The ramblings of Keane Ingram

This year seems to have gone so quickly. It's already mid-September and the kids are back at school - everyone is much happier with having a routine!Our weekend in Clacton was good, we got very lucky with the weather and had an entirely dry and sunny weekend, which is always welcome when having to deal with an awning! The kids enjoyed doing archery, fencing and various watersports.I've had the kids on my own this weekend whilst Anna has been in Scotland raising money for Marie Curie. Unfortunately due to weather conditions she couldn't get to the summit of Ben Nevis, she wants to go back and get to the top one day. The weekend has been pretty quiet, we went bowling and to the woods with their cousins. I'm writing as I sit waiting for the car's MOT to be done. I'm convinced it's going to fail, I just hope it's not too expensive to put right as I want to get rid of it soon.

The last few weeks have been very hectic - it's no coincidence that the kids are also off school for the summer!

After weeks of blazing hot sun it was inevitable that RideLondon was going to be wet and windy. I got around in 6 hours 22 minutes but I think if it hadn't been raining I would have beaten 6 hours. I wrote a bit more about my efforts on my cycling site.

Our holiday to the Isle of Wight was good, although fairly similar to previous years. The one major change was that we were staying in a static caravan rather than a tourer (Anna's parents came with us and also stayed in a static) so the journey to and from the Isle of Wight was much less stressful.

The kids are starting to get a bit too old for Blackgang Chine now, although as they've been 4 years in a row maybe it's just not that exciting any more. Robin Hill was still good, we've only done that 2 years so maybe it was more interesting for them. We only had a couple of days on the beach as the last …

It's been a pretty hectic month and very, very hot!

The World Cup was surprisingly entertaining and for once the England team did us proud - it almost came home! I think we would have been thrashed in the final but there are promising signs for once. It was Nicky's first proper World Cup and he really got into it, he was a little upset at the end of the semi-final as you might expect. I bet tickets for the next England game at Wembley won't be so easy to come by as when we went in March!



The heatwave is showing no signs of disappearing. I have the stupidest tan lines from long training rides in the sun, my jersey sleeves are different lengths so my arms look like Neapolitan ice-cream! Speaking of which, RideLondon is on Sunday and my training is more or less complete, I've got a couple of 30 minutes rides to do before then. I've booked a hotel for the Saturday night so I'm not panicking so much on Sunday morning - last time I did it I was running late and ended…

I went to Glasgow a couple of weeks ago for a friend's wedding. I had spent the weeks leading up to this in various states of anxiety. I'm not entirely sure why but going away leads to me being worried over every tiny detail. To start with I needed a new suit as my old suit was eaten by moths. I probably spent more time researching suits than I did planning my own wedding! I even learned about pocket squares (and bought one too). I had the honour of being an usher, and more through luck than judgement the other two ushers had similar colour suits and shirts.

Then I had the practical things to worry about. I was flying up on my own and meeting friends at Glasgow Airport, then we were hiring a car and driving to our accommodation. We were all flying from different airports which meant I was going to arrive in Glasgow at 8.50am whilst the others would get there at 5.30pm. So I spent a lot of time researching things to do in Glasgow, how the buses and metro system worked, bike hir…

It's been a long time since my last post, I've been pretty busy and haven't had much free time recently. I'm in a better place mentally at the moment but that can change pretty quickly.

Last month we saw Frank Turner at the Cliffs which was excellent. The support acts were probably the best I've ever seen, normally they are rubbish but this was an exception. I was expecting The Homeless Gospel Choir to be a) a choir made up of more than one person b) singing gospel music and c) homeless, but he turned out to be a single non-homeless non-gospel person. He was excellent though, the sound system wasn't working at first so he came into the crowd with his guitar to do a few songs unplugged. They finally fixed it and he went back on stage to sing a few protest songs!

After that we thought the Arkells were going to struggle but they were also excellent and enjoyable. They pulled someone from the crowd to play a few chords on the guitar, the bloke looked like he enjoye…

I wasn't feeling so well mentally last week. I can't think of any cause for it but for a few days I was very anxious about things. I managed to work and exercise as usual but part of me just wanted to go back to bed for the day. I'm feeling better this week thankfully.

Things seem to be getting back on track with training for RideLondon - I managed an 80km ride last week and 100km this week. My legs are suffering a bit so I've booked myself in for a bike fit and physio session next month which will hopefully get things back to normal.

Yesterday marked 16 years since Anna and I first met - I don't think either of us remembered (I thought it was today!) We went to see Avengers: Infinity War yesterday which was really good, but the year-long wait for the sequel is going to feel like a long time.

Got a busy week ahead - I went out last night for a meal with my brother, tonight I'm going out with some friends for a curry, tomorrow I'm meeting another friend for …