Steve Colman: Riding bikes, chasing profit and a racing star
What a week! I did my bike rides...
Last Friday night as we were waiting around for instructions as to what to do when Steve Cram came ambling towards us wearing asuit.
We were all kitted out in cycle wear, (thank goodness Fox Europe don't do Lycra anymore and have hidden the padding away inside the shorts and not on the outsid,e if you know what I mean) but he was in a suit.
We thought "He's not going to be that flash and ride round and beat us dressed like that?!" Well, no. He had tweaked a hamstring. I quite honestly couldn't believe he's got any left! Anyway, it was up to us to carry on and entertain the gathered crowds. And when I set off at great speed I felt very confident. At the top of the course I was changing through the gears and my chain fell off! So I didn't win, but after popping it back on I finished strongly. But that was a piddly 1km. Saturday was the big one...
As I'd chronicled last week I had been training reasonably hard but in all honestly probably not hard enough. I should have found some hills to work on. Over most of the first part of the course I was feeling pretty confident and when we stopped at a very enterprising ice cream van - no, I didn't have one - we discovered we had done 19.2 miles. That was just to boost I needed.
I visualised the route of the rides I had been practicing on and knowing that the remaining distance was less than two laps of my practice circuit I felt really good. When we went belting down the hill to Stamfordham I was reluctant to stop at the tagging point where we were checked in order to find out whether we had cheated. Anyway as they were offering bananas, energy bars and drinks, stopping did prove to be worthwhile.
I headed off and, with a little help from the racing cyclist from work Dom, I completed the 33 miles in 2hours 58mins 29secs. He had cajoled me and pushed me, quite literally on some of the latter hills, but nearly broke my spirit with about 3three miles to go, when after looking at my watch and saying I might be finished before three hours, he stated that if he was racing then it would take him an hour and 6 minutes! My oh my, I hated him.
Will you do the Fandango?
Sarah French–Ellis, Scaramouche from We Will Rock You, came on the radio with me on Thursday. For me she was the star of the show, and I wanted to find out more about her.
Google is great and I even found something that made her gasp in amazement. I told her I had found something on ebay - it was a signed photo from when she was in Eastenders. As a reasonable regular for six months on the soap they had not committed to providing her with photos to send out to audience requests. I showed her a print out and she was horrified. I asked how much she thought it might be on sale for, she ventured "One p" but as I was playing a game of Higher or Lower and she eventually got it right at 4.99. Oh, how we laughed. Go and see the show at The Sunderland Empire and see how good she is. She wants to star in Wicked and I really think she could do it.
The Nolan Sisters were on as well – that must be the easiest interview I've ever done with three women who had loads to say. We don't know if they will be able to find a venue in the North East as everywhere is booked up in October in the region's entertainment spots. I'll let you know when to get "In the mood for dancing"
I'm off to Silverstone this weekend to sort Lewis Hamilton out!
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Weather for Sunderland
Friday 10 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -3 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 1 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: South west
