I had occasion to need a tub (tubular cycle tyre) mending the other week and, as usual, I sent it off to Peter Burgin who advertises in Cycling Weekly every fortnight (he can’t afford the ads weekly now. It was only after some painful Googling that I found his address on the net – on some forum or other – and only because I knew his name.

When I got the tub and info leaflets back – photocopied and handwritten ones advertising his services, I just realised how this fantastic, niche service – and as far as I’m aware, the only one of its kind in the UK – didn’t have any web presence at all. I happened to know also that Peter has been doing the same thing for 50 plus years, and I wasn’t about to swoop on this old gentleman and try and tout for some web design business… so a new, purely one-off approach was needed. I was feeling philanthropic, so spoke to Peter and built him a website (1.5 hrs work) and bought him a domain name (£4.00). All for free.

I’m so nice, aren’t I. Just watch it pile up there to the top of Google for all those important keywords… I hope he can handle the extra business.

View it here… Cycle Tubs / Cycling Tubular Tyre Repairs in the UK | Peter Burgin – and of course, get your tubular tyre repairs done there… unless you fancy two hours with glue, unpickers, mess, needles, thimbles, threads, and general hassle.

Lily recently came home from school telling us that she’d won a competition and her picture was going to be on the cover of a magazine… well, she brought it home today and was very, very proud of her achievement!

The weekend just gone was the last of my really lovely long weekends since Elsie was born just before the May Bank Holiday. Rather than take a hyge chunk of paternity leave and putting unnecessary pressure on Reverse Delta, I thought it would be best to take off Mondays and Fridays for a few weekends whilst things bedded down at home and we got a routine established.

On reflection, and I’ll admit that it’s early days, things have been really quite relaxed and easy for us to adapt to. With a second born, there’s so much less adjustment because it’s more about resuming a familiar routine. Add to that that Elsie is a bit more of a sleeper and eater than her elder sister and it all makes for a very chilled existence.

The long weekends though have had a special value – working from home has meant that I can roughly keep abreast of my work without that ‘out of office’ panic. With Lily being at school it’s also meant that I get two days with Lily sandwiched by two days with Katie and Elsie. The unusually dry – I’ll say it again – unusually dry spell of weather that East Lancs has had has made the weekends generally outdoor affairs, be it gardening, or walking, or – just occasionally – some more strenuous activity.

On Sunday, Lily and I had a great trip up Knowle Hill – about a four mile round walk all in all from where we’d parked – to watch the annual fell race up there. It’s a hill I know reasonably well, but for some reason I’ve watched the race there twice and never yet taken part for one reason or another. My friend Matthew was taking part, something that gave Lily and I the excuse to head off for a couple fo hours togather watching the fell race (photos here) and exploring the new Scout Moor windfarm (photos here).

The down side was that this – and the rest of the weekend’s activities – were carried out without Elvis, who I took running on Thursday evening and brought back home with a two inch gaping wound in his belly – somehow. The vet sorted it, but he’s on an enforced rest now as a result.

It’s all happy times here… just keeps on getting happier.

It’s been a funny season so far in the Science in Sport crit races at Preston – last night was my fifth Thursday in a row there and there’s been trouble of some sort in the final lap each week, either someone crashing or a few riders taking a detour onto the grass.

Last night, it was my turn to hit the deck. God knows I’ve gotten away with it for long enough now. When you’re 350 metres from the line and the sprint is just reaching full speed (32mph according to my Garmin 305’s records), you don’t have much room for manoeuvre if you find two people and their bikes on the deck in front of you. Over the top I went and somehow managed a complex but effective forward roll.

The injuries I sustained were minimal in the circumstances, but I had to get a nice bloke called Alistair to drive me to A&E in Blackburn for a dislocated and very painful finger.

The trip to Hospital was pretty good, all things considered. I was seen and tended to, including four X-Rays, in fairly fast time. The high point was finding out that the hugely swollen digit was just dislocated – it looked very, very broken to the untrained eye, and wasn’t pointing where it’s finger colleagues were pointing. The most humorous moment was when it took two male doctors almost ten minutes of almost wrenching my arm from my body in brute force as they painfully pulled the anaesthetised finger back to where it ought to be. A quiet, final click was a very satisfying noise indeed.

A deep cut on my elbow plus two grazed shoulders and a bruised hip finish off the set, but they’re all minor and there was no torn lycra.

The whole episode meant a very late night but all in all, I feel like I got away with it… as most cyclists seem to do in high speed crashes. I don’t feel like contesting the sprints at Preston for now – when I resume in a few weeks (post natal!) I’m going to be concentrating my efforts on getting a break away working, as we very nearly achieved last night. Fingers crossed.