In a world where sporting champions images are carefully controlled and managed by PR advisors and social media managers it would be refreshing to see a genuine sporting great film his own videos while sitting in an empty train carriage on the way home from a race, which is exactly what four time Tour de France champion Chris Froome has done.
Chris Froome joined Israel Start Up nation at the end of 2020 after many successful years at Team Sky/Ineos Grenadiers. Following a horrendous injury in 2019 Chris Froome was looking for a new start and team to support his ambition of competing again for one of cycling Grand Tours. It would have been easy for him to keep a low profile as he returned from injury but, instead, he has posted regular updates on his training and races as he tries to regain his place in the peloton. And what’s refreshing is that while it’s clearly a result of his contractual requirement to promote his new team, it’s also done in a way which appears open and sincere about his challenges as he films himself at training camps, at races or working on equipment or technique.
I cannot lift my arms. Every time I try and raise them a ripple of pain runs from my elbows to my shoulders. The same happens when I try and lie on them. Any weight on them leaves them throbbing and numb. After an hour of trying to get to sleep I get up and get some painkillers before sitting in the living room waiting for them to kick in. It takes three hours, 4am, before I can move an arm without hurting. I finally go back to bed cursing every stroke I swam tonight.
It’s mid April and Pinkston Watersports has reopened for swimming in Glasgow. As it’s April, and the temperature is hovering around seven degrees, I decide to swim in full hood, boots, gloves and an extra vest. Unfortunately so much lycra twists my body in the water so I’m gliding through it like a broken corkscrew made of concrete. Every stroke feels like I’m trying to contort my body round a u-bend. After a couple of laps, one kilometre, I can’t swim any further. I think I’m just out of practice, my technique poor and my arms weak, but through the rest of the evening my arms become more and more sore.
In six weeks I need to swim three kilometres, that night I couldn’t even lie down for three minutes.
The following week, I don’t bother with boots, swim slower and concentrate entirely on stretching out flat in the water. It helps. I don’t need to raid a pharmacy on my way home but it does show that trying to get to a 3K swim in just a few weeks is a big ask. I’ll keep adding some distance with every swim and hopefully I’ll build some confidence that I won’t need more drugs than Lance Armstrong to complete the bike leg after the swim.
Saying that, I’m still not sure the race will go ahead. Triathlon Scotland are limiting waves to 30 people (including support and volunteers), which would mean Celtman would need have starting waves. I believe Celtman is not part of Triathlon Scotland, so doesn’t have to follow the guidelines, but for insurance, I wonder how it can avoid them completely. Further details on how the race will be run will be out in the next few weeks. For the moment, I continue to try and get ready to start.
I wrote the following entry a year ago and then decided not to publish it given the uncertainty over how COVID would affect everyone. It seems okay to publish it now as a way to look back at this time last year.
There are rainbows in windows. Mostly hand drawn, mostly the work of young children but others are clearly the work of parents with a steady hand and a good eye for a radius while drawing onto a window. I didn’t know what they were so, for the last two days, I thought that Pride had moved indoors. That’s nice, support the LBTG+ community. However, it turns out to be a project started by schools and spread online to encourage children to put up paintings to spread hope. This week the rainbows have been joined by soft toys. Teddy bears and plush dolls hanging in the windows next to the rainbows. Now it looks like Pride has moved indoors and started lynching Big Ted.
On Thursday we were outside walking the dog when the clap for the NHS started. We were in a park and could see people stand on their doorsteps in the houses which surrounded it. As the clapping started, as people banged on pots and pans, I joined in and thought: “this must be what it’s like to be a footballer for a team with no supporters. I thought of ‘doing the airplane’ and maybe a celebratory knee slide but joining in and clapping instead was the right thing to do.
It’s peak week. Two weeks into lockdown and life has a routine. Get up at 7am. Breakfast. Mrs TwinbikeRun walks the dog and I start work at 8am and she starts at 9am. Team call at 9:15. Less about work and more about seeing everyone. Yesterday we were asked what we did at the weekend. I said: “On Friday, I watched One Man Two Governors streamed from the National Theatre. On Sunday, I watched Swan Lake from the Paris Opera House. God, I miss Scottish football.”
I was called a middle class tosser. I couldn’t argue with that.
Lunch is 12:30. Mrs TwinBike Run has tried lunchtime yoga while I have a toastie. If you want to survive the apocalypse, don’t get flexible, get a toastie machine. You’ll run out of stretches, but you’ll never run out of fillings.
Work until 5 then close computer and try not to check work again until next day. We’ll have dinner, walk the dog and then watch some television. Normally I would have the news on a loop but I don’t think it’s healthy to have hours of virus news with updating death scores and speculation about what might happen next. I like my news with indirect consequences. Brexit. Politics. A disagreement about ideologies not a scythe cutting through the nation. Boris Johnson is seriously ill. Last night he was admitted to hospital and has been given oxygen to breathe. I do wish him well though. I disagree with his complete lack of beliefs but I offer my best wishes to him and his family. And his family. And his family. And his American IT woman. And the woman he met down the pub on Tuesday night. And…
[Postscript. Boris got better. Wait, that’s not right. Sorry. He recovered. He didn’t get better, he’s still useless.]
I wrote the following entry a year ago and then decided not to publish it given the uncertainty over how COVID would affect everyone. It seems okay to publish it now as a way to look back at this time last year.
I thought I had trouble breathing last night. Every so often I’d need to take a deep breath while I could feel a heaviness over the top of my chest. It didn’t help that I was also coughing… and had turned green and smelt faintly of decay.
Those last two symptoms might be hyperbole.
Did I have the Coronavirus? Or, after 130 minutes on the indoor bike cycling through Zwift, was I just tired?
We seem to be gripped by a fear that everyone is about to die. Even though the statistics show that we’re not. That most people will pick up the virus and then recover a few days later, we’re treating it like the end of the world, which is depressing. I thought the world would end in fire and brimstone, not with a mountain of bogroll and tinned tomatoes.
Maybe we’ve been spoiled by films and television. We see the endtimes in terms of the spectacular when, in fact, for everyone but the heroes battling to save the planet, it ends with a full fridge and a clean bum.
I worry about catching it. I’m being irrational but still I scour websites for “What are the symptons?”, “What does it feel like to have the virus?” and “how many 42 year olds have died from the Coronavirus?”.
It’s pointless. I’m looking for answers to confirm a fear. I should be looking for “How many people have recovered from the Coronavirus?” and “How many 42 years olds have won the lottery?” because the numbers are much more comforting.
At work today we had a call to plan how we’ll deal with the virus. Travel stopped between offices. Cancelling meetings. Limiting use of the kitchen. Asking people to let us know if they think they are ‘vulnerable’ and what to do with someone who decides to self isolate for two weeks then comes back only to self-isolate again and again until it starts to snow in December and they can take the Christmas break.
We have an action plan but it’s already out of date. We issued it 5pm. By 5:05, Boris Johnson was recommending everyone worked from home and that whole households should isolate for 14 days if one member showed symptoms. Maybe the extra toilet roll has started to make sense?
I wrote the following entry a year ago and then decided not to publish it given the uncertainty over how COVID would affect everyone. I didn’t want to publish an entry talking about going to the swimming pool when it might have been safer to stay at home. It seems okay to publish it now as a way to look back at this time last year.
We’ve been at home all week. On Monday, Boris Johnson announced a nationwide lockdown, which we’d missed as we were walking the dog and, with the announcement trailed in advance as a ‘big statement’ we pretty much expected to find that we’d been incarcerated on our return. Not that it made much difference to us. Mrs TwinbikeRun has been home for six days and I’d been home for four. We weren’t going back to work or out and about now.
At home we’ve divided the house in two with each of us at opposite ends of the top floor. We share a speaker and she gets to choose the playlists as I don’t need to listen to music while working and can easily tune it out if I need to. However, after one day we need to establish some Spotify ground rules when choosing tracks. And, according to Mrs E, rule number one is that it’s entirely reasonable to listen to One Direction’s album ‘Made In The AM’ five times in a row.
At work, on Monday lunchtime the Scottish government announced that we must close down all work for the foreseeable. On Monday night the UK government announced we could stay open. We listened to Nicola Sturgeon and not Boris and closed down on Tuesday. Others didn’t which led to one newspaper report of angry staff recording conversation with their boss to ask him “Who was more important, the chief exec who ordered them to work, or Nicola Sturgeon?”. The answer: “Well, Nicola doesn’t pay your wages does she?”.
A day later everyone was shut. Everyone was on “furlough” and we just had a skeleton crew. “I don’t think that’s an appropriate name!” I said and the next day we were the “core team”.
Today, is the weekend and I can tell because my laptop is closed.
Other than that I’ve tried to clean my bikes, get them ready for summer and generally potter around the garden. I don’t potter round gardens. I pay people to do the gardening. I hate gardening. Instead, I realised something bad about me today: it takes around 500 people to die before I will willingly take out a lawnmower and cut the grass.
Lucy Charles-Barclay and Reece Barclay are both professional triathletes and husband and wife. Both were swimmers before converting to triathlon in 2014 having no background in running or cycling. They are now both successful professionals and Lucy has become one of the best triathletes in the world.
Their YouTube channel is worth a follow and this video in particular is worth a watch to see what a typical day of training if like for them as they get close to a race. I say “typical” but as the video was shot in lockdown it also shows how they are training and having to comply with COVID regulations.
I wrote a few entries a year ago and then decided not to publish them given the uncertainty over how COVID would affect everyone. It seems okay to publish it now to look back at this time last year.
We are living in historic times. Which is just like living in non-historic times except there are fewer books written about it.
Years from now people will look back and ask how we coped with lockdown. I can say this: “today, I cleaned out the shed and catalogued all of my old paint pots by room and colour. Result.”
I also emptied the shed and found a patio strimmer. I don’t even know what that does. Do patios need strimmed? Are they not made of concrete? How do you strim concrete with anything but dynamite? However as it’s in an unopened plastic box I can only imagine it was bought at a point when I did know what it was and thought I would need it but not at a point where whatever it did was actually required urgently as I never opened it. In fact, there was so much junk in the shed that behind the leaf blower – something else I’ve never used – I found the Ark of the Covenant.
Today, my wife and I decided to go the local Morrisons for a weekly shop. I volunteered to go on my own as it seems selfish to both go together when shops are limiting numbers. We make a list of what we need for the week and think about taking latex gloves – another shed surprise (were we going to carry an operation in there?! Maybe an amputation with the patio strimmer?) – but decide against it as I’m not a serial killer.
Outside Morrisons there are barriers set up to direct people to queue to get in. We stand two metres apart, self isolating, until one man walks out the shop, and decides to push his trolley back along the queue rather than going straight out into the car park. It’s like watching the boulder coming towards me from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Do I run? Jump out of the way? Or just let it flatten me? Luckily I’m next to a gap in the barrier and he takes his plaguemobile out of it.
Inside the store a couple wander round the veg aisle touching carrots and onions and saying “These are no good. Not this one.” Well, not now you’ve touched them!
Another man walks round in a white tracksuit and a Burberry checked facemask. I might not be able to see his face but at least I can still tell he’s Glaswegian.
At the checkout I ask if the store has been busy today. “It wasn’t safe earlier,” said the man at the checkout, “but they’ve reduced the numbers coming in and it’s okay now”. Oh, that’s good, because Coronavirus is like a cool party. Once people leaves, it’s doesn’t hang around. (This may not be medically accurate).
I then drive home with an itchy nose. I don’t touch it. At home I try and open the groceries with my hand wrapped in an arm of my jumper, which I’ve pulled down.
“That’s smart,” said Mrs TwinBikeRun, “now you won’t get the virus from that jar of Jalapenos.”
“Exactly!” I said.
“You’ll just get it on your jumper sleeve that you’ll wear for the rest of the night instead.”
I throw my jumper somewhere I know I’ll never touch it again: the shed.
The Bob Graham Round ultra running challenge is a challenge to run up and down 42 mountains (aka Fells) in the Lake District within 24 hours. The challenge is named after the first person to complete it back in June 1932, Bob Graham, a guest house owner. For the next 90 years he would have be pleased that other people have followed in his footsteps as his challenge inspires people to travel to the Lake District to complete it – and he can rent them a room when they arrived. It should be called the Bob Graham Advert.
This documentary about the Bob Graham Round follows Danish runner Kristina Madsen as she attempted the round in 2019. I’ve read a number of books about the challenge and they all say the same thing: if you’re attempting the challenge there will be a big community of runners willing to help you. Previous racers, local runners who know the fells, everyone will go out of their way to help anyone trying the challenge. And this documentary is no different, it shows the problems she had when some of her support pulled out, the people who stepped into help her, and it shows how grateful she is for everyone’s support. It’s nice. Very nice. But…
… wouldn’t it be great to see just one film where someone turns round and says “why are you talking about my support crew, they didn’t run it/cycle it or swim the Atlantic – I did! It was all me! I am the greatest!”
Humble is nice but it would make a change to see Kanye West or Donald Trump complete the Bob Graham.
I wrote the following entry a year ago and then decided not to publish it given the uncertainty over how COVID would affect everyone. I didn’t want to publish an entry talking about going to the swimming pool when it might have been safer to stay at home. It seems okay to publish it now as a way to look back at this time last year.
I am the last person who should be giving medical advice. Except maybe for Doctor Who, who’s neither a medical practitioner or a PHD, just a conman with a phonebox. Or perhaps Dr Hannibal Lecter, who’d eat you as soon as cure you. So, when I try to answer a medical question, can you still train with the coronavirus, I’m not being too serious…
Can you train with the coronavirus? If it was a cold or flu or a broken leg then, for most runners, the answer is “yes, just run it off!”.
Amateur athletes are notorious for training and racing while ill. We assume any cough or headache or Ebola virus is just a sign that the training is working. “Of course, I’m not well,” we say “I’ve been training!”.
But, yesterday, I went swimming and I thought: “Should I be here? Should I be in a swimming pool that’s a coronavirus cocktail of sweat and spit and whatever else has washed off the bodies of a thousands swimmers?”
And what about the changing room? Do I need a hazmat suit to change out of my birthday suit in a room filled with perspiring bodybuilders?
Or do I assume that this is no different to any other cold or flu or bug and live life normally until the government says otherwise?
It seems as if many have already started to panic. There are no toilet rolls or pasta on supermarket shelves. Personally, if I was stockpiling, I’d be stocking up chocolate biscuits and cake. Stuff fusilli pasta, if I’m coughing and hacking, I want a KitKat.
I don’t get the obsession with pasta either. After the virus started in China there were numerous people saying they wouldn’t eat Chinese food. Now the virus is in Italy, we’re eating Spaghetti Bolognese like our lives depended on it (literally). It seems we’re only suspicious of our food when it doesn’t come in a cheese sauce.
We’re also washing our hands for 20 seconds. The Government says you should sing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice. I don’t think you need a song though – just wash your hands like you’ve just killed a man and don’t want to get caught. You don’t need soap to clean hands, just pretend you have a guilty conscience.
But, if water and soap is effective, then all you need to do if you want to swim in a swimming pool is pour some liquid soap in the pool. Turn it into a sink. That way 2000 metres will leave you cleaner than an hypochondriac throwing out his Kung Pow Chicken.
And, if you’re adding soap, then why not also add conditioner for your hair? I was told by a hairdresser that if you want to avoid damaging hair with chorine then apply some conditioner before you swim. Now, you’re not just training, you’re protecting yourself too. With all the soapy water, you’re immune from the coronavirus. And you have great looking hair.
Possibly.
Maybe.
However I’m not a Doctor and this is definitely not medical advice.
[Postscript – it turned out this was the last time I was in a swimming pool]
Twin brothers swimming, cycling and running in Scotland 