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Showing posts from 2014

Lakes full of Porage.

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Porage has always been a mixed experience for me. First of all it was this mythical, uber-elite invitational event, shrouded in secrecy and wreathed in misinformation and rumour. Then in 2006 I got invited and I became part of its own little world of pain and oddness. My Porage record is not a good one: Dundee 2006 : Rode with Lesley, awesome day out, big crash, timed out at pub, driven to finish. Placing: Joint last. Pennines 2008: Rode solo, physical hell across Bowes Moor, driven between feed stations 1 and 2, awesome descent of High Cup Nick to finish. Placing: Last. Strathaven 2010: Rode with Ross, awesome day out, snapped rear mech, driven to finish. Placing: Last. Usually, being recurrently last at an event would be a bad thing, but the calibre of riders invited to Porage pretty much means I will always be at or near the bottom of the results, and I've no problem with that - hell, I'm chuffed just to still be getting an invite - but you'll note in that li

Remembering how to suffer.

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It's an oft-used phrase in road riding, Tour de France commentary etc: "He knows how to suffer". The truth is, everyone knows how to suffer, but a big part of any endurance sport is knowing (or at least learning) how to suffer and yet keep moving; How to accept the suffering and still push forward in spite of it. A skill I think I've possessed at intervals, but perhaps forgotten in the last couple of years. A skill I need to re-learn. This weekend was one of remembering how to suffer for me. I'm working on getting back in shape, getting some miles back in the legs before Porage in September, getting some weight off and doing myself a few favours. I've built my cyclocross bike up and have been trying to use it more, I've got comfortable with being juddered around on a set of Midge bars, braking from the drops and trying to hang on to my teeth on rough sections. I even took it out for a spin around Llandegla forest's 'True Blue' route on Saturd

Jennings Rivers Ride 2014

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I've never done a 'sportive' before. I'm not really a road rider, to be honest. I own a road bike - well, a cyclocross bike with slick tyres - and ride it occasionally for commuting and pottering around, but aside from road stages in multisport races I don't really ride on the road. Same reason as not running on the road a lot, I think: I find it dull. I like the technical challenge of mountain biking, the variance in surface and skill level required keeps it interesting. Road biking doesn't really have that, for me. So, there was a bit of trepidation in getting ready for the Jennings Rivers Ride . I'm not particularly fit at the moment - I'm a couple of stone heavier than I should be, and while I'm still kayaking a fair amount I'm not getting out to run or bike as much as I should do. I'd been entered to ride with my Dad, but hip and leg problems meant he was out, and I'd not managed to find anyone to take his place. The route I was b

On Progress

'Progress' is a bit of a funny one. Business can talk about 'SMART' aims (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-linked) , but in the world of the Outdoors, we don't really do those. We don't normally set aims, we don't really closely monitor our progress, we don't have personal development plans, we don't do increments. So what do we do when we recognise a problem and want a long-term, hardwired, resilient solution to that issue? The root of my paddling issues I've covered at length on here, so you know the problem. Obviously I needed to improve my technical skills and my confidence, so I started keeping a live log of my river days and making notes: What went well, what went not so well, how I felt on the river, what I think I need to work on. That's coupled with one of my 3 aims from a while back, to pass my 4*, and I have a 4* profiling sheet, so I can look at my progress against the things I need to do. I've still got Kel

Response & Responsibility

It's been a while since I posted up on here, but some stuff from the past few weeks got me thinking. 'Responsibility' is a bit of a funny word in the world at the moment. There's so many situations where it's both a good word and a bad word, a blessing or a curse. It would be too broad-brush to say that people don't like responsibility, but you do seem to see so many stories in the gutter press where ' responsibility ' equals ' liability ', equals ' fault ', equals ' blame '. Unfortunate things happen, and people look for someone else to shoulder their burden for them, financially at least. Teams of no-win-no-fee lawyers wrangle and twist people's testimony to wring out every last penny, scrying for that tiny chink in the armour/crack in the pavement/missed paragraph in the training document to prod and jemmy until coins fall out. Okay, that's an over-the-top view, and I'd like to believe that the world isn't as