Winter Break

Christmas is always a difficult time of year for the professional athlete. Temptation is a terrible thing and greed is a bastard. I am pleased to report that none of our team succumbed to the perils of profligate behaviour though. Booze may have been in abundance (photo 1 - left) but its effects were well harnessed (photo 2 - below).

In fact, despite the odd, momentary, week-long lapse, the team maintained their training. Steve Redgrave famously used to train on Christmas Day to get one up on his opponents. Fool! What did he know! Deciding this was frankly excessive, we ate copious amounts of turkey and drank champagne.

Cometh the New Year, cometh the man. I bet Steve has never swum in the 2 foot deep waters of the Welsh wonderlands, ventured up and out into the driving hail on the Welsh hills like Williams for run after run, braced 80mph gusts on the Lakeland fells for "feet time"like Ian or battled the gales in Fort William to reach the Co-Op for more mince pies, like Caspar. In Caspar's defence the weather north of the border was so bad that the Scot's cancelled Hogmonay in Edinburgh. By his own admission though, that may have simply been because they were tight.

Steve, however, may now be enjoying his retirement on the marginally more appetising Norwegian ice with Selman. Sensible chap.

Bob would have been proud.

Two New Years resolutions:

1. more sleep.
2. more action.