Q. Which sport(s) do you / did you participate in?
A. Cycling - Road, Cyclo-cross, Touring.
Q. Which year did you become a veggie and why?
A. Something around 1992 when I realised that the piece of meat on my plate was actually a part of a dead animal and tasted horrible.
Q. What’s your favourite veggie food?
A. I like chickpeas - falafel, chickpea flour pancakes, hummus.
Q. Could you recommend a good veggie café / restaurant?
A. Sattgrün in Düsseldorf, Germany: my favourite place for lunch breaks.
Q. Thinking about your sporting activities, what’s your favourite event to participate in?
A. Dunwich Dynamo a night ride to the Suffolk coast.
Q. What’s your favourite sports event to watch?
A. Ronde van Flanderen, (Tour de France - only if it’s in Yorkshire ..)
Q. Are there any other sports you’d like to try?
A. Maybe some day Krav Maga (a military style self-defence).
Q. What made you start participating?
A. Being a veggie for more than the half of my life I just didn’t think about it because it was just normal. But when I had to change my diet last year I again became more conscious of being a veggie with the result of increasing the vegan part of my diet. In combination with my plan to become an End2Ender (see below) in the next five years it was an obvious choice to join an UK based club to remind me of my plans (and there isn’t a veggie cycling club in Germany anyway..)
Q. Do you / did you always train purposefully, or just for fun?
A. Just for fun.
Q. Do you / did you prefer to be on trails / off road, or on the road?
A. A nice calm country lane with rolling hills, that’s fun.
Q. What is your favourite distance to run / cycle?
A. If there’s the time, get up in the morning and go for 200km+, but no matter what distance – get on your bike!
Q. Which events are on your ‘must do’ or ‘would like to do’ list?
A. Three come to mind:
Q. What are your plans, sporting wise, for the next few years?
A. I’ll do my E2E ride (LEJOG – Land’s End to John o’ Groats) in the next 5 years, so some more long-distance rides might be useful (maybe Germany west to east).
Q. What is favourite post-event / post-training treat?
A. Some home made Ginger Ale or a cool non-alcoholic Weizenbier in the summertime.
Q. Do you have any tips for those starting out in your sport?
A. Get on your bike and have fun. Slowly increase the distances to your first 100k and don’t bother about training tips.!
Q. What is your favourite bit of kit?
A. My Carradice Super C SQR Tour seat-post bag.
Q. What would you recommend as a good food for refuelling on those long runs / bike-rides?
A. Dates and bananas.
Q. Which sporting achievement are you most proud of?
A. I’m not a competitive rider, so the sporting achievement I’m most proud of is when I started my ride in Harwich on the first day (Fri) to go to London, did the DunRun (Dunwich Dynamo - see above) from Hackney to the Suffolk coast on the Saturday night, returned from Dunwich to the Harwich Ferry on Sunday and crossed to the Netherlands on Monday to return to Germany. So I did about 620km in four days carrying my 7kg of luggage on my bike.
