Term has well and truly started

The term at Oxford Brookes has started, and I have a flock of M.Sc. Biotechnology students to tend to. I thought the type of student might be different from the M.Sc. Microbiology course I helped run at Birkbeck, University of London. However, we have the same sort of mix of students.

The beginning of the university term also means that for me, its the end of the time trialling season, which has been quite successful on the whole. I was pleased that I managed to get my name in the local paper most weeks, with consistent top-ten placings throughout the year meaning that I can look forward to receiving one or two prizes at the club dinner. However, my highlight of the year was going "under the hour" during an open time trial two weekends ago. The quest to cycle at 25 miles an hour for one hour is delightfully pointless, and if you are going to do it, why not cycle 25 miles in 58 minutes and 14 seconds? Thanks to Hounslow & District Wheelers for organising the event, but could they please send out the results sheets soon?

More ground-breaking news is that the book I co-authored last year (Instant Notes in Microbiology) is now number 99,357 in the amazon.co.uk bestseller list, and 1,652,746th in the equivalent amazon.com list. Surely I can expect the offers of interviews on daytime TV to start flooding in? The pleasing thing is that on the whole the book has been well-received, with quite a few positive reviews in journals as well as on Amazon. The one fly in the ointment is that one reader felt that this was more of a GCSE book than a university-level one. This disturbs me a little as my part of the book was based on a series of lectures I gave to postgraduate students. Which sort of brings me around, circularly, to the subject of the first paragraph of this post...

New Specialized Transition

VeloNews have some pictures of the new Transition:


It includes a hidden rear brake for reasons I can only guess at - why wasn't the front one hidden too?



I've always liked these, but I wonder what the seat angles are like?

Obsessive behaviour

Its quite possible that I am obsessed with cycling. Unfortunately the Tour de France starts in London this year. Why is this so unfortunate? Mainly because the prologue falls on the 7th July, a day on which I am not overly keen to go to London.
The next day the Tour winds its way from London through Kent. The map suggests that it might be possible to see it in more than one place (for a pdf of the route click here).
There is only one, you know...

More black news from cycling

Well, it seems Eric Zabel, as well as the current DS of T-Mobile, has admitted using EPO. Another body blow for professional cycling.
See news item here, and no doubt all through the cycling press from later today...

I'm not sure what to make of it, it all seems a bit inevitable. How long until a famous Texan also makes some sort of confession?