Friday, 5th March – 51 days to go

A rest day. Have a training session with Tony. I’m on my own as Liz is away in London with work. Have a good upper body and core workout. The physio was right; I really do have a weak core. I can barely do the crunches. Perhaps I’ll have to do some strength and conditioning work at home.

I’m beginning to look forward to the cross country race on Sunday. It’s strange that when I was racing for four consecutive Sundays I was keen to stop racing and get on with training. After three weeks of training I feel I need a race to freshen things up.

St Bede’s have stepped in and are providing the course, facilities and some marshals with Eccleshill also providing support. One consequence of the last minute changes is that there will be no post-race buffet. For me, this is a blessing as buffets are probably the one thing about being a coeliac that I really don’t like. I don’t hanker after any particular food that I can’t have and have got used to the inconvenience of not being able to just pick up a sarnie or pasty or something in town when I’m peckish. Buffets are pretty awful though as there’s never anything I can eat. What makes it worse is that I was a world class buffet performer before I was diagnosed.

There are very few people in the world who can claim to be “world best”, but I reckon that at buffets I could make such a boast. I was entirely self-taught, with no formal training in structural engineering. The key for me was always in making a rectangle with four vol au vents (two storey if they had reasonably sound lids) and build round with sandwiches, particularly the little triangle ones. In fill with other goodies such as sausage rolls, chicken legs, crisps etc. I always took two plates and if challenged (usually by some matriarch who was already ticked off because we weren’t technically invited to the party anyway) would say one was for my (imaginary) friend Denis. If this didn’t give me free access to the buffet and I was feeling cocky I’d add “He’s in a wheelchair”. One particular speciality was with buffets where paper plates were being used. I mastered a technique of whipping a ceramic plate from under the food that was placed on it (usually without too much disturbance to the food) thus giving me the edge on others who were trying to stack food onto paper plates. This technique was more or less successful even after many beers.