So much to take in

Home again, home again jiggety jog.

Google it.

Anyway, here I am back home after our weekend away. Very nice weekend, a bit of a winter get away, lots of snuggling around fires and exploring outdoors on glorious bright winter days. All very lovely.

Nice to be back and into things again though, well sort of anyway. I am actually off again tomorrow morning for a couple of days, heading up to Darwin for some work. Will only be until Thursday though, so not a big trip and I should be active on the blog still.

Despite the travel things are starting to feel a little bit more normal exercise wise. I had a bit of a paddle this morning and it was feeling a whole lot better than last week. As always with these things it is just slowly, slowly, one step at a time. Just got to keep taking those steps.

At least there is plenty to keep me entertained while I slowly build fitness. I mean really, how good is it at the moment in terms of sporting events to watch and obsess over. World Cup, Tour de France, Wimbledon and they are just the ones that come immediately to mind. So much great sport to watch.

I will admit with the World Cup I am not that much of a follower, but now that England has reached the Semis I will have started to take a of interest. Not enough to watch the games, but definitely enough to search the results afterwards. I know how obsessed the English are and so it would be amazing if they got the whole way. England seems to have a talent for faltering at the last step and so I think everybody is sort of on tenterhooks, hoping for the best, but sort of expecting the worst. Despite the normal England vs Australia rivalry in most sports this is one where I am actually hoping England make it, it doesn't happen very often and so I think it would be cool to watch. Plus this seems to be an English team that has been successful without the usual fanfare and antics that so often accompany their football. Perhaps not keen enough to jump on the bandwagon quite yet, but definitely interested enough to watch keenly.

With the Tour I think it is way too early to really make too many calls yet. Will it be another Froome Fest, if it is then he will have achieved something that many thought no longer possible, the Giro/Tour double. I am not sure, he will certainly be fighting recent history to do so, plus his own inability to stay on two wheels. Time will tell, but you would never bet against Froome.

To be honest I am not sure I am that keen on a Froome victory, if nothing else the salbutamol issue leaves a bit of a bad taste. I know the issue has now been closed, but it was such a mess. Putting that to one side though, one of the attractions of the tour is the drama and the unknown and the unexpected. If the race becomes a bit of a procession then it becomes dull, it would be great to have a bit of the unexpected to happen.

Who would I like to see get up? Well the first answer to that is an obvious one, Porte of course. Aussie, aussie, aussie and all that. After Porte, I would love to see Bardet do something, watching a Frenchman win the tour would be pretty cool, I suspect France would eat itself. Quintana is another I have a soft spot for, the amazing climber who never quite gets the result. Dumoulin, the TT specialist that could, watching him win the Giro in 2017 was one of those unexpected exciting events that make cycling so good to watch. I don't really expect Dumoulin to win the tour, but it would be awesome to see if he did.

Who know what will occur though, it could be any of the above guys, or it could be none of them and any one of a dozen others, we will just have to wait and see. That's what is so good about the tour. It really is one of my favourite sporting events of the year.

And then Wimbledon. Well if I am honest so much else was going on that I didn't even realise Wimbledon had started. Whoops.

Back to the tour.