The Vegetarian Cycling & Athletic Club
(Established 1888)
Pin Board
Coaching courses, social bike rides, book and restaurant reviews, even a lament for that very special pair of socks. The Pin Board is available for most types of sporting and vegetarian notices. Send your snippets in for inclusion.
Reviews are the personal opinions of the authors not the club.
Vegetarian Society 100km bike ride
There is a 100km night-time cycle ride around Manchester being organised for the 21/22 April to raise funds for the Vegetarian Society. Unfortunately, this is the weekend before the Manchester Marathon, which looks like getting at least very close to it's hoped for 8,000 competitors, so I'm afraid it's a non-starter for me and probably many others, as much as I like to be involved in such things. More details Manchester Nightrider
Outdoor Swiming Society
Maybe swimming outdoors isn't quite the biggest thing on your mind as we move into December - though the OSS do organise an annual dip in a lido in Parliament Hill, London. But as well as the general OSS website they have also released a guide to pool training to see those of us not hardy enough to fancy breaking the ice through the winter months. Go to OSS winter swim training to see it.
Winterswim 2011 Challenge
For those bored swimmers out there and swimmer wanabees, Winterswim has just opened it's virtual doors for the 2011 season. Much to my surprise since I'm not someone who usually needs a lot of outside encouragement to do what I want, I got well into this last year.
All you need is a pool, the drive to visit it at least once every two weeks through till march-ish and a computer to upload your results to a number crunching website that does all the rest for you. To start you just need to do and record a base time swim of 400 metres before 27/11, the site converts this into a percentage of the current Olympic record and your subsequent swims over 100, 200, 400, 800, 1500 and a final 400metres are measured against this in some complex fashion and league tables produced on the basis of your improvement. It all gets a bit OTT mathematically but the return to the 400m if you've trained for the other distances is something that gives even those of us who still take off our socks to count to 20 something to compare against.
For more information go to Winterswim. It is possible to register at anytime, though obviously you miss the earlier, shorter rounds.
Marathon Talk
Marathon talk is a weekly online magazine style radio show by Martin Yelland and Tom Williams. Each week they interview a wide range of running guests. The podcast is available to listen to for free. Go to Marathon Talk and hit the Latest Episode button for details
Book Review - Nutrition
Vegetarian Sports Nutrition
by D. Enette Larson-Meyer