22 Stone Cyclist

A week ago was the Tyneside Vagabonds Awards dinner. Essentially, it is what it says – a dinner, with awards. It was my first Vags Awards Dinner, and I was looking forward to not only getting out of the house but also letting my hair down (as much as someone with a shaved head can). I even got myself a new outfit (in a size smaller too!)

The evening started off (and inevitably finished with) beer. Now in my defence, I’ve not been out drinking since Christmas, so I was always going to be a bit of a lightweight. However, as my mum always told me, I didn’t mix my drinks – I spent the night on the John Smiths.

An impressive buffet was put on, including gateaux (so of course I was a pig) followed by the awards themselves. A speech was given by Hugh (the same Hugh who enjoys putting us in all in serious pain some Saturdays - I’m sooooo glad his speech wasn’t as long and as painful as his routes) in which I was given a mention and a round of applause – and I have to admit I had to fight back a tear or two!

As expected, Craig Fenwick, Adam Hogarth and Lucy Sill pretty much cleaned up the awards, and rightly so. All 3 are phenomenal riders, especially Adam. A message to Adam – please don’t discover “birds and booze” – you’ve got a future ahead of you.

After the awards, slightly tipsy, I wandered to the bar to fill my empty glass (again). At the bar was the guest of honour, John Tuckett, so I took a moment to introduce myself. Imagine my surprise to hear than John reads my blog! (It got me wondering – who else reads it? I get 1,500 visits a month, and hardly anyone comments – so who are all these people? What the hell are you doing? Is there nothing good on TV?) To cyclists in the North East, Mr Tuckett needs no introduction. But to readers from further afield, John Tucket is one of the best (if not the best) time trialist we have in the North East. Not only that, he finished 8th in the National Time Trial Championships, a couple of minutes down on Bradley Wiggins. 2 minutes might sound like a lot, but when consider that Wiggo is a paid professional cyclist with a large Pro Tour team and John is a doctor who cycles in his spare time – it’s nothing short of phenomenal. And I told him so. Several times. I might even have tried to hug him at some point, I honestly can’t remember. Needless to say, John is a thoroughly nice bloke, and despite being better than all of us on a bike he doesn’t feel the need to be arrogant about it…

All in all, it was a great night at the end of which I told everyone how much I loved them (apparently – I don’t remember much of that either). What made the night for me was just how many people came up to me to congratulated me on how far I’d come and told me how different I looked.

However, I have to admit, that despite Danny, Lucy and Kyle all deserving their novice awards far more than I would have, I was a little disappointed not to have won anything. But it only goes to show that in order to win something, you have to do more than just turn up. You’ve got to compete, and hopefully, that’s what I’ll do in 2010.

A great night, thanks to everyone!

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 15th, 2009 at 10:31 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.