I have been following Lance Armstrong’s return to cycling on Twitter (here). He is currently in Hawaii and it is not all golf and hula –  he is training hard by the looks of it. On the 31st December he did 80 miles with the last hour on a time trial bike. Good weather apparently, 25°C or more!

In Nottingham today I was watching a guy training on his time trial bike – round and round Holme Pierrepont (National Watersports Centre), it was 2°C. I was struck by the difference in training between the amateurs and professionals, and the misery of riding in the winter in the UK. Even if you are lucky enough to have a closed road circuit like the road around Holme Pierrepont you still have to wear every piece of clothing that you own, dodge the bird spotters and geese, but at least it wasn’t raining. 

Also riding around the lake today were a father and young son on their mountain bikes and a guy who was doing a wheelie all the way around – pretty impressive really. It always strikes me as a shame that more people do not make use of the facilities at Holme Pierrepont and probably reflects the activity levels of most people in the UK. With 9 out of 10 of the current generation of primary school kids facing obesity as adults (and as children for that matter) what is the country doing to turn this worrying pattern around – spending £200 million on an advertising campaign (Change4Life) and website to help people get more active. So how is that going to help? Well if you did not know that kids should be active then it tells you that – thanks! Apparently 60 minutes per day. Then there is a list of activites in the local area – I was interested in cycling so it supplies a list of cycling clubs, not where to go cycling with your family, not a link to a site with a list of cycle routes but a list of competitive clubs. No investment in infrastructure just telling people what they should do!

How about sign posting people to things that they can do for free. Or maybe spending some of that £200 million on providing activities that people can do for free. Or ride on the back of British Cycling’s success and get people riding more by encouraging them to ride to work, ride with their family or go mountainbiking.

I suppose it is a start though, and at least they are doing something. Of course it would be easier to get people active if there was more access to either better weather (we are not all Lance Armstrong) or inexpensive indoor facilities, so lets see if this advertising campaign will make any difference or whether it will just be a waste of tax payers money in a time that we could probably do with using it to bail out the Brown Government.