Meeting with Bryan Steel Olympic medalist

Today I met a special type of person. The type that when you meet them you can feel something special about them. The type of person that has a calm exterior with a wealth of knowledge, experience and passion behind it. That person was Bryan Steel - Olympic silver medal cyclist.

 Bryan contacted me as he had seen some of the mentoring work I had been doing for young people and wanted to talk further as he was running a programme similar to mine. Its was nice because we both share very similar views on helping young people through enlightenment and empowerment so we had lots to talk about.

We met at a hotel in Northampton and discussed ideas. Its always nice to talk to a fellow former professional athlete and share experiences as his experiences were different to mine but also very similar in some ways. We spoke about lots of different things and our businesses very much complement each other so we will hopefully be working together on some new projects in the not so distant future.

Exciting times....

Take care and Ill be in touch soon

Jake Ogden

Grading cancelled through severe weather conditions!

The start of the weekend went really well. The grading at Rothwell for North & East Northants was excellent. Standards were the highest they have ever been and the grading its self ran very smoothly as usual. Hazel was ecstatic with the way her students performed along with Mark Bruce's. 

When I got home yesterday evening I prepared all equipment needed for the Towcester grading the next day....  and the snow came!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like snow as much as anybody else but the amount that we had last night was crazy!

 I put messages on facebook and on the website explaining that a decision would be made whether the grading would go ahead or not. This would be done and on the website by 8.00am the next day following an inspection in the morning.

At 6.45am my alarm went off, I jumped out of bed and looked out of the window where I was confronted with a deep white blanket of snow, everywhere! I got dressed and walked down the street to the main road. The road was dead, nobody around at all and there were no fresh car tracks on the road. 

After consulting my grading panel and committee, we deemed it unsafe to hold the grading today based on the conditions we were in, the weather forecast and the news giving severe weather condition warnings. 

With this I updated all websites and social networking sites with the news that the grading was cancelled. 

I will rearrange the grading ASAP, but for now all of those who missed out today, keep practicing and the grading will be here very soon.

"When you get given bitter lemons, add some sugar and make lemonade!"

Bye for now 

Jake Ogden.