The good, the bad and the what the Dickens

The good news I have to report is the fact that I've managed to complete another official run and an official cycle event too. The run was only a 10k affair. The cycle event, can you believe, saw me cycle outside!

The run I completed was the 00's Retro Run supporting the Roy Castle Lung Foundation. I didn't challenge myself too much and just entered for a 10k distance. I'm yet to receive my bling - a rather fancy medal and running top. Was great a few folk sponsored me and helped raise an additional £30 or so for this charity.

My cycle event was entitled 'THE (SOCIALLY) DISTANCE(D)'. This was a quirky event and suitably named during these Covid times. The organisers of this event basically sent out a task card (as pictured above) with a whole bunch of buzz words. Each rider would have to plan their own ride (no matter how short or far) using the Komoot cycling app and cycle same taking photo's of buzz words on the task card. The task card worked in a 'Blockbuster' style and boxes had to be connected by joining the blocks together in diagonal lines. Simples.

I cycled this event with Ron the Phantom and we used this ride to not only take snaps of the buzz words but to also post newsletters to members of our fellowship. What a great idea eh?! Ron made a such a wonderful photographer. To add a bit of further quirkiness to the ride, I decided to ride my super funky fixed bike.

Collecting the necessary photo's was a lot of fun. Cycling outdoors with Ron was also super fun. Other friends of ours were cycling this event too but we never saw them because we were socially distanced. We did however, bump randomly into people we knew. People of note were Brenda - she was just walking to her home after we had posted a newsletter and John C who had a surprise newsletter posted through his window. Ron's niece, (I forget her name), was the most random meet though. Ron was just talking about how super a cyclist his niece was and then, wham, bam, our wheels were facing hers! Bizarre!

Following the event, all the photo's were uploaded to Instagram with the @thedistance tagged and #thesociallydistanced in the post. Didn't include the photo of the 3 of us obviously and the 'Dogbut Lane' pic was omitted too. That would have made a great strange place name photo. The route we cycled was also uploaded to Komoot. Wonder if I'll win any prizes?

The bad news received this month was the very disturbing confirmation that the TransAlba race I was hoping to cycle this year (and last) had been postponed again - now scheduled to take place in 2022. Slightly frustrating! 

As February ended and March began, the Audax website advertised that entries for planned cycle rides were opening again. I've entered the 'Goats Head Soup', 'Brum 200' and 'The Kidderminster Killer'. What the Dickens?!👽