Top Dog – Tanner the Border Collie

Tanner did not need a fancy bike fit because Tanner preferred not to cycle his bike in public . . . it only drew too much attention.

Tanner – my border collie buddy.

l miss him.

Tanner loves life and in general he likes to run, chase things and eat. A man of simple needs.

Tanner wasn’t counting up his mileage or the time on his 4 paws. He wasn’t using a GPS device or worried about the route. Tanner knew he covered the most ground. Tanner knew he would stay out longer than you if you let him.

Tanner preferred tennis ball work to swiss ball work. He wasn’t worried about his core. In fact if I attempted to do some gym exercises he would look at me with both curiosity and distain – wondering when I was going to stop messing around. He would be fascinated by my ‘aqua pacer beeper’. He liked to lick me and sniff me when I bridged. When I would jump up and down he would get excited, “Yes, yes lets stop messing about and hit the forest’ he would bark. He’d run and find a ball and then come back with a disappointed look when I was back down bridging. You should have seen the look on his face if I ran on the treadmilll – he would give me his ‘man up eh head shake’.

Tanner ran barefoot – not because the Kenyans did when they were young or because he thought it was some sort of quick fitness gain. Tanner was never influenced by marketers, magazine adds or studies funded by random shoe companies. It just saved him time. In fact he would hide or eat shoes in an attempt to save faffing time at the door. Tanner scorned at the thought of  ’5 finger running shoes’ …. ‘are you going to a monkey fancy dress !?‘ he would bark.

Although compression socks were acceptable to him in certain circumstances, Tanner never wore compression calf guards. Tanner has yet to see anyone in a golden league meet or major cycling tour wearing calf guards in competition.

He did not have a European agent or Italian coach. He did not fill in whereabouts because he did not use the internet. Mostly he ran intervals whilst others ran slow and steady. ‘Are you teaching yourself to run slow or what ?’ he would bark.

Altitude did not affect Tanner. Sometimes he ran anaerobic frisbie fetching intervals, sometimes Swedish fartlek in the forest. He liked to do circuits of jumps followed by a tempo run / fetch followed by short hill sprints / forage followed by wind sprints/ shuttle runs along a fence (that made other dogs mad though) / he also liked a game of sniff sniff . . oh he loved the girls.

Tanner wasn’t worried about what he ate. He was not obsessed by ‘metabolic efficiency’.  He wasn’t emailing Barry Murray for advice or reading journals. You put food down and Tanner ate it, no questions asked. Gluten (he loved gluten), dairy, meat, fruit, nuts, bits of animal parts glued together by Walmart … he ate it or hid it for later.

The only thing that halted Tanners chow time was someone moving towards the door in a tracksuit. Run time.

Tanner did not sleep. Tanner waited.