England were playing Estonia in the European Qualifiers. England had been struggling a bit but seem to be scraping through now. This match should not have been a tough one and that's how it turned out. 3-0 by half time and that's how it finished. The big test is now to beat Russia on Wednesday.
Then came the Rugby World Cup Semi-Final, England vs France in Paris. It was televised at 3:00am in Malaysia so I'd got up at 4:30am on Saturday to get a decent bike ride in and then the plan was to sleep early Saturday evening and wake up at 3:00am, watch the rugby and then go straight off for my Sunday morning long run.
That was the plan but I'd forgotten to build the TWIN FACTOR into the scenario. The little buggers took it in turns to be up most of the night. I got an hour or two sleep before the match started BUT WHAT A MATCH. Even Shilpa woke up to watch it and was on tenterhooks all the way through.
It was nail biting stuff from start to finish. England were behind for most of the match but somehow squeaked ahead with 10 minutes left through the boot of the indubitable Jonny Wilkinson. He then slotted a drop goal in with just 2 minutes left. That's when time itself stopped! Surely the longest two minutes of my life. In the end the whistle blew and we'd won. Next stop the final and hopefully back to back world cup titles. AMAZING.I was a little late for the run as I hadn't built in any "GLOATING" time for after the match but the guys understood. "Sam the Man" who is Welsh was supporting England but was rather misguided in betting against England with yours truly. Thank you Sam, it was a pleasure doing business with you.
Surprisingly the run went well with almost no sleep for the previous two nights. I sneaked in a 32k in 3:06 and since my running buddies had been calling me a wuss recently for not being able to go over 21k they were surprisingly difficult to find this morning, tch tch!
This brings me rather nicely onto some real hardcore triathletes competing at the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii. My buddy Mon SMS'd me the other day and asked me who I thought would win - "McCormack" was my reply. "What do you think?" I asked. Mon replied with a string of names, which was fair enough; predicting IM winners is tough because so much can go wrong even for the best athletes.
It turned out that I was right and "Macca" won his first Hawaii IM. The list of dramatic catastrophes that hit a plethora of title contenders was unbelievable though Click here for an overview.
Check this guy out! Hats off to him - he's German of course - and finished 18th.
In the women's race an Ironman newbie won. Chrissie Wellington from England! It was a good weekend for the English. It was only her second Ironman, having qualified in Korea a few weeks before and she's only been in the sport for a little over a year - WELL I NEVER!Tomorrow is a holiday but as I'm playing golf with a 7:10 Tee Off in the morning I won't be watching the South Africa vs Argentina match at 2:30am but I'm sure South Africa will prevail.
Golly, what a great weekend!
STOP PRESS
Wow, just as we were going to print and the editorial staff were leaving for the evening we got a newsflash from Germany via SMS - We are informed from a reliable source that Angela Burkart (my sister) just completed a local marathon in a Personal Best of 4:38 - pretty fantastic in anyone's book especially as she had a migraine too. Well done Angela, that's amazing!
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