My sister and her family came to visit from the UK over Christmas. Her arrival allowed me to partake in a great English tradition I had completely forgotten about. Namely, standing on the beach in the rain looking expectantly at the horizon and exclaiming “I think it is getting brighter over there”. Normally I wouldn’t be anywhere near the beach in such weather but when they’d travelled over 10,000 miles, needs must.

Fortunately the weather picked up and a great time was had by all. After bidding them a sad farewell we have decanted to the in-laws farm en route to Adelaide. I have spent the week on my bike as I am riding the BUPA Challenge next Friday, an open ride that is part of the Tour Down under.

This bike malarkey is a little more complicated than just taking off for a run, primarily because it involves a piece of machinery. On my ride last Saturday I noticed a rather loud creak. I had the biked serviced before we left and the bike shop had mentioned the bottom bracket may need looking at. As I pedalled around, the serenity of the countryside was consistently broken by this increasingly annoying creak.

Even farmer Mick was reluctant to have a go at fixing it, if it was a tractor, header or anything else he’d give it a go. Quietly relieved I decided it would be a trip to “town” to fix it. A 400 km round trip to Wagga Wagga and the nice man at Kidsons Cycles had replaced some parts and we were good to go. The next day I jumped on the bike, was halfway down the road and there was the noise again. I knew it wasn’t mechanical as there was nothing left to replace or service so I spent the whole of my ride trying to work out what was wrong.

After taking everything off the bike, that I felt comfortable enough to touch, the creak was still there. Whilst pondering how to buy myself a new bike before next week (I was not going to let the bike win and was going to show it who was boss) I casually tightened the seat clamp.

Turns out a 1/4 turn of a nut fixed my problem. Riding the thing can be tough but looking after it for somebody as incompetent as myself is the real challenge.

Without the creak I completed my first 100 mile (About 165km) ride today. On the whole I finished in good shape. The new knee I got before Xmas held up, aerobically I felt fine, legs were tired but felt good, the only part of me complaining was my “freckle” (my bottom).

Compared to when I first started there is a big improvement, but it is still a concern. I have the most padded racing saddle I could buy (short of getting one with springs and some nice leather), I have the top notch cycling shorts and I even have taken to applying chamois cream to my nether regions before I ride. Despite all this after 5+ hours in the saddle it still hurts somewhat.

Alice, in her 9 year old wisdom has offered me her favourite quote to help deal with the situation. Apparently “the pain is just weakness leaving my body”.

Mick has suggested I use Metho to toughen the area up, if there are any other suggestions to strengthen my weakness then answers on a postcard to…

One of the joys of travel is it gives you a different perspective. It doesn’t take long to become blind to what is in front of you, a bit of distance and a fresh outlook reminds you of all the things you noticed when you first arrived in a city or country.

There is a lot to love about living in Sydney and I have always appreciated the harbour, the beaches, the instantly recognisable landmarks and the wonderful climate. The one thing that I have become a little oblivious to is the size of the place. Not so much the size of Sydney, the size of Australia. Once you hit the open road then you realise how big this country really is.

Robyn’s mum and dad live on a farm in a place called Ungarie in NSW. This is 550km (340 miles) from Sydney and it’s a 5 ½ hour drive. We head back every school holiday to have a week of rest and relaxation and have just spent another wonderful week in country NSW.

When we first arrived in Sydney, 14 years ago, we drove to the farm and back over a weekend, a 1,100km round trip. This was the same distance as a “once in a lifetime” big drive we made from Dublin to Bracknell and back. When you live in such a large place you get used to travelling long distances.

The farm has always been a great place for a holiday. It’s a working farm with dogs, cats, chickens, sheep, tractors, motorbikes and paddocks (not fields, as I am constantly reminded) with crops in them. The girls love the freedom of being able to do what they want and roam free.

I enjoy this as much as they do, what I have also started to appreciate is how flat it is. Why have I just started to appreciate this feature? Well, it makes it a lot easier to ride my bike. Flat, straight roads and a distinct lack of traffic make it easy to ride further and faster. I rode over 100km’s last Sunday and saw only 17 cars!

Ungarie is a little off the beaten track but to only have seen 17 cars in 3 ½ hours was pretty impressive.

I don’t think they get many MAMILS out here. It would be hard to explain the joys of Lycra to the local gents who are more interested in the practical things of life such as the weather, sheep prices and the performance of the latest John Deer tractor. Discussing the benefits of spending thousands of dollars on a carbon fibre bike or the merits of different types of inserts in your cycling shorts would be an interesting conversation for the “local” on a Friday night.

So with this in mind I shall continue to indulge my new perspective on life and enjoy the solitude and good fortune of having large parts of the country and the open road to myself.

I have not run a single stride since I completed the marathon in April. An MRI reviled that I had an “8mm chondral flap with moderate marrow oedema of the lateral patellar articular facet”.

Basically I did some serious damage to my knee and after weeks of physiotherapy to see if it would fix itself, my surgeon now reckons an arthroscopy is required to get me up and running again.

In the meantime I have evolved into a MAMIL. This is something that I had strenuously resisted, in my weakened state the lure of the Lycra was too strong.

For those of you not in the know, MAMIL stands for ”Middle Aged Man in Lycra”. It is a mildly derogatory term used for the thousands of male cyclists that hit the road early on Saturday and Sunday mornings. We go out under the cover of darkness in our tight figure hugging outfits, and then once the sun is up we gather in packs to preen and pose at coffee shops all over the western world.

I have been cycling for the last 3 months. It doesn’t completely replace the high of a good long run but it goes close and you can go so much further. You also get to splash out a whole lot of money on stuff you never knew you needed. I have Lycra leg and arm warmers, logo infested jerseys and an assortment of Lycra shorts with, and I quote, “high density foam inserts protecting all contact points.”

My new internet addiction is surfing the web for various items of cycling paraphernalia and leering at expensive carbon-fibre bikes. Robyn calls it “bike porn”.

Until I am back running, I am committed to the bike. The family and I are all off to Adelaide next January to watch the Tour Down Under. Apart from a good excuse to indulge my new passion, and visit some of the finest wineries in Australia, I have also signed up to ride the Bupa Challenge. You ride the same stage as the professionals, you set off early in the morning before the peloton and cover the 135km’s a lot slower than they will.

Milly is very impressed she wrote this poem for me for Father’s Day:

You ran so far you hurt your knee,
But that doesn’t stop you from loving me,
You took up biking to occupy your mind,
But that won’t stop you being kind,
When you’re going so slow up hills,
That you fall off because you’re almost still,
Just remember that as long as my heart is in my chest,
I will always think you’re the best.

My neighbour provided this other perspective when he saw me looking resplendent in my Lycra, “Ben, you are a walking cliché“, he remarked.

I think this is a fair, slightly snuggly fitting, observation of where my mid-life crisis has taken me.

I am delighted to be able to say that I completed my first marathon, a 42.2km slog around London, in a new personal best of 4 hours, 17 minutes and 5 seconds.

A problematic knee and some cramping means I was a little slower than I wanted to be. Despite the pain, there is no place in the world I would have rather been than running around London on April 17^th 2011.  The crowds were amazing and having all my family cheering like mad at the 40KM mark made the final run to the finish line something to savour.

I am not sure where my mid-life crisis will take me next. There have been post-race discussions of running the Sydney Marathon in September and maybe New York next year.

I have bought myself a unicycle so maybe this is where my talents lie! Whatever happens I am determined to grow old as disgracefully as possible…

We have arrived in the UK and I have had my last proper training run. Bracknell, where we are staying with my folks, at 6am on Saturday morning was quite serene. After a couple of warm days the flowers and trees are in bloom. As I ran around the town that I grew up in, the memories came flooding back. I ran for 20km and everywhere I went I could recall a memory from more than 25 years ago. If marathon running is my midlife crises then this “therapy session” has left me feeling very appreciative of what I have and what I have experienced to get me here.

A couple of things I don’t remember but witnessed on my run were, a deer, a team of sled dogs, a fox and a couple of Bracknell youths riding their bikes with hoodies and attitude. At 6.30am I like to think they were riding home after a big night out, if not the Bracknell Massive obviously takes hanging around on street corners extremely seriously to be up training at that hour.

I am feeling in fine form, a couple of light runs this week and lots of rest and I will be at the start line ready to go.

Here’s to creating another happy memory!

My marathon aspirations have made it into our local newspaper. Robyn thought this was an opportunity to good to miss,  so she set it up (or set me up, I’m not sure which) either way Milly and Alice are delighted!

So says the Oxfam fundraising material they sent me about the London Marathon.

It has been an interesting few weeks, I have had a heavy cold that basically stopped me training for 2 weeks. I was back on my feet this week and developed a slight knee twinge. I got myself checked out by the physio on Friday and he couldn’t find anything wrong.

So rather than ease myself back into it,  I set off at 6am in the pouring rain yesterday to run 30km out to Bondi and back. I made it to Bondi and as I was heading home my calf began to really hurt,  so as a precaution I called it a day and took a cab home!

It has felt better today so I think it may just need some rest, I have another appointment with the physio tomorrow just to be sure. I think us mature chaps are a bit like old cars, once one things goes wrong then so does everything else.

With less than a month to go my running coach reckons I have enough mileage under my belt not to stress.  I think there is enough time to bodge myself together, even if I get to the starting line running on 3 cylinders the chances are I will still get around (after all statistics never lie).

You can sponsor me at http://www.virginmoneygiving.com/BenReeve

…until I run the London Marathon. Training is going much better than I would ever have thought. I went for a 35km run last weekend and could even walk afterwards.

One of the benefits of all this training is that it seems you can eat what you like. My running coach has prescribed chocolate milk as the perfect post run pick me up. My preference is “Vanilla Malt” . To give you a comparison of how much goodness it contains, a Big Mac is 12 weight watchers points, a 600ml of Oak Vanilla Milk is 15 points.

I am not sure if being able to drink this guilt free is a key reason to get up at 5am and spend 3½ hours running but it certainly tastes good when you finally get to sit down.

For those of you that are interested here is a site that contains a few of my training runs from the last few weeks. The joy of living in Sydney is you do get some nice scenery. To make a donation to Oxfam who I am running for go to http://www.virginmoneygiving.com/BenReeve

After flying around Sydney harbour in my bamboo flying machine last year, the second part of my midlife crisis is to head back to “Blighty” to run the London Marathon on Sunday 17^th April 2011.

Running a marathon has not been a long held ambition of mine, I owe it all to a rather large Friday night out on the town. The next Saturday morning feeling sorry for myself and a tad remorseful that I didn’t feel well enough to attempt my regular Saturday morning jog across the bridge, I decided to put things right and run a Marathon. The Sydney Marathon was less than a month away and applications for the London Marathon had already closed. Why I didn’t stop there and then is beyond me, it can be very easy to “think big” from behind a computer keyboard with a hangover.

After a little bit of research I discovered that I may be able to run in London if I got a sponsored place for a charity. So without really thinking it through I filled out a form for Oxfam, dreamt up a plan to raise the necessary sponsorship money and emailed it off straight away. Feeling much better about myself and having corrected the wrongs of the previous evening I went and had a fry up and forgot completely about it.

A couple of weeks later I was away delivering a training program when Robyn rang me and was more than delighted to inform me that I had been offered a place to run for Oxfam in the 2011 London Marathon!

So it began.

Initially I planned to go over on my own, stagger around and come back. Apparently there is a lot more to running a marathon, I now have the backing of a team of people (physio, chiro, and running coach) who are working hard to get me to the start line in peak condition and the family have managed to include themselves on the trip so they can cheer me on.

Christmas and a visit from overseas friends in the New Year means I have juggled a few too many drinks with some early morning training runs.

I have also been running in the Australian summer so even on an early morning run it is often 20+ degrees. I have been telling myself I have the benefit of warm weather training like the elite athletes. My own elite running coach was a Christmas present. My sister and brother in law (a London Marathon veteran) found some bloke on the Internet and they commissioned him to help me get around. I was a little sceptical at first, and Robyn didn’t help by saying she thought he was  25 stone and all he did was sit around in his undies all day and between mouthfuls of chips he was going to ring me up and tell me to run faster and eat more nuts!

I have met him he is the real deal. An ultra marathon runner himself, he firstly set about analysing my data. Running with a small computer on my wrist, tracking my every move brings me great joy, I enjoy the post run analysis more than the run itself. He has also deemed my internet sourced training schedule “light on”. The upshot is he now has me running time trials and a variety of distances at different paces whilst we balance my power output against my recovery profile. At least he knows what he is on about, I just do as I am told.

As long as I can balance the occasional piece of work with my running schedule and stay injury free I will be able to tick the second item off my bucket list on the afternoon of Sunday 17^th.If you want to support my midlife crises and a good cause you can make a donation at: http://www.virginmoneygiving.com/BenReeve

I was asked what my most memorable experience of 2010 was and what my biggest learning was.

My biggest learning was if the entry guidelines say “maximum wing span 8 meters” then there is a reason behind this, hence my most memorable moment (or one of them) in 2010.

Watch me fly on YouTube – Flugtag Ace of Spades