Snow Go Area and Goodbye to Santa.

The weather over the past couple of weeks has been really awful, and especially over the past week when the snow came and stayed. As an athlete this has meant indoor training on rollers down at Harlow Sports Centre, and my usuall strength and conditioning training with my coach, John Campbell. I have been working really hard over the past few months and I'm looking forward to the New Year and the challenges ahead.
I've also been learning to swim and Neil Mann from Stewards School here in Harlow is the unlucky one trying to help me. I have never met such a patient person as Neil. He is an excellent teacher and has been working with me, off and on, over the past year. I must admit to finding it difficult to slot the time for swimming into my busy schedule, especially on these freezing cold winter nights, and when I got into the pool last week it was my first time for about 8 weeks. I managed to swim 8 breadths of the pool unaided and Neil was convinced I must have been having secret training elsewhere! I haven't and my success is all down to Neils patience and my own determination. It's good to learn new skills and my next target is to pass my driving test. I passed the theory so now its just the manual driving to master. I'll do it!
Outside of my sporting life I have been just like everyone else and getting ready for Christmas. Timothy, my son who is 8, is beginning to question the existence of Santa and wonders why he can't deliver presents to children in Africa, and do us parents give him the money for his presents. It's sad but inevitable that I think this is probably his last Christmas of believing in Santa. It's all part of growing up, at least in the developed world. As a child growing up in Kenya there was no such thing as Santa. We just woke up on Christmas Day and if we were lucky would be given a new dress or pair of shoes which would be proudly shown off at church. For us, the true nature of Christmas was to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. I feel that has largely been forgotten here in the U.K, at least it has if you have to judge by the media.
Anyway, it was still a delight to see Tim's face at 8.15am on Christmas morning as he opened his gifts, and to watch him happily playing throughout the day. I was shattered by the time I finally got to bed but it was a great day with the family. Roll on New Year.

Harlow Sports Awards 09.

It's interesting that when you are an athlete and start doing well how this can lead on to other things. For example, yesterday after I'd done my usual 10 miles training it was back home for a nice hot bath and then getting dressed in my posh clothes to give a short talk at a function I'd been invited to.
It was held at Harlow Town Football Ground, a lovely venue with a great view of the pitch from the windows of the Functions Suite. It was the official launch of the Harlow Sports Awards 09.The awards started last year and I was a recipient of the Disability Award, presented to me by the famous cricketer Graham Gooch, so I was honoured to be asked to give a short talk on the Importance of Sport as part of the launch. I think it went well.
Afterwards it was nice to chat to the other guests who included Councillor Tony Hall and his wife, Robert Halfon, the Conservative candidate at the next election, Neil Mann, who won the Services to Sport Award last year, and the man who has the unenviable task of trying to teach me to swim, plus up and coming sporting talents James Huckle and Mark Hunt. I really enjoyed myself and it was a nice break from the rigours of training.