It was the first Belgium Rollers in Brussels yesterday evening – not a bad start to the season. The website says things start at 1900, in fact it was due to start at 2000, and we finally departed around 2030. The first parts were very slow (the first loop on...
The picture is from lap 8 of Sunday’s Montréal Roller Marathon. Ouch, what a race. First of all, the weather – 6 degrees at the start, and very windy. The race is around the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve – on an island in the St Lawrence river. Hence little protection from...
This is the view that greeted me when walking from Schuman to my Brussels flat this morning – a smashed up TV just lying on the pavement. Presumably the owner didn’t know it had to be put in a special white bag, the street sweepers in the commune of 1000...
OK, so the first race of the season is behind me – the Berlin Inline Half Marathon took place this morning. My result is here. I managed the 21km in 46 mins 9 seconds, giving an average speed for the race of 27.82km/h. Overall I finished in 175th place of...
I’ve been the happy owner of a Gaggia Classic espresso machine for more than 2 years. It’s a stout, shining beast of a machine that sits proudly in my kitchen and provides 3 or 4 excellent cups of espresso that make my daily website programming much more pleasant. So pleased...
It was a grey yet dry day in Brussels; time to put my inline skates on for the first time this year and skate more than 24km between Delacroix Metro (line 2, in Brussels) as far as Beersel in Flanders, and back. I had intended to go as far as...
Just back from an excellent morning run – 10km from Leyton through Hackney Marshes, then Walthamstow marshes (almost as far as Tottenham Hale) and then back. There was a sprinkling of snow on the ground, and the grass in the marshes was hard and icy. But where else in London...
There are going to be a few changes here at this blog over the coming few weeks as, from a professional point of view, 2009 promises to be a year of major changes. I’ll be starting a Limited Company in the web design business together with a number of others...
Having skated the Berlin Inline Marathon in 1 hour 35 minutes in September 2008 I’m determined to do better in 2009. So I need to make my training regime more professional… Problem: when skating there’s no way other than GPS to measure your speed. Pedometers don’t work. So I managed...
So Peter Mandelson announces that Royal Mail is to be part privatised. Cue much teeth gnashing / soul searching / resignations / bemoaning of the loss of a national icon, bla bla. Come on folks, let’s get real about this. Royal Mail, much like Woolworths, MFI and plenty of others...
It was nasty accident. Some teenagers were digging tunnels in sand dunes in West Wales, one of them was in the tunnel, it collapsed, and the boy died. The coroner in the case has suggested that signs be put at the entrance to beaches warning that playing with sand is...
A fine sunny autumn day, flat and fast roads, and I managed the 41.129km of the Berlin Inline Marathon in a total time of 1 hour 35 minutes. Considering I had hoped for 1 hour 50 minutes I’m rather pleased with that. I think it’s something to do with the...