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I started to go out on my bike regularly in preparation for the Triathlon events I was entering. Some of the Lichfield Triathlon lads I had got to know were and still are very strong cyclists. I started to be part of conversations that were going way over my head. Things like cadence, power output, functional threshold levels and similar performance measures were all completely new to me. I avoid technical things at the best of times (I never read instructions, easier to make it up as you go) but I was beginning to realise I had entered a completely different world.

It started to make more sense when I attended my first watt bike session at Lichfield Friary leisure centre. I had been encouraged to go along as the guy that ran the class did tests to figure out your average watt output which was then used to figure out threshold levels for the class sessions. These were intense and as with most of these type of things I enjoyed smashing myself to bits. Using the power as a benchmark was great for developing fitness so I went along as often as I could.

It wasn’t until recently that I took this a step further and invested in a power meter for my road bike. As I started to build my training up for the Ironman, I realised that any predictor of fatigue or over exertion was going to be critical for my chances of completing the event. Having deliberated for months about it I finally got one. Has it changed my world? Not really, but at least I have an additional guide that helps avoid the dreaded ‘bonk’. Destroying my legs on a 112 mile bike record ahead of a marathon would not be a good idea.

I never had any interest in cycling when I was younger but now I’m doing it regularly I feel as though I might have missed out. I’ve really no idea whether I could have been any good at it. Arguably my physique suits the sport and I have often been told that I have good leg strength. But I can’t honestly say whether that would have translated to being anything amazing.

I’ve only done one time trial. This was when I went along to a regular weekly club TT that Burntwood triathlon club held in Yoxall village. Only a handful of people turned up on the night I did it and since I didn’t do it again I have no idea whether I progressed or not. Not the way to do these kind of things I know. The training for these seems pretty brutal, with hours on turbo trainers to develop consistent power output over time. I know some people swear by them and they are great training for Ironman or sportives but it just looks massively painful to me.

I have had a go at track cycling recently. I got a voucher for an introduction session at Derby velodrome along with a few other family members. We went along and got the induction talk from one of the professional coaches. He clearly had some standard jokes and phrases that he used as part of his talk. Most of them went along the lines of ‘road bike users are lazy so listen up because this is completely different’. To be fair it was. I’d never been on a track bike before i.e. no gears and no normal brakes. It took a few minutes to get used to the fact that you need to keep pedalling otherwise you’d be braking, which potentially meant you could fall off. We went around the track on the flat section a few times to get used to the feel of the bike before he introduced us to the slopes of the velodrome. He placed markers on the track to push us higher up the slope. It was a bit daunting at first but you soon get used to the incline and get more confident as you cycle round. It was only an hour session so I only got a very small taste of what the top track cyclists do but you can see the appeal. Going as fast as you can in a race environment must be some feeling.

It is only recently that I’ve completed my second long cycling event. I entered the Rutland Sportive as a build up to the Ironman. The course is 105 miles long but you have to cycle 2 miles to get to the start from the official car park, so I’m rounding that up to 109 (that’s crazy maths). I selected that one as the route looked very hilly and would be good training for the Ironman course. I’d competed in other events around Rutland so I knew that it would be lumpy, the locals refer to the hilly countryside in that area as the Rutland ripple. I figured doing some hill work over a long distance couldn’t be a bad thing.

Aiming to avoid a bonk I decided to test my nutrition strategy. I’d just been on holiday and read a book by Vassos Alexander, radio sports presenter and self-confessed running addict. He mentioned making his own super food cake which had worked successfully for him over various long distance races, so I decided to follow suit. I’m not sure what his exact recipe was as it wasn’t in the book, but I ploughed on regardless by buying the essential ingredients of bananas, blueberries, eggs, peanut butter and avocado. I then made up the rest myself to add extra flavour. I was quite surprised when I made it that it actually tasted good so decided to take it along on the Sportive. It worked like a dream. I ate a couple of mouthfuls every 30 minutes, plus anything else I managed to pick up at the food stations dotted along the way. Bonk avoided.

The course itself lived up to expectations. It was very undulating. A few days before the race a fellow Leicester Tri club member posted on the club forum that he had also entered the event and wanted to know if anyone else was going along. More than happy to have a riding mate I said I’d meet him at the start. I’d never met Lewis, or Coops as he’s known, before the race but it didn’t take long to realise that we were both coming at it from the same angle i.e. nothing too serious, but great to have some company on the way. I think he may have regretted meeting up at one point as he’d only signed up for the 75 mile version. I convinced him to go for the full distance after a couple of hours. I’d found out that he worked for the RAF and that he doing a charity bike ride from London to Paris later in the year to raise money for war veterans. The extra miles were not going to him any harm in preparing for that.

It was a great day out. The weather was pretty kind to us, sunny with very little wind. I felt pretty good throughout and went well up the (multiple) hills. Apart from the obligatory sore backside from hours sat on a saddle, I had no ill effects from the ride or my cobbled together cake. The nutrition side went smoothly and my legs weren’t demolished. I don’t know whether I could have run a marathon straight after but I didn’t think it was an impossible task either. Job done. Coops and I went on our separate ways and it was another box ticked in my Ironman preparation.

I bought my first road bike whilst I was in the rowing club. Quite a few of the squad members owned one, and often went riding out at the weekend. I decided it was time I joined in so got a recommendation on what to buy. I opted for a Giant OCR, for no other reason than it was fairly reasonably priced and was considered by the rowing lads as a good first bike. I was reliably informed that I needed proper bike shoes with cleats to clip in to, so I bought those too. The bike arrived by mail order and I assembled it myself. I didn’t read the instructions of course, like many guys I never do. It wasn’t until I was on the way to the rowing club on my new steed that I realised I couldn’t change gears. I also realised that cycling with cleats was a new experience. I proudly turned up at the club for training to show off my new purchase, and promptly fell off, much to everyone’s amusement.

On the same day I also got my first experience of a ‘bonk’. This occurs when your body has used up all of its reserves of energy, so you are basically running on empty. It was hardly surprising really. I’d cycled to the club, done a full rowing session, cycled with the lads after the session and then cycled home. It’s a strange sensation when you ‘bonk’, you feel completely drained. I’d run out of fluid, had no snacks and no money to buy anything. I was about five miles from home, cycling in to a headwind and just couldn’t ride any more. I fell of my bike again and sat by the side of the road wondering exactly how I was going to make it the last few miles. I eventually made it back of course and raided the entire contents of the fridge.

It’s fair to say then that I was a novice cyclist. I only really got interested after I’d finished rowing and started seriously considering triathlon. I had no idea about technique, riding position or any of that technical stuff. I just got on my bike and rode. A friend of mine was also starting to get in to triathlon and had entered a charity bike ride from Wolverhampton to Aberdovey. This seemed ideal given that my parents have a holiday home there, as previously mentioned. This was a 100 mile ride and was by far the longest distance I’d ever thought about riding. Up until that point I reckon I’d clocked thirty miles as my longest outing.

Given this I thought I’d better get my bike serviced to make sure it would last the distance. I took it to a bike shop in one of the local villages in Barton-Under-Needwood. It was clear as soon as I entered that I was out of place. The bikes on show were Pinarellos and the shop owner was an ex-tour rider. He looked me up and down when I walked in, clearly disapproving of me and my bike. I left the bike with him and returned later in the day. He then spent half an hour telling me that my position was all wrong and that I should consider myself lucky I wasn’t injured. To be honest I wasn’t really interested in the lecture, I just wanted to know my bike was fit enough to handle the ride. Clearly annoyed he insisted on adjusting my seat height to better suit me and then let me go.

It may well have been a better height, but the radical adjustment was too much for my legs and I strained my knee ligaments almost immediately the first ride out. Great. Not only subjected to a load of abuse, I was now injured. It took months and multiple trips to the physio to sort out. Lesson learnt; don’t listen to arrogant ex pros and make incremental adjustments with a proper bike fit in future.

The day of the charity bike ride eventually came round and I’d managed a few longish rides in preparation. It was great to do, but the weather on the day was atrocious. It started drizzling when we left Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Stadium and got steadily worse as we cycled toward Wales. We didn’t treat it as a race but even so, it was a long day and pretty tiring for a non-cyclist. We stopped every twenty miles or so to get snacks and drinks but the mileage was definitely something I wasn’t used to. I had many moments later on where my legs just felt like lead. The dreaded bonk was never very far away.

At around sixty miles the weather was at its worst, strong headwinds and pouring rain. After a few hours of riding, this was pretty depressing but we ploughed on nonetheless. The weather finally got better with about fifteen miles to go and the ride into Aberdovey was actually quite nice. My first experience of long distance cycling was exactly that, an experience.

Having a bike when you’re a kid is pretty special. What kid doesn’t want to have a new bike as a Christmas or birthday present? The first bike I remember getting was a Boxer. These were all the rage when I was at primary school so I was massively excited when I got mine for my birthday. I also remember my dad teaching me how to ride my bike in the back garden. It was the usual technique of him letting go of the saddle as I was pedalling and shouting encouragement to keep going. I did exactly the same thing with my daughters and it’s a great feeling seeing them pedal away, growing in confidence as they get used to balancing the bike on their own.

For me, it was freedom to get about in the village I grew up in, Stonnall. Racing around the village with my friends was a regular thing, no different I’m sure from every other kid that age.

At that time it seemed easy to go anywhere and everywhere on my bike. As long as I got back for tea time, I was free to go out and meet up with my mates. Maybe it was because I was a boy, but I never felt any nervousness from my parents about being off doing my own thing. However, this must have been put to the test by my brother. He also had a bike and being a few years older he would be hanging around with his friends or my cousins, Chris and Steve, who also lived in the village. One day Dave didn’t come home at the normal time for tea.

Understandably my parents became concerned and ended up calling the police when there was still no sign of him in the evening. Going through their usual protocol, the police first checked the house to ensure he wasn’t hiding anywhere. I was most upset when they came in to my bedroom to look under my bed and woke me up. The police later found my brother and my cousin cycling up the M54 motorway past Telford. It turns out they’d had the bright idea of cycling to Wales, not realising it was a 200 mile round trip. I later found out that my dad had done something similar when he was a lad although his hadn’t involved the police. Long bike rides were obviously a family tradition.

Throughout the summer I would be down the park with my mates or just riding around the village having fun. There was nothing serious or competitive about any of it. I often ventured out of the village to go to nearby Aldridge or even Lichfield to buy records, books or toys. It was just part of growing up.

One day I went on a longer bike ride with Dave and Chris to Sutton Coldfield, where my other cousins Shelley and Zoe lived with my Aunt and Uncle. I’m sure my brother and Chris didn’t really want me tagging along, but they couldn’t really leave me alone at home. We cycled to Sutton Park on the way and ended up getting confronted by a group of lads. I got my baseball cap taken by one of them which predictably led to me bawling my eyes out (I was quite a cry baby to be fair), much to Dave and Chris’ embarrassment. We managed to get away and cycled off to the safety of my Aunt and Uncle’s house. The incident was never mentioned again.

Over the years I got bigger and better bikes. The BMX Chrome Burner was a particular favourite, just because it was silver and shiny. I wasn’t interested in doing tricks or jumps like some of the lads, having a cool looking bike was good enough for me.

At secondary school, mountain bikes became the in-thing. My mates Jonny and Grizzly (Nick Adams…Grizzly Adams of 80s TV show fame? No?) were avid mountain bikers and I would often accompany them and others to Cannock Chase which was the place to go near us for off road cycling. Again, I was never interested in going down steep banks or off jumps, I was far too much of a wimp for that. I liked going out cycling and getting knackered though.

Years later properly designed mountain bike trails were developed on the Chase. These became known as ‘The Dog’ and ‘The Monkey’. I’ve done them a few times when I lived that way. They’re great fun, but not quite my thing.

I took my mountain bike with me to Loughborough University. Like most students it was my main mode of transport to and from lectures. I didn’t use it for anything other than that during my time there, other than maybe the odd cycle out in the countryside. I managed to get two bikes stolen while I was there. The first was my own, which got taken from the hall of residence. I had locked it to a drainpipe, and when I came to collect it the next day all that was left was the front wheel. Mental note: lock the frame as well next time.

The second time was when I borrowed a bike from a fellow student in the hall, because I’d had mine stolen. I borrowed it to check my results for my second year exams. These were posted on the wall of the Economics faculty. When I got there I realised I hadn’t brought a lock with me. Thinking it was ok because I’d only be gone for a matter of minutes I just left it against the wall outside. Sure enough it was gone by the time I got back. Clearly bike theft was a lucrative business in Loughborough at the time. The guy I borrowed it off was less than impressed, but took it very well. He got another one from insurance like I did later anyway. He actually saw his being ridden around Loughborough a few weeks later on his way back from lunch. Him and a few others gave chase but couldn’t catch the dastardly fiend. High drama for us student types.

After university myself, Wyn, Closet and Simeon decided to go up to Scotland for a cycling holiday. More accurately, we went to visit Closet, see a bit of Scotland whilst drinking a lot and took our bikes. Closet was living in Edinburgh at the time, so Simeon and I headed up there in Wyn’s bright orange VW Beetle with the bikes loaded up on the back. The plan was to head west from the capital and then spend a week travelling to various places including the Isle of Arran, Loch Ness, Inverness, Aviemore and then back to Edinburgh.

On the Isle of Arran we got our bikes out with the intention of cycling to the nearest pub whilst exploring the island. It wasn’t long before the heavens opened as we headed up our first hill. At the top of the hill we realised we had lost Wyn. Not worrying too much the rest of us carried on. About half an hour later Wyn drove past us in his car and said he’d meet us at the pub. By the time we met up with him we were all drenched, and the weather looked like it was only going to get worse. He’d already had a couple of pints by the time we got there and was clearly happy being nice and dry. That was the last time we used the bikes. Beer was the order of the day after that as we wound our way around Scotland.

Burton Leander had actually had a very strong tradition as a rowing club. Back in the 50s and 60s the club hosted a hugely popular regatta, which was the largest outside of the London area. More significantly the club had also had a crew that had won Henley Royal regatta. This was by far the most prestigious event in the rowing calendar in the UK. Every year thousands of people descended on Henley-On-Thames to enjoy five days of rowing races. For that week the town was taken over by people dressed smartly in blazers and formal attire. It is the Ascot of the rowing world and has a very strong tradition. To qualify for racing at Henley you either had to win or perform strongly at one of the major competitions, or get one of the remaining available slots by having a fast time in a qualifying event the week before Henley regatta.

As Burton Leander had won the Fours event fifty years ago, there was a supposed guaranteed spot at the anniversary year in 2008. With this looming, that season we decided to switch from the quad to a Four in order to claim that available slot if it was indeed available. We shuffled around the order a few times until we settled on the right format. I ended up at stroke, with James Walsh at 3, Rob Jephcote at 2, and Matt Isard at bow. We spent the whole season training hard with the aim of competing at the Royal Regatta. We entered the major events and managed to pre-qualify for the Wyfold Challenge Cup. I don’t think we will ever know whether we qualified outright or were allocated the 50th anniversary place, but it didn’t really matter. We were racing at the event.

This was a major deal for us as a club. We’d had some successes with people like Ashley Prestidge winning national single sculls titles and Liam Rose representing GB, but we hadn’t had a crew boat race at Henley for years. The mood of the club changed. A few of us had wanted to move the club from a social club to one that could compete at the major events and this was a significant stride forward.

The draw was made a week before the event started. We discovered that we were up against Marlow rowing club. They had a very strong reputation so we knew it was going to be tough to get through to the next round. The likelihood was that they were a solid crew and had probably competed at Henley before. However, they were by no means one of the strongest crews so we felt like we had a chance of progressing to the next round. We spent the rest of the time in the build up to the race practicing out on the river at Burton and trying to get ourselves in race mode.

As usual I was driving the minibus and towing the trailer. As I was working the day before the race I went with Matt to the boathouse to collect the boat and blades after work. Double checking we had everything (it wouldn’t have been the first time we had forgotten something) we set off down the motorway to the venue. We got there quite late but it was a relief to get the trailer parked up and head over to Swiss Cottage, the campsite that most competitors used during regatta week.
We woke up early next day to head down to the regatta course so we could do a practice session.

The place was packed with competitors and supporters. It was by far the biggest thing I had been involved in and it was great to get the boat on the water the day of the race to familiarise ourselves with the conditions. We did some drills and practice starts, getting used to the feel of the water. Everything felt good and we were starting to psyche ourselves up for the race itself.

The day couldn’t have been better in terms of the weather. It was calm and sunny. It was perfect for rowing and for the friends and family coming down to support. In the hours before the race we just chilled out as much as we could. I spent most of my time mucking about with Erica, my eldest daughter. It was great to have her there, even though I’m sure she had no idea what was going on.

When our race eventually came around we had our final pep talk which involved a lot of comedy swearing, something about ‘not making up the numbers’ and manly fist pumping before putting the boat on the water. We went through our usual routine of drills as we made our way up to the start. We waited in the queue of boats for our turn to race, getting more nervous as the time approached. It was great to be part of the event.

There were some big names milling about including the likes of Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent. Being members of Leander Rowing club, which was headquartered at Henley, these Olympians often helped out as officials during the event. It all helped to the atmosphere knowing that you were surrounded by the very best in elite rowing.

I remember sitting on the start in silence just waiting for the umpire to appear in the official race boat to get us lined up and ready. The Marlow crew were sat alongside us and I couldn’t help notice that they were big lads. Given that I was the tallest in the boat, that wasn’t much of a shock. We were always one of the smallest crews.

The moment finally arrived. The umpire called us to attention and we sat forward with our blades resting in the water. It felt like we were in that position for a long time but I’m sure it was just a few seconds in reality. It’s always the weirdest sensation waiting for the start. It feels like time stands still, you can hear your heart beating and your adrenaline is firing.

The umpire shouted and we were off. We all pushed down hard on the footplate before spinning the hands to get the rate up high and accelerate away. The tactic was always to rate high for 100 metres before settling in to a rhythm through the first 500m of the race. It wasn’t the greatest start we’d ever had so we found ourselves playing catch up right from the off. When you are sat in the stroke seat it’s difficult to know where you are in the race unless you are pulling away from other crews so you go with the cues from the others in the boat. Everyone tries to not look round to see what’s happening but it’s pretty difficult when you’re in the race itself, especially when it’s a head to head race.

I think we had a pretty good row overall after the dodgy start. The atmosphere was incredible, and the noise of the crowd as we moved up the course grew and grew. As we moved past the half way point and in to the last part of the race the legs really started to burn. The grimace you can see on all of our faces in the photos towards the end is plain to see. During the final section we were physically spent but as we approached the finishing enclosure we gave everything we had. I’m sure they were mainly cheering on the local club of Marlow but it didn’t matter. It was a unique experience and one I’ll never forget. I guess we were disappointed when it was over knowing that we’d been knocked out but it wasn’t to be. Rather predictably we had a large number of celebratory drinks afterwards, joining all the other crews that had been knocked out that day.

We tried in subsequent years to qualify again for Henley but never quite managed it. We were always a few seconds off the pace at the qualifiers. It was by far the biggest race we were involved and one which we never really quite replicated. After a while the crew went their separate ways. I carried on training and racing in various different boats, including eights, quads and the pair but it never felt quite the same. I think the real turning point came when one of our crew, Matt, passed away. For reasons none of us will ever understand he decided to take his own life. It was a complete shock. He was a genuinely nice guy, very popular and outwardly he seemed so full of life. I guess you never really know what is happening beneath the surface.

Somehow it was difficult to stay motivated knowing that he was gone. Also, things in my own life were changing and dedicating such a large amount of time to a hobby with two young daughters growing up fast just didn’t seem right any more. Inevitably my passion for the sport slowly faded away. I’d had a great time doing it and I will always look on those year with really fond memories but it was definitely time to move on.

In order to get race fit we had fitness sessions as well as water work. The balance of these changed on the time of year. Generally the water sessions were on Saturdays and Sundays all year round, with Tuesdays and Thursday evenings varying. During the winter the evening sessions started with a warm up run called ‘the bridges’ which was a 2 mile loop from the club house over the bridge to the right, through town and back over the other bridge further down the river before heading back. After that was a combination of ergo (rowing machine) sets, weights and circuits. I loved the fitness work.

The worst by far were the indoor rowing tests, the 5km and 2km distances. These were held every couple of months and were dreaded by everyone. The 2k was the standard test that all rowers use to determine how they compare against one another and it was brutal. It only lasts 6-7 minutes but your legs would burn and if you paced it incorrectly it would be agony. It wasn’t uncommon for people to be sick afterwards as everyone just buried themselves. I regularly had ‘white outs’ after doing these. You feel dizzy and get a taste of blood in the mouth. Not pleasant.

Another thing I learnt was that rowers were divided in to heavyweights and lightweights. If you were under 70kg, you were classed as a lightweight. This was the category I fell in to. This makes sense as rowing is all about technique, power and geometry. The longer your arms, the more leverage you have so all things being equal a taller and stronger rower will beat a smaller and lighter rower. At national level there are different minimum ergo times for lightweights and heavyweights required to qualify for trials. Most of the top heavyweights would be doing sub 6 minute 2k ergo tests. Ridiculous.

During the winter the races were called ‘head races’ where you raced on rivers of varying distance depending on the club hosting the event. There were lots of these around the region and we eneded up racing fairly regularly at places like Nottingham, Leicester and Derby as well as at our own stretch of water in Burton. These were winner takes all, and followed a time trial format. Winners of rowing races tend to win ‘pots’. These are pint jugs basically. No idea why you get these, but I’m sure there’s some historical reason.

During the summer the racing turns in to regattas which would be multi lane if they were on a specifically designed rowing lake like Holme Pierrepoint in Nottingham, or side by side racing if there were on a river. The format was knock out, with winners progressing to the next round until the final. As well as winning pots, there were also rowing points on offer. The more points you picked up from winning, the higher the racing category you moved in to. If you were in a crew boat, the combined number of points determined the race category you would be competing in.

The regattas themselves were good fun. During the summer on sunny days, it was great to be part of the club. These were often held over two days with most competitors camping overnight. There were always barbecues, discos and lots drinking involved, so it was a truly social affair.

I got in to a regular rhythm of training and competing and for the first couple of years I was in a quad with Rob Jephcote, Matt Isard and Simon Ludlow. We did pretty well in the local regattas, picking up wins quite regularly. The big event for us at the time was the national championships which always took place at one of the big rowing venues in either England or Scotland. In these, the top three boats won pots and there was also the added incentive of possibly picking up a seat in the national squad. Although in reality, the GB squad was pretty much pre-determined from the trials. However, for us club rowers it was a big deal. We came fourth twice in a row at these, not quite making it on to the podium. The races themselves were tough. The legs burnt the same way they did on the indoor rower, and your lungs were bursting during the last 500 metres. But it was great to be part of a team and push yourself to the limit. It was the closest I got to the team atmosphere I’d had playing rugby.

We entered all kinds of different events during my time there, but without doubt the toughest I took part in was the Boston Marathon. This is a long distance rowing race that takes place annually. It starts at Lincoln and ends up at Boston along a 30.6 mile stretch of river on the River Witham. Apparently it started off as a pub bet in 1946 and has continued ever since.

It has become pretty legendary for the challenging distance and so attracts a lot of entries. I’d heard about it during my time at the club as a couple of the lads I rowed with had done it a few times in small boats but hadn’t experienced it personally. The idea started to develop that we should enter a men’s eight. Not knowing any better I went along with the idea. Yes, it was a long event but by that time I’d done a fair amount of rowing and felt confident that in an eight it was doable so I agreed to take part.

By default, I always ended up as the driver of the minibus as I was only one of a handful of people that was legally allowed to drive a larger vehicle and tow the boat trailer. This was due to my age which meant I automatically held a driving licence which permitted it. Everyone else would have had to have taken a separate test to get permission rather than for any other reason. As usual then I was the driver when we went to the Boston start area.

Knowing that the head race itself was going to take a minimum of three hours I took more drinks and food than I would normally. Avoiding cramp and fatigue was pretty key, particularly in a crew boat. What myself and others had failed to consider was the ‘Rob’ factor. Our captain and stroke man for the day was a very good rower, but also very competitive and head strong. He had got it in to his head that we were going to try and break the course record. A fine idea in principle but it soon became apparent that the reality was going to be much harder.

We started off at a high stroke rate and we were soon overtaking crews. We were going strong for the first half but things started to unravel after our stroke man fell out with the cox for not being aggressive enough with other crews. The intense rate started to impact members of the crew, and the morale in the boat started to go downhill. Not used to rowing for that long, my technique began to fall apart which in turn led to my hands blistering. I wasn’t the only one suffering. There was a lot of groaning going on and at one point the guy in front of me started whimpering. It was turning in to a nightmare. I think the worst part came when we turned a corner in to a headwind with about five miles to go. It felt like we were rowing against a brick wall. When a single sculler overtook us near the finish it was pretty obvious we were pretty much done.

Unsurprisingly we didn’t break the course record which Rob wasn’t very happy about. I was just pleased to get out of the boat with my body not permanently crippled. Driving home with my hands in tatters at the end of a day like that wasn’t the best experience in the world.

I’d always been curious about rowing but had always believed that I didn’t have the right physical make up to do it. I’d also never seen or heard of any local clubs, or even knew anyone involved in it. Like most other people my only exposure to it was watching Redgrave and Pinsent pick up their Olympic gold medals every four years or randomly catching the Boat Race on TV. I’d used the indoor rowing machine on many occasions at the gym, but that was it.

I first became intrigued in actually doing it as a sport at a work sales conference in Dublin, Ireland. As with many other similar meetings we had an external speaker come along to use as a motivational tactic. These took on various forms throughout the years, including the Olympic gold medal cyclist Chris Boardman, a hostage negotiator, a blind marathon runner, Olympic gold medal swimmer Adrian Moorhouse and a host of others. Being sports mad, I always find these really interesting. But I know there are many people who find the whole thing completely irritating. In fairness, there is always a tenuous link between the experience of the presenter and how that can be applied in a business context. It’s very hard to make the leap from someone sat on a bike as a living with one sole aim to win a gold medal, to convincing someone in hospital to buy a sticky dressing. Having a clear plan, meeting targets, playing to your strengths etc are very relevant but it’s an analogy only. I just like hearing from professional sportsmen and getting a glimpse in to their world. One of the perks of the job as far as I’m concerned.

On this particular occasion, the presenter was Garry Herbert. He was the cox for the Searle brothers in the coxed pair at the Atlanta games. He famously cried his eyes out on the podium whilst the Searle brothers towered above him and looked slightly bemused. It’s a very inspirational race. They beat the Italian Abagnale brothers who had been unbeaten in the run up to the games, and they did it through sheer guts and determination. Garry showed the race during his presentation and explained the psychology that they had deployed to win against all the odds. As part of the session he asked for volunteers to row on an ergo for thirty seconds. I can’t even remember why, but being me, I volunteered. It turns out I did ok, Garry made some comment about being impressed with the metres gained and I won whatever challenge it was that he’d got us to do. It may not have been much, but it was enough to get me thinking. Garry completed his presentation and I made a beeline afterwards to say how much I’d enjoyed his talk. He seemed genuinely grateful I’d said something, I think he’d been fairly nervous. I guess it can be pretty daunting to stand up in front of a group of strangers, even if you have won an Olympic gold medal.

On the way back from the conference I got chatting to a colleague of mine and mentioned that I fancied getting in to rowing but didn’t think I had the right physique. He encouraged me to give it a go. ‘What have you got to lose?’ was his remark. He had a point. When I got back home I searched local clubs and found out that there were two not far from me in Burton-Upon-Trent. I literally had no idea they were there. Based on no other reason other than one club looked slightly more appealing than the other, I emailed the club secretary of Burton Leander and enquired about joining. I got a response pretty quickly inviting me to come along to a Sunday morning club session to meet him and have an introductory session, so that’s what I did.

The introduction basically involved a guide around the clubhouse and a lesson on how to row properly on an ergo. The club consisted of a weights room, indoor rowing area, club meeting room complete with kitchen and bar, and a boathouse filled with all sizes of rowing boats from single sculls to Eights. As a member you were allowed to use any club boat and had access to all the facilities for a very small annual membership fee. The clubhouse was right next to the river Trent, and I got to watch the club members row up and down the river in front of the landing pontoon. I was made to feel very welcome and any doubts about being the wrong physical size were dissipated when I looked around and saw all shapes, sizes and ages of those involved. I agreed to come back the following week where they promised I would get to go in a training boat to learn the basics of sculling. Now this was completely new to me too. I wasn’t aware that you could row with two oars i.e. sculling. I had only previously seen people in what I learnt were sweep oar boats i.e. single oar, where you had crew members rowing on different sides. I also learnt that rowing on the right side of a sweep oar boat was called ‘stroke side’, and the left was ‘bow side’. Confusingly the rower at the front of the boat was also called the ‘stroke man’ and the person at the back was at ‘bow’. The stroke person generally set the rhythm of the boat for the other rowers to follow. The person at bow generally steered the boat with their feet using a foot plate attached to the rudder underneath the boat, unless it was a coxed boat which in that case the cox would steer using a pulley system. If there was a cox, they would set the tempo, steer and drive the race tactics. Without a cox, this fell to a nominated person within the boat to make the calls. Confused? Yep, I was too.

Burton Leander as it turned out was more of a sculling club. Most of the boats were used for rowing with two oars each, and of course you could only row single boats by sculling. The minimum for a sweep oar boat was 2 people, which was called a pair. As I later found out, these were the most tricky to row as balance was crucial. But as a beginner at Burton Leander, sculling was the way to learn. That following Sunday I got in the ‘yellow boat’ which was very stable and was attached with a rope to someone on the pontoon so they could reel you back in if you were struggling. The first experience in one of these was quite nerve wracking even though it was virtually impossible to capsize. The technique of placing the oars or ‘blades’ in the water was something you had to get used to whilst learning how to balance the boat using your body position.

It took some time, but slowly I got used to sculling.
It wasn’t long before I was put in an Octuple, an eight man sculling boat. This was fairly safe for everyone because with that amount of people even a complete novice can’t cause the boat to capsize. It also meant that the person behind me could coach me by talking me through the movement and exercises designed to improve technique. The coaches talked about not ‘catching a crab’ which I learnt was not some STD reference, but instead meant not getting your blade stuck in the water because you’d got it twisted. I would catch many crabs throughout my rowing time. A particularly spectacular one occurred whilst rowing in an eight in preparation for the Head of the River race down on the Thames. I unwisely decided that I could tighten my Velcro straps on my footboard whilst rowing. In turns out you can’t. The next thing I knew I was underwater after effectively catapulting myself out of the boat. Bobbing up out of the water I started laughing as the rest of the crew looked at me, trying to understand just how I’d managed to end up out of the boat.

I managed to capsize on numerous occasions whilst in the single scull. Having taken up rowing quite late on I think I was overly nervous about trying not to make a mistake. This didn’t help. Being relaxed is the best way to keep balanced. On one occasion I caught a huge crab in one of the long stretches of water a couple of km’s up river. I ended up upside down but managed to get myself back in and get going again. As I was completely on my own no-one actually saw me do it and by the time I got back to the club I had completely dried out. A clubmate helped pull me in to the pontoon and noticed a large amount of water sloshing about in the foot well. He asked if I’d capsized, and I flatly denied it. There was no other logical reason for the water in the boat but admitting it was a no no. It was just a recipe for relentless ribbing from the lads, so I kept shtum.

The coached outings were great fun and I learnt a lot. The real way to make improvements though is to master the single scull. Once I had learnt the basics in the yellow boat, the next step was to learn to row solo with extra stabiliser floats attached to the rigging. This was to get you used to the narrower design of the single scull and lean balance before progressing to scull without the stabilisers.

It’s fair to say I was very nervous to begin with, as most novice scullers are but the coaches and club mates were very patient and supportive. The challenge was to progress to be good enough to earn a place in the crew boats with the aim of entering races. After a few weeks this is what happened and I began to train in a quad (four man sculling boat). The river in Burton is a great stretch of water. You can row around 4 kilometres from the clubhouse upstream before turning back round. This was great for training sessions as we tended to do drills and exercise on the way up the river, and then do races on the way back down. The feel of a boat moving fast through the water when you are going at full speed is pretty exhilarating and I soon got the bug for racing.

Yes, you’ve read that correctly. I’ve tried hang gliding. This was another one of my random wanderings during my wilderness years. I went through a period of trying to find something new and different.

I’m not sure what led me to try hang gliding to be honest, I wouldn’t say I’m an adrenalin junkie. I’ve never wanted to go anywhere near a motorbike or anything particularly dangerous. The closest I’ve probably come to that is doing a bungee jump whilst on holiday in Turkey. It wasn’t something I’d considered before, it hadn’t even entered my head. During the holiday myself and my partner at the time would walk from the hotel to the resort centre to look for places to eat. Sticking out like a sore thumb due to my pasty white skin or sunburn (I sunbathe, go red, peel and then go back to white again. Standard) we used to get bombarded by the waiters as we walked past their restaurants. This is a common tactic of the local restaurant staff to try and charm you so that you’ll wander in. It’s ok but gets annoying after a few days, particularly when they turn from being all nice and smiley to almost aggressive when you fail to live up to your suggestion of ‘maybe tomorrow’.

Once we’d got through ‘Hassle Street’ you could see the bungee jumpers leaping off a crane over the sea near the resort harbour. The first few days I saw it I was dead set that I would never do it, but as the week went on and I saw more and more people making the jump I started to warm to the idea. One day we were walking past and there was no queue, they had just opened up for the night. Thinking that the best way to approach this was to just get it over and done with quickly with no time to start talking myself out of it, I walked over to the guy selling the tickets and went for it.

After the obligatory signing of the disclaimer document I got measured up for weight and height so that they could calculate the correct bungee length. I was asked if I wanted to dip my head in to the water on the way down, but I politely declined that element. I can understand why people do that but it seemed bad enough without the prospect of slamming my head on water as well. Why anyone would sign up for bungee jumps over land is beyond me. At least over water you should be ok if the length of the bungee is wrong or breaks, over land you’re stuffed. No thanks.

I made my way to the platform where I was going to jump off from and was given a safety talk by the guys up there. To be fair, it was pretty simple. Jump outwards and then plummet. They did all the necessary fastening and tightening so that I was strapped to my bungee cord. I was then told to shuffle to the end of the platform ready for the jump. I stopped when I thought I was at the end only to be told that I need to shuffle about another foot further along. Up until that point I hadn’t looked down, but there was no way I could know where I needed to be without doing so. As soon as I did, reality hit hard. It was a proper scary moment. My heart started going like the clappers. The guys on the platform were more than used to this of course, and were loving the fact that I was clearly starting to panic. Offering me reassurances that ‘don’t worry, we haven’t had any fatalities yet’ was just what I needed.
Checking if I was ready, Mr Motivator started counting me down from 3…2…1…and then I jumped. Oh….my….god. It was the most bizarre sensation, my stomach felt as though it was literally coming out of my mouth on the way down. I tried to scream but I couldn’t. The wind was completely knocked out of me. It felt like I was falling forever. Before I knew it I was bouncing back up again, and then falling again. Knowing that I had to go down again was the worst. By the time I came to a halt I had had more than enough. I put a brave face on it and pretended I loved it, but there was no way I was doing that again. Box ticked, move on.

Back to hang gliding. The bungee jump experience was not something I wanted to repeat. Hang gliding seemed a lot more graceful but with an element of adrenaline attached to it. I’d also had a fascination with flying, so I was curious as to what this would feel like. I’d had thoughts of joining the RAF when I was younger and had even enquired at a school careers fair but that was the sum of it.

Having visions of leaping off mountains I signed up for a two day taster session in the Peak District to decide whether it was something I would enjoy. I put myself down on the list and reserved my slot but as with windsurfing the sport is very weather dependant so there was no guarantee when the lesson would be. The instructor would be in touch when he was confident there would be an appropriate weather window to go ahead. Checking in with him the day before the first lesson he confirmed that the weather was looking good and I was to meet him in the car park of a pub in the Peaks. This sounded very clandestine and when I turned up the next day the fog was rolling in. It was like something out of a Hammer Horror film.
When the instructor turned up, myself and some others who had signed up for the course were told to get in our cars and follow him to a nearby peak. The higher we went, the foggier it got. I wasn’t massively confident that leaping off a mountain would be the best thing to do in this kind of visibility but what did I know.

When we got to the summit, it was clear that no leaping was on the agenda. The idea instead was to experience ‘flying’ by being strapped in to a hang glider whilst the instructor and his helper held on to us with ropes to stop us disappearing. Less flying, more floating. I’m not sure why I’d expected anything more rudimentary than this given I was a complete novice. It’s probably something to do with the fact that I’ve got zero patience and expect to be able to jump straight in to things. You may have guessed this already.

When I got my turn to get strapped in and do my floating, it was actually quite enjoyable. It was a very windy day so we were getting buffeted around quite a bit whilst we were up in the air and you did get a sense of what It would be like, without any of the associated danger of crashing headfirst in to the side of a mountain. At the end of the lesson we were told to come back the next day for the second part.
As it turned out, the weather wasn’t good enough the following day so I had to wait a few more weeks before I got my second stint. Same kind of routine as before but a slightly different location in the Peak District. This time we were taken to a field with a fairly steep incline. Instead of being tethered like we were in the previous lesson, this time we would be getting much more of a flavour of learning to actually hang glide.

Once the glider was assembled the instructor showed us what he wanted us to do. You positioned yourself underneath the wings with the glider resting on your shoulders. You then started to run so that the wind would come under the wings enabling you to get off your feet and glide down the hill by holding on to the metal frame. You could then use the bar of the frame to push the wings up or down to catch the wind, enabling you to stay in the air. This was more like it. He did a few demonstrations and then it was our turn. It wasn’t that easy.

The first time I ran down, I just fell over in to a pile of sheep poo with the hang glider upended. Nice. The same thing happened a few times. Run, jump, crash, sheep poo. The instructor was very patient though and just kept suggesting adjustments to what I was doing. On about the fifth attempt, I ran a bit faster and felt the wind fill up the wings. I jumped up and this time the glider got airborne and I flew for about thirty metres before again landing in sheep poo. It actually felt really good. After that I got the hang of it (no pun intended) and managed to get slightly further each time. The instructor was delighted, much to the annoyance of one of the other guys who was there on the course. He was having a nightmare. However hard he tried he couldn’t get the glider off the ground. We’d had a conversation earlier where he’d admitted that hang gliding was something that he’d always wanted to do. He’d actually signed up for a week long course, so his lack of success was starting to get him down. He was getting a bit despondent and the instructor was clearly getting frustrated with him which can’t have helped. I think he gave in and left before the end of the day.

At the end of the session I was getting on well with the instructor. He was trying to encourage me to get in to it as a serious hobby. He started talking about joining as a member of his hang gliding club and was talking enthusiastically about the cost of gliders. Nice as it was, the experience hadn’t got me hooked. Being a fair weather sportsman the thought of only being able to only do it in windy conditions wasn’t appealing. I wasn’t about to make the same compulsive mistake I’d made with windsurfing and shell out thousands of pounds for a piece of kit I was never going to use. I’m sure the garage would have had room, but I’d had my fill of sheep poo related flying incidents.

It has to be said, golf is not exactly in line with my love of keeping fit. Walking around a course for hours on end whacking a little white ball around doesn’t really float my boat. Why on earth would I by a set of golf clubs then? Good question.

I’d occasionally gone down to Lichfield municipal golf course in Beacon Park with my mates from school whilst we were at the Friary. This mainly happened during the school holidays and involved renting a set of mangled clubs from a little white hut next to the children’s playground and crazy golf course. The course itself was pretty small and was very much designed to be a social thing rather than anything remotely serious. Some of the lads were quite handy players, but I was very much in the ‘whack it and attempt to putt’ category. My technique was awful, and my patience wasn’t much better. I was well known amongst my friends for having a short fuse and getting frustrated if things weren’t going to plan. Playing a game where patience and calm are fundamental was not really playing to my strengths. So it was fair to say that I didn’t take these games very seriously and had no intention of getting better by practising.

We also occasionally went down to the local driving range. This better suited my personality given that it was all whacking and no putting. It also didn’t really matter if your technique was awful as you just picked another ball out of the basket if you hit a complete clanger. Every now and then I’d connect properly with the club and the ball would go sailing off in to the distance. It’s a pretty good feeling to be fair so I do get the attraction of regularly doing that but this was clearly never going to be a serious hobby.

I played a few times at University with my mates. This time we went to proper courses where the etiquette was a lot more formal. Sharing clubs and not wearing the proper attire was frowned upon, but we somehow managed to get a few rounds in. As with my school mates we treated it as a bit of laugh. We were all around the same mediocre standard apart from Ian, who was my roommate in my first year and one of my housemates in the third year. Ian was the first person I met when I arrived at Loughborough University. My parents brought me with all my stuff to the hall on the weekend before term started. I knew I was in the Holt hall of residence, which was off campus. This was a bit of a disappointment when I found out as my expectation was that I’d be in one of the halls situated on the main University site. I’d imagined that being on campus was a normal experience of student life so felt I was going to miss out in some way. It was therefore an even bigger shock to find out when I registered at the hall that I wasn’t actually going to be in the Holt site either. I was in one of the annexes called Westbridge, and this one was an all-male hall. Now, being off site was one thing but being surrounded by blokes only was a different proposition altogether.

It was with some trepidation then that I got back in the car with my parents and headed over to my new home. That’s when I discovered I was sharing a room. Things were going from bad to worse. My student dream life was rapidly going down the pan.

When I got to my room I met Ian who was already unpacking his things. We began the small talk and it soon turned in to one of those weird coincidences that sometimes happen. We got on to the subject of where we were from and at that time I had been living in a village called Whittington, a few miles from Lichfield. We’d moved from Stonnall when I was eleven, just before I went to secondary school. Where we lived was down a quiet lane that ran around the back of the village playing field where there were only a few houses. It was called Vicarage Lane and it turned out that Ian’s Uncle lived in the house at the end of the lane so he had regularly been there for family gatherings. Small world. It was a great icebreaker as we had something in common, even though it was fairly trivial. From that point on we got on pretty well.

Ian was there to study Mechanical Engineering and had signed up for a Masters degree, so would be doing one more year than me. It was obvious that he was very intelligent. He was also a keen golfer (got there in the end, I bet you were beginning to wonder what I was going on about). He had grown up in Sheffield and had been very good friends with Lee Westwood, who went on to be a very successful professional golfer. Like virtually everyone in the hall, Ian soon picked up a nickname. Due to his strong Sheffield accent, he was Ratskin as in ‘two bob and a ratskin’. Can’t recall who’s bright idea it was to name him that, but it stuck. It was a hall ritual of the second year students to provide everyone with nicknames. As well as Ratskin there was a whole variety of new names. My friend Mark became Closet, due to being a closet ginger. Wyn became Hoop as his surname was Hopkins. Paul became Damian, because he had a passing resemblance to a character in Australian soap Neighbours. You get the idea. This made it really difficult when the hall phone rang and a parent asked for their son. Quite often no-one knew the real names of their house mates, so there would be confused scrabble to work out who they were referring to. This soon developed in to the phone game, where the person answering would deliberately put the wrong person on the phone. This was hilarious until you were the one it happened to. It was quite a regular occurrence for the caller to hang up after the third incorrect person came to the phone.

Ratskin ended up doing his Master’s dissertation on golf club design, which was a fairly good indication that he was a fan of the sport. Not only was he a very intelligent guy but he also had the great fortune to have a photographic memory. This was a major advantage for him and a source of great annoyance to us. As we went through the painstaking process of cramming before the exams, Ratskin would be calmly confident as he’d taken it all in from just one reading.

So every now and then we’d head to the golf course to spend a few hours whacking a ball about. Nothing serious, except for when Ratskin joined us and easily got the lowest score of the day. We also played golf after leaving University when we went up to see Closet at his family home in Berwick. The golf course was on the top of a hill, with RAF planes acting out dogfights. There was more than one occasion when we got frightened to death when a fighter jet came roaring over the course.

However, it wasn’t until after University that I went ahead and bought my own set of clubs. It wasn’t because I suddenly had some mad epiphany that I was going to become good at it, it was actually because it was the only chance to really meet up with one of my school mates, Wieland (his real name was Jonny, but in true bloke style we called him by his surname). Wieland was a keen golfer, having inherited his dad’s skills. He was also a policeman working shifts, so it was pretty difficult to see him on a regular basis. A few of us started to join him for a game of golf on one of the council golf courses in Birmingham. We started off by sharing clubs from Wieland’s set but after getting abuse from club members on multiple occasions I decided I’d invest in my own set.

I really was not very good so decided to have a lesson at the driving range in Lichfield. The coach asked me to hit a few balls while he videoed me. The idea was that he would analyse my technique and then offer some tips on how I could make some improvements. I thought I’d done pretty well as I connected with the balls and had hit them a fairly long way. The coach told me he had a couple of suggestions. This included my grip, my stance, my head position, my swing rotation and my eyeline. So basically everything. Once he’s made all his suggestions I could hardly hit the ball, and it felt like learning to write left handed. I’m sure it was all perfectly valid, but it was hardly inspiring me.

Armed with my new knowledge I took to the course with Wieland and company and proceeded to be just as bad as ever, much to everyone’s amusement. Every so often we would organise a weekend away at a hotel and golf course in what became known as the ‘Wielnad Cup’. A handicap system was applied to level the playing field, but Wieland generally won. It didn’t help that getting drunk and having a laugh was the main priority rather than the golf.

Much as it was great to spend time with mates, four or five hours on a golf course was getting a bit unmanageable, particularly when my first daughter, Erica, came along. So apart from a few rounds at stag do’s, and work conferences the golf clubs didn’t really get used. The most memorable golf experience at work was at a course near Cheltenham as part of a national sales event. The UK MD for the company at the time was an American, and he was a mad keen golfer. He also used to be an American football quarterback, so was a pretty big guy. Being the MD he would always be the one to tee off first, proudly knocking lumps out of the golf ball with his massive driver. Being quite a loud bloke as well, he would shout something like ‘watch this!’ before smashing it down the fairway. It turned out that myself and another work colleague called JY were in a four ball behind Jim’s group, which consisted of three senior members of the management team. On the approach to one of the greens, JY managed to slice a shot so badly that it went straight towards Jim’s group who were lining up at the next tee. It must have missed the MD’s head by a couple of inches. JY’s desperate cries of ‘Four’ didn’t so much to alert the group, much to the anger of one of them who stormed over yelling at us. Jim himself wasn’t that fussed and instead tried to coach JY into improving his swing. Needless to say we hung back a little after that.

Unsurprisingly, the golf clubs got consigned to the garage of discarded hobbies soon after this and haven’t been used again since. Not a huge surprise that golf wasn’t my thing but it had provided a few comedy moments and had helped spend some time with a mate. Golf is now an Olympic sport after being introduced at the 2016 games in Rio, which I find slightly strange. Even so, it’s not something I see myself doing again.