So, so cold

-3 this morning at 10am. That's cold.

Belgium

Beckenham Hill Climb

It's the richest race I've ever been to — £1000 for the winner, £900 for the team prize, and £100 for a course record. Dan Fleeman rode the Catford event in the morning, then sprinted up Titsey hill in the afternoon like gravity had had a momentary lapse of concentration. He broke Gary Dodd's 12 year-old course record and won by 5 seconds. Gary Dodd was a creditable fourth, in 1.51, beating some big names on the way. Norwood Paragon was out in force with Wozza cheering everyone on in a giant blue condom suit. Nice.

Self portrait

Seeing as I'm the best looking bloke I know, and the most talented on a
bike, I had a go at doing a self portrait riding shot. Here's the result...

World Championships

Cycles Dauphin/Army CU 3 Day Stage 1 TT

Click on the pic to see a gallery of pictures from the Army CU/Cycles Dauphin Prologue at Box Hill on Friday 24th August.

Photobucket Album

Laura portrait

Another horrible day today, to add to the long list of horrible summer's days in 2007. We were going to go to the cinema but couldn't be bothered leaving the flat, so I had a practise with my silver umbrella. This is shot at f1.8 to narrow down the depth of field.

Bracknell with a 50mm

I thought I'd have a go at copying Dan Barham's desaturated steez. I like it. I spent both days last weekend in Bracknell, well, actually most of Saturday was spent in the bike shop while Mark scrabbled around trying to find enough pennies to buy his new Orange 5.

More velodrome action

This was probably the hottest day of the year. I'm so glad I wasn't racing — 25miles equates to 84 laps around Herne Hill. You could tell the riders were bored to tears. Still, it was a good opportunity for me to shoot some pics.

Dungeness

Such a strange, eerie place...

Le Tour en Angleterre

This weekend the tour was in London and it was absolutely amazing. I was fully expecting myself to be a miserable old sod and dismiss it as "just a load of old druggies" and do my best to ignore it. But Andy Knowles wanted to go and watch it so I got involved and once I got there, the atmosphere was incredible — London really put on a spectacle. I got some pictures in the warm-up area as well as round by Big Ben — just about the only area you could get near the barriers (people were five deep most of the way round the course).

Herne Hill Velodrome

I went along to the track last night as the track league was on. I should have ridden really but I'm still recovering — I'm going to go down for the Derny session tonight. Here's a couple of shots from the evening. I was having a go at panning which I've not really done before — this shot of Wozza was at 1/40 of a second at 200mm. It took ages to get one sharp. The flashed shots didn't really work too well. This one was one of the best though.

Sick day

I've felt awful the last few days, I'm pretty sure I've got gastroenteritis. It's horrible. I know there's not a lot I can do about it but I feel like this after pretty much every race I do, it just doesn't normally last this long.
So, I've been at home today, watching Peep Show (again...) and getting bored. To keep myself entertained I took some pictures of the flowers Laura's former colleagues got her when she left IPC. I set the vase up in the bath (to get that seamless(ish) white background)
and used my new umbrella to provide some light (it's pretty grey out today).

Brockwell Park BMX track — under construction

This is the new track at Brockwell Park. Looks pretty good to me — but what would I know eh? Still a fair way off, I think it's all being done by volunteers at the weekends, so fair enough really.

Apologies for the crap video skills. I don't know what I'm doing

Sunday shining

I woke up at 6.45 this morning. That's early for a Sunday isn't it? It's weird, I wake up earlier at the weekends than on workdays.
Mark and I had planned to go to Peaslake all week and I lent him the Orange 5 from work on the grounds that he'd model in some shots. This is probably the best.
Location — the steep drop from the top of Pitch Hill. We didn't see any other riders go down in the hour or so it took to set up and shoot 1,000,000 frames. What's wrong with people? This is one of the best descents out there!

One that got away

I've got a bunch of pictures in this week's Cycling Weekly, (and yes, that is me on the cover, much to derision of veloriders — LOL!) and I thought they'd use this one for the best in test shot in the Sportive Bike Test. They didn't, so I'll show it off here. More of the same as seen below really, just a bit better.

MBR Scotland roadtrip

It's quarter to two in the morning and I'm up doing this. What a loser... We just drove back from Fort William and I'm exhausted, but I need to chill out for a bit before I'll be able to sleep, so this is cathartic in a geeky sort of way.
Scotland was amazing; the whole place is of a scale I never imagined it would be. The size of the hills, the friendliness of the people, the crapness of the weather and the quality of the trails all blew me away. It was proper wilderness biking at its best. Pictures here are from the Isle of Skye and Auchindrain, both shot with a camera phone. Geoff's (waughphotos.com) should be pretty stunning in comparison — they'll probably be in the mag for months to come.
I'm too knackered for this, I'm off to bed

Racing

In the last four days I've done three races, and surprisingly enough, I feel better for it. The first one went ok, a 110km hack around the Cutmill circuit in Surrey and I ended up 14th, not that the judges spotted me — they placed two riders who didn't finish in the top 10! On Tuesday evening I road Crystal Palace where I suffered like I've never suffered before just to finish. I spent the whole race wishing I was still a third cat and could race the slower race. Not that that's actually any slower, just the attacks are easier to follow. I'm looking pretty desperate in this picture from londoncyclesport.
Last night I raced at Eelmoor and came 7th. I attacked 10miles from the finish (there were already two riders up the road) and road 2miles by myself before being joined by Wozza and three other guys. Our tactics were crap and we came last out of our break, but still, it's points in an E/1/2 so I can't complain. Let's hope there more where that came from!

Flanders Sportive and road bike pics

Good Friday was the start of a really good weekend which saw me travel to Belgium, ride the Tour of Flanders Sportive, drink Belgian beer, take some pictures of bikes, chase the proper race (see shot of Boonen, Bettini and O'Grady on the cobbles, below), met up with Belgian Stan in Geraardsbergen and then travel home Sunday evening (see above), knackered but happy at a weekend well spent. And then on Monday Al and Brummy John came over and we kicked a ball around the park in the sun. Nice.

Last night I did some final shots for Webby's bike test — the bikes we rode in Flanders — at Crystal Palace (example left). I'm pleased with them. All comments welcome though.

Make your way to Berlin

Laura and I went to Berlin last weekend. It's such a cool city. Really vibrant and masses of recent history. I took a whole load of pictures with my Holga and some expired Kodak 400NC film and these are the first I've scanned. More to follow...

NB: That's it, there's loads on here now, the systems about to blow so I'll stop loading any more pics on this post