|
Wow, it’s been a month now since I set off on my big adventure. Time’s flown for various reasons but here it finally is: the first instalment of my Iditarod story… Alaska is an amazingly beautiful place – just looking at it from the window of the plane filled me with excitement and anticipation. . . . → Read More: Iditarod 2009 Part 1 It’s been ages since Iditarod, and I’m finally back onto bikes and blogging… The briefest possible story of my experience is that I finished in McGrath after 6 days 22 hours; it was spectacular and difficult; I’d love to do it again. Some of my photos are on Facebook. Bill Merchant’s video is here. . . . → Read More: Getting back on the horse Well, things are coming together for the race. My injured leg is hurting less (but still hurting – under ice at this very moment), my food is going to be there in time for me to pick it up, and the bike’s all packed for flying. Without using drops, I’m going to have to carry . . . → Read More: Music to get me pedalling again It was a couple of weeks ago now, but back on February 7, I went out to Imatra for the Finnish Winter Swimming Championships. It was a completely ridiculous distance to travel in order to swim two 25m races but I’d always wanted to go to Finland and their competition was the inspiration for Tooting . . . → Read More: Finnish Winter Swimming Champs One week until the Iditarod and things aren’t looking as organised as they were a while ago… First my seatpost bolt snaps on a training ride so I have to go home and swap seatposts before carrying on. At least I managed to do that and fight the gremlins saying “Go home now, eat cake . . . → Read More: Stumbling towards the start line Another lovely company has been nice enough to help me out with training for and riding the Iditarod… Goodridge! They make steel braided brake hoses and brake pads. Since brake pads are one of my biggest training costs and Goodridge are my first choice brand that’s great news. I had already specced their hoses for . . . → Read More: More help for the race… Goodridge To quote Bill Merchant, nutrition on the Iditarod trail is about “Fat, fat, and more fat“. A reasonable estimate of expenditure on the trail is 8000 calories per day (an adult male’s recommended intake is 2500 per day in normal conditions), so high fat and calorie dense foods are needed. Roughly speaking: fat is 9 . . . → Read More: Food I was supposed to be going to Austria for my mum’s birthday this week, which would have been a lot of fun. Time to have walks, dinners, drinks… chilled out stuff with no connection to bikes. Unfortunately, a couple of inches of snow intervened. As usual South East England fell to pieces. No flights, buses, . . . → Read More: Snow halts play 24 January saw me attending the South London Swimming Club‘s UK Cold Water Swimming Championships. Now there’s a silly idea. Take one gigantic 90×30 metre unheated Lido, and organise a race in January when the water temperature can be as low as 1C then see what happens. What happened was that the water was a . . . → Read More: SLSC UK Cold Water Swimming Championships Well, there was an awful lot of waiting, but the monster has finally arrived. On Friday afternoon and with many thanks to Cycle Care, I took ownership of my Pugsley. Then, life being life, I couldn’t even put the grips and pedals on until Monday. Saturday was 10 hours of training on the bike, and . . . → Read More: Enter The Pug |
