Rain

I got a bit damp pedalling in this morning due to the rain, luckily it's still quite warm but it was also pretty dark. I nearly bottled it though and came in the car. Glad I didn't. I think my usual Tuesday Blues had kicked in.

Stats here:
Started: 8 Jun 2010 05:47:29
Ride Time: 38:41
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance: 11.81 miles
Average: 16.00 miles/hr
Fastest Speed: 39.32 miles/hr
Climb: 164 feet
Calories: 696

Quite pleased with the average speed and time. A sub 40 for the journey in is for me good going.

I know it's off topic, but I just have to unload about the Rugby meeting I went to last night. I volunteered to take over my club's representation from a guy who has sat on the committee of the Birmingham Rugby Development Group and has after a quite a few years service decided to stand down.

The BRDG remit is to promote rugby in Birmingham, supply the first level of representative rugby to players through the Greater Birmingham Squads, to support amateur rugby and provide a conduit to communicate regional issues to the RFU which is the game in England's governing body.

We had to get there for 1900hrs which being me I arrived at 1840hrs and was quite relieved to see a few faces I recognised from the circuit and a few new faces too. So I relaxed a bit.

My boss at my club had sent me there with the express instruction to push our club forward in the area through means of offering Coach Education, coaching sessions run by our professional staff and offering our facilities out for conferences or meetings such as the one I attended last night.

Five minutes in I quickly discovered why as a County Level coach (North Midlands) I always have had trouble with Greater Birmingham Rugby. The words Breweries and piss ups immediately sprang to mind.

I sort of worked out that we were there to discuss why junior rugby clubs in Birmingham do not like Greater Birmingham Rugby, have no faith in Greater Birmingham Rugby and generally do their own thing despite Greater Birmingham Rugby. Every club in Birmingham is supposed to be represented at this group which I believe is about 30 clubs at all levels from Level 2 professional clubs like mine (equivalent to the Championship in soccer) to clubs the likes of Old Fatbastardians Drinking XV. There were by my count 8 clubs represented there.

You know the phrase "A camel is a horse designed by committee", well this organisation was a classic example of that, what agenda there was was digressed upon pretty well most of the time and what aims I could discern were aims my club had already decided we would pursue anyway.

Please don't laugh, but the only thing I could see the 2 and a half hour meeting achieved was to have another meeting to discuss stuff we were meant to be discussing anyway! My natural inclination is to hate meetings, I have to have them at work and I hate them too, I describe them as 2 hours of my life I'll never get back, this was right up there as a bigger pointless waste of time than I have ever experienced.

This is the God's honest truth, 3 of the older blokes had a 20 minute argument about the cost of representative ties awarded to players as though it was the most important thing ever!

I came away at 2130hrs more mystified about what the hell that was all about than I was at the start. The funny thing was, I was accompanied by Eugene Martin one of our professional coaches, when we both got outside we both looked at each other at the same time and both said together "we'll do it by ourselves", in that we already had all of the groups "new" ideas in place and more initiatives as well to promote the sport in our area. The only difference is we'll deliver them! Hopefully if they see how we operate they'll use us as a model to get things done instead of talking bollocks for nearly 3 hours and achieving the square root of bugger all. They were the opitomy of the word "amateur".

Rant over, apologies.

Back on topic.

Last night's pedal here:
Started: 7 Jun 2010 15:04:13
Ride Time: 45:53
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance:11.58 miles
Average: 13.52 miles/hr
Fastest Speed: 32.78 miles/hr
Climb: 564 feet
Calories: 805

It went pretty well and I blasted a guy on his MTB going up Frankley Beeches which I was quite pleased about, he was a young fit looking bloke too on a pretty high end Scott.

I should start to have some more footage for you as my Muvi Clone that I ordered off Ebay turned up yesterday. First impressions are that it's pretty plasticy and not as well made, obviously! I'll have a report on funtionality as soon as possible. Whatever happens, you can't really moan for a tenner.