Sally Gunnell's blog by Sally_Gunnell

What have those three got in common? Think about it for a minute while I tell you about last week! I went to open a new sports pavilion at a girls’ school in St. Alban’s. The building was like something off Grand Designs; I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. It was beautiful; a wonderful facility for the young people to enjoy. Having done the deed, I then addressed the massed ranks of pupils. Now sometimes when I speak, I feel like I’m working hard to generate that energy in the room. But these young ladies sat there transfixed. They took in every word and seemed to love it. I’d quite like to address them about once a week, because I reckon they’re one of the best audiences ever!

That evening, I shot over to a Senior Management conference at John Lewis. These guys have some truly challenging targets to meet in the months ahead; we all know how much pressure there is out there right now in the retail sector. John Lewis are at the sharp end of that, with lots of hard work ahead of them. My talk reflected the scale of the challenge they faced; a very different atmosphere from the girls’ school that morning, but interesting and rewarding all the same. In fact, I had such a good time that I found myself finishing very late, which wasn’t ideal because I had an early start the next day. I went in to Sky News to chat with Eamonn Holmes.

Now I thought we were going to be talking about the Royal Mail’s campaign to get 7 to 11-year-olds writing about why they find the Olympics inspiring. Instead, I found myself reviewing the papers! We covered NHS computer systems, foreign news and even cage fighting. All I could think was “how does this lead into the Royal Mail?” It was a nightmare! But Eamonn was very kind and he helped me out with a couple of questions on it at the end. So there you are; Eamonn, cage fighting and the Royal Mail are linked by the Sky News sofa!

Busy weeks like this make training a little bit tricky, although I’ve got a bike ride around the Isle of Wight coming up, so I need to be conserving energy and not overdoing it. I think we’ll be cycling about 75 miles and I know the interior of the Isle of Wight is pretty hilly in places, so we’ll see how it goes. I did well on the Monster Challenge biking section, so hopefully my legs are still strong! Thanks for all your congratulatory messages about the Monster. To answer your question about next year; it’s too early to say whether I’ll be taking part. I’ll give it some thought over the winter as I plan next year’s challenges…