Blink and you'll miss it

This week I treated myself to a little pre-Christmas pressie.

My TV is about a hundred years old. It's not quite black and white, but it's not colour either - over time apparently the tube (whatever that is) has died and now the screen pushes out a picture which is a shade of green. Not good for the eyes. The mono sound system is not good for the ears either. I think the old 8-track which I had in my first car was of higher quality.

So, I have bought myself an all-singing, all-dancing, bells and whistles, lots-of-inches flat screen TV, together with surround sound home cinema system and hard disk recorder. Just in time for the usual Christmas repeats, although I suspect it will be dominated by the kids' Wii and XBox.

Over the weekend I tested it all out with the final of the X Factor. My daughter Emily and I sat down and treated ourselves to some Saturday night visual and audio entertainment from the eventual winner, Alexandra. Her opposition, Eoghan and JLS, were Ok but were simply no competition for Alex. Her rendition of If I Were A Boy, a duet with Beyonce, was absolutely outstanding and from then on it was a one-woman show (but enough of the crying, already). I know the X Factor has its critics, but I think it is great family entertainment for a Saturday evening. Beats Strictly Come Dancing anyday.

But the highlight of the weekend's viewing was the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year. Favourites Rebecca Adlington, Lewis Hamilton and Chris Hoy came in 3rd, 2nd and 1st respectively, but I think I must have blinked because apparently there were split second moments of glory for Chrissie Wellington winning Hawaii and even Alistair Brownleee who was part of the audience.

Now, I know that triathlon is, and will most probably always be, a minority sport, but surely the world Ironman champion deserves more than a two second slot in what is a celebration of British sport. And, yes, I know that 2008 was a fantastic year for British sport (especially the Olympics), but if they keep on harping on about triathlon being 'the fastest growing sport in the UK' then why does is continually get overlooked?

But, then again, I think that is one of the reasons why I love the sport so much. It isn't the sport of the masses, and I like the lack of the football-hooligan mentality at races. It is a sport where you can participate with the best, and how many other sports can you say that for? So I suppose I shouldn't complain when it doesn't get much coverage, but it would be nice to give Queen Chrissie more than two seconds in front of the Great British audience at sports' equivalent of the Bafta's.

As the writers of BBC SPOTY suffered from a bit of triathlon laziness, so did my training suffer from my own lethargy. I did a couple of runs and a road bike ride with Jev (stopping half way for a soup and coffee, so it was hardly a hard ride). I have decided not to follow a strict plan yet until the New Year, so for the next couple of weeks I am not going to beat myself up if I take it easy. My ever increasing work schedule is also making it more difficult to fit in lots of training. So, it's 'do whatever I can' time again.

That said, I shall be starting a more structured running plan which I have found on the tri247 website (in conjunction with my plan from Mark K). I shall hopefully be getting out with Alex and Jev at some point this week too.

In the meantime, here's our greatest sportsman of 2008. Officially. Well deserved too, and very gracious in his acceptance. Like Chrissie, a true inspiration to us all.

Cheers.

C