other jacuzzi. Yes – this gym was so posh it had two Jacuzzis. At least we got some  exercise walking between the two.

We didn’t just use the two Jacuzzis. We’d often get out and head to the pool…and then past the pool to the sauna. The sauna in any Glasgow gym is predominately a male environment. I’ve often thought the main reason women pay so much for a spa is to avoid sauna-ing with men.

This sauna never had any women but it did have three bald men. Sometimes just one of them, sometimes two but often all three. We called them the “Baldy Men Club”

A sauna is quite small so we could hear their conversation. They only had one topic – themselves. Namely, how well they had used the gym before getting to the sauna.

Week after week we’d listen as each tried to out compete each other. “I just did 10K on the running machine in 30 minutes” One would say. Another would reply “Did you bike 20K first? I always bike first and then run”. The third man would try to beat this and add: “Did I mention I bench pressed three time my body weight today and I didn’t even sweat once?”

We talked about the Baldy Men Club and their strange ways until we realized they probably talk about us – “Can you believe how much nonsense they talk? One of them claims he’s done a stage of the Tour De France but the only exercise I’ve seen him do is dry himself with a towel after the jacuzzi!”