Wind and surprises

Cut up - Graham Young had to cut into a picture of himself when he cut his 65th birthday cake

With too little sleep on Saturday night the long session at the NSC was always going to be tough but with a sharp wind I curtailed my training at half marathon distance. But not before I had seen many of our top race walkers congregating by the Manx Harriers website at 8 am.

Surprise number 1 came during the Formula 1 race that saw plenty of action without any rain - that only happens about twice a year.

Surprise number 2 was when we arrived at Graham Young's surprise 65th birthday party at his daughter Hazel's house. I will come back to my Graham stories.

Surprise number 3 was to see former Manx resident Alex Lloyd take third place in the world's most famous motor sport event (sorry TT fans) - the Indy 500. Brits 1, 2 & 3. With what seemed like a world record for the number of commercial breaks (I nearly wrote brakes but they hardly use them at Indy) there was plenty of time to catch up with some newspapers but the website remained untouched until the following morning (today) when i added the photo of Graham with son Martin.