Aidan Harding

Category: biking

  • West Highland Way – The Intention

    OK, it’s time to ‘fess up.

    When Rob Lee made an unsuccessful attempt at the West Highland Way Double, it piqued my interest a little. It’s always interesting to read about what people are up to in the world of riding bikes a long way. It’s rare to have such a candid account when the goals are not achieved. And yet, the small, mean, and competitive part of me thought, “Hey, I should give that ride a try!” Making firsts is good ego boost.

    Now, I like John “Shaggy” Ross. He’s a good man and always fun to talk to. But, it did grate a bit after Iditarod 2009 when everyone who found out I did it said, “That’s the one Shaggy did!” Not his fault, but you can imagine my thoughts when John also had an incomplete ride on the West Highland Way Double.

    So, I have decided to repeat my method for the Tour Divide by doing a UK ride as preparation. For The Divide, I rode The Sarn Helen Trail (the length of Wales) over a couple of days. It was as much a test of gear and food as it was a test of my fitness but it really helped me to go into The Divide with confidence.

    On January 15 or thereabouts, I’ll set off from Milngavie (Glasgow, to you and me) bound for Fort William. I will be fully kitted up to deal with deep snow, camping overnight if it comes to it, and generally looking after myself in a Iditarod style. If it turns out to be possible, I’ll turn around at Fort William and ride back to complete the double. I’m highly doubtful that this will be possible. If conditions are bad, I could have to walk large sections of the trail. It will be good preparation for Alaska, and if I make the double that would be just dandy.

    PS Thanks to Shaggy for lending me pogies to use on this trip after mine were stolen at the weekend. See… we are friends šŸ™‚

  • Mistakes

    I’ve been making stupid school-boy errors recently.

    First, I happily advised someone I was going riding with that Camelbaks are OK below freezing as long as you blow the water back into the bladder to stop the pipe from freezing. I then forgot to do so myself and ended up having mine freeze solid. Doh!

    Then, I forget to check my chainring bolts at all for ages and this happens:

    [singlepic id=31 w=320 h=240 float=]

    With thoughts turning toward Alaska again, I thought it was time to review the mistakes that I shouldn’t make in an unforgiving environment:

    Mistakes not to make again on the Iditarod Trail Invitational

    • Take plenty of socks! They weigh hardly anything and the frostbite from last time was largely attributable to my wet socks.
    • Don’t set off from a checkpoint in wet socks (especially if it’s -30C out there) – you’ll get frostbite.
    • Take sensible food i.e. varied and tasty. Last time I took a mix of salty and sweet for eating during the day. I thought that nuts would be good because they pack a lot of calories and will replace salt. I ate some nuts on day 1, the rest were dead weight. I’ve got a sweet tooth during rides, so I should know better and pack for it (at least I got this right on the Divide).
    • Don’t get too excited (another one I got right on the Divide)
      • I tore away from the line on day 1 with no real idea of where I was going. John Ross and I got kind of lost. We rejoined the pack only after wasting a load of time and effort.
      • I barely slept before the race and on the first night of the race itself. If you’re going to lie down and do nothing else, you might as well sleep.
    • Don’t bother with hydraulic brakes. I really wanted them for UK riding, but should have gone straight to cables on my snow bike. They were more noisy than really draggy in the end, but if it had been colder, I could have been in trouble.
    • Don’t rely on post from the UK to Alaska being half-way reasonable. Send it really early, or take it with you.
    • When veteran racers are putting on extra clothes before they drop down to ride the frozen river, they really do know better than you.
    • Don’t use an old pump. The seals on mine shrank from OK in normal temperatures to completely useless on the Trail. I had to rely on others and had some dodgy moments when the temperature drop brought my tyres down with it.
    • Take some energy drink. I know it freezes faster, but it encourages me to drink more (the taste and the knowledge that I need to drink it soon).
    • Don’t listen to snow machiners (or snow mobilers, or whatever you call them). Bill told me not to, but I didn’t listen to him. If they’ve got motorised transport, they’ve got a whole different idea of distance than you have (I got this right in the Nokia Coast 2 Coast re: motorbikes).

    I’m sure I’ll have a whole load of new mistakes to make this time around šŸ™‚

  • Nice

    I just had a “nice” ride tonight. Nice people, relaxed pace, nice time.

    I’m not so sure about mountain biking being nice. At its best, it should be about fire in your belly, blood pounding in your head, and a dance through the trail. Or, it should be about epic places and worn out legs pushing worn out tyres around on a trail that goes to the horizon.

    But nice seems like a hobby, not a passion. Nice has its place, but doesn’t scratch the itch.

  • Training Actuality

    Not been blogging much, but I have been training much.

    Getting my head down and doing some substantial rides in The Chilterns, riding to work every day, shed-based turbo training, and running a bit.

    The good news is that I’ve caught up on Fighting Talk podcasts while in the shed. Unfortunately, that means 1 hour a week of brilliant podcast and the rest on not quite so brilliant podcasts. Ho-hum, my power output on the bike is creeping upwards and it does seem to have genuine real-world speed benefits. Not to mention the easy bike cleaning side of things.

    These are testing times for mountain biking round here. Getting up in the dark, finishing a ride in the dark. Everything is filthy and wet. But these are the conditions that make British mountain bikers tough. When you spend eye-popping effort dragging yourself up a muddy hill, only to get your ass handed to you by wet roots on the way down, and then go home and hose your shoes off, there is no answer but to laugh.

    I have noticed a worrying trend recently, and I know I’ve been guilty of it in the past: descending into myself when it gets really foul. Retreating inside yourself and letting your body take care of keeping the bike moving is a somewhat viable tactic for shorter rides. But I really can’t keep letting myself do it if I want stay well day-after-day. It leads to not eating enough, not drinking enough, ignoring cold when it would be more prudent to add more clothing. All kinds of ills. I need to embrace the world and work with it, not just scurry around the hills until I can go home to get warm and dry. That, more than 10W extra power, is my main goal in the run-up to Christmas. All I need is some bad weather to play in, and I don’t think that’ll be a problem.

    No photos as the moment as I lost my camera on the Divide. Instead, a couple of interesting altitude profiles (ft on the y-axis, miles on the x-axis). First, a recent run:


    Yes, that’s down to The Thames, and then along it. Looks quite hilly until you see the scale!

    And then a recent training ride:


    And people say we don’t have hills in the south.

  • Training Philosophy

    Entering back into training, and I’m thinking about it. About how much is enough, and what I’m really aiming for.

    I seem to do less than other people with similar goals. I seem to do too much to have any time outside training. I seem to do enough to get by and go the places I want to go when the event rolls around.

    But what is it that I’m aiming for at this point? Can I ever put my finger on a single goal and say, “When I can do that, I will be ready”? The answer is no. I might think that doing regular 12 hour rides every weekend is about where it’s at, but I didn’t get that far before the Tour Divide. I only got up to 10 hours.

    What I had instead of the 12 hour rides was more important. What I had was belief. Belief that I would finish under anything other than the most extreme circumstances. It wasn’t gung-ho over-confidence, but an underlying sense that I had physical resources to draw on and a knowledge of my body.

    For these multi-day things, I think it comes down to the trail moulding you. My aim is to shape myself into something like what the trail needs me to be. To also be flexible enough to adapt myself to its mould when I’m out there.

    That is the goal of my training. At all sports, I lope. I don’t sprint. But I keep loping. Tonight’s run was 10km in about 45 minutes. Little bits of pain in my legs to begin with. Toast wanting to come back up part way through. But at ease in the last 5 minutes. In the rain and encroaching darkness, that’s what I’m looking for.

  • Must eat fewer pies

    I am a bit over racing weight at the moment. In fact, until his drug habit was revealed, I was feeling like the MTB Ricky Hatton. It’s the luxury of only doing one big race a year – I can lay off for a while and do other stuff.

    But I’m back on the training now. Unfortunately, my cranks weren’t ready for it:


    That’s not really what you want to happen on a solo night ride, but I wasn’t hurt when they broke so I managed to get plenty more practise with the one-leg drills riding home.

  • Full Circle

    Way back in 2000, I was sitting on a train out of central Birmingham. I saw a free newspaper and, flicking through, I saw an advert: “Ride from London to Paris for the NDCS“.

    Back then, I was did no sport. I was crazy about music, my friends were all crazy about music, and I even played in a band. When I read that advert, I wished that I could do something like that ride. I had recently finished my degree and was trying to take a positive attitude to life. It was the commitment to positivity that made me question my immediate reaction: Why wish I could do it? Why couldn’t I do it?

    Soon after, I had signed up to do the ride and bought what I thought was a nice bike. I couldn’t understand why the shop had tried to convince me to buy the lighter one. The lighter one was a bit cheaper, but it didn’t have a suspension fork and the steering felt too fast. The shop said it was better, but I wanted stability and that suspension looked cool.

    So it was a mountain bike-shaped-object that I propped up against the wall of the lab. And it was the same bike-shaped-object that prompted a fellow student to invite me mountain biking.

    We went to Coed-Y-Brenin. Packing the bike into the car, I deflated my tyres to get them past the brake blocks. When we got there, I thought my friend looked ridiculous in his purple cycling jacket and tights. I thought that there couldn’t be that big a difference between his suspension fork and mine. They looked pretty similar. I thought that the Race Face sticker on his bike was pretty funny… What a stupid name.

    It was raining, but we set off into with me dressed in heavy cotton clothes. I could not believe how tough this was. My head span and the stupid gears wouldn’t change, especially when I was pedalling hard and really needed them. I wanted to take short cuts, but my friend wasn’t having it. We’d driven for hours to get here.

    When the impossible climbing was over, we turned to riding along terrifyingly thin trails. Everything was pointy rocks, and built up so that I felt like I’d stumbled into Kickstart. It wasn’t so bad – if I kept looking right down at my tyre, I could make sure it was on-line but stuff kept surprising me as I hit it. Then, at the end of the narrow bit, the track dropped down vertically to a gravel road. I just hit the brakes hard. “You can’t ride that on a bike”, I said. When my friend rode it and it looked much less vertical, but I pushed down to be on the safe side.

    The rain just kept coming, and my clothes were heavy with it. My trousers kept catching on the saddle. Somehow, though, this was the most fun I’d had in years.

    More downhill narrow stuff, and there was a serious guy behind me. He started shouting abuse at me and I wanted to get out of the way, but I was braking as hard as I could manage and just hanging on. I wished I wasn’t holding him up.

    We let a load of people past before my friend and I made our way down to the end of the trail. It ended with a confusing maze of roots. Every one looked slippery, but my perspective had changed since we set out. People could ride bikes on this stuff. So I tried.

    And I failed. The pointy bar-ends caught me on the inside of my thigh as I crashed over them. I was OK-ish. It hurt to walk, and I needed a cup of tea, but I would be OK.

    Before London to Paris came around, I had dumped the bike-shaped-object and laid down Ā£500 on a Specialized. Again, it felt like it had twitchy handling, but I realised that it was a good thing. It was precision, and soon it was natural.

    I kept riding off-road and trying to learn about this sport. Crashing on every ride, making friends to ride with, and generally having a fine old time. I couldn’t believe how fast my mind had to work on the bike, and how much technique there was to all this.

    So, I rode out of London as a “mountain biker”. I arrived in Paris with another new idea of what bikes could do and how they could bring people together.

    10 years later, and just last weekend I travelled from London to Paris again. This time working as a guide with a fair bit of cycling experience behind me. And I had the privilege to see people exceeding their expectations and extending their boundaries. I had the pleasure of Northern France and their farmer’s hay-sculpture.


    It’s good to look back and seen how transforming cycling has been for me. To remember how many things seem natural now, but were alien then. I’m lucky to have the chance to share people’s discovery of cycling. I just try to share the enthusiasm without all the crap we think is necessary. And it’s great.

    Weirdly, I’ll soon be going back to Birmingham for the kind of music that drove my life back then. Swan, Godflesh, and Napalm Death all together at the Supersonic Festival. Moving forward, but not forgetting where I came from (until beer intervenes).

  • Iā€™m crap at pedalling

    It’s that in-between time now where I don’t have any big adventures sufficiently close to have to be training. Usually, this means a bit more time away from bikes and spending what biking time I have playing about – trying to improve technique and just have fun. Essentially, falling off a lot.

    Weirdly, it hasn’t been like that this time. A combination of Emily being away, and me working from home has resulted in all-day-eating and my mind being stuck in a very small rut. The answer? Keeping up with somewhat big miles until Emily is back šŸ™‚

    Technique-wise, I have been looking at my pedalling, though. I’ve always suspected it wasn’t good but I finally took Adam’s suggestion and tried some 1-legged time on the turbo-trainer. It was even worse than I’d imagined. With one leg against the resistance of the machine, I could feel how little of the time I was actually driving the pedal. I jerked and clanked against the cleats. My left leg was way weaker than my right. I felt like a cheap puppet being operated by a drunk.


    Turbo-training in the shed… yes the puddle is sweat!

    And that’s how I pedal… terribly.

    It’s easy to take for granted that there is no technique to the pedalling part of mountain biking. With all the corners and the mud and the stuff to jump over. The only comparison I can make is to swimming. I can spot a poor swimmer, even if they’re moving quicker than average, by their lack of economy. You can see lots of unnecessary movement and splashing rather than efficient forward motion. So swimmers go and do drills. In the last couple of years, I’ve even done some of these drills. And suddenly it challenged the individual parts of my stroke, bringing improvements when I put things back together.

    I don’t expect such a dramatic change from pedalling drills, but the thought of “free speed” is mighty appealing. Maybe I don’t just have to mash up and down on those pedals like a dumb singlespeeder. Turbo training, riding without a camelbak, tubeless tyres. What next road bikes, gears, and leg shaving? No!

  • Alone

    2700 miles. Canada to Mexico. Alone.

    That’s the strapline for the Ride The Divide film. It’s easy to focus on the first part of that statement, but the gravity of the final word is not apparent until you go there.

    Alone.

    No-one to support you, no-one to love, no-one to share with. At times on the Divide, there’s only dust and wind. And there’s no help in screaming at the wind… I tried that and it neither f**ked off or turned around. The land can extend to all horizons with no features giving you either beautiful solitude or mind-eating vastness.

    For a long time during the race, it wasn’t a burden to be alone. It was a change from normal life and allowed me to have a Singular (subtle branding!) purpose. I could get on with just riding and being. But the burden crept up on me. By the final miles of the Divide, I decided to ride it out and get to Antelope Wells. Largely so that I could arrive that night and sooner be with people again.

    While I was riding, I would sometimes imagine being at home, or out to dinner. Sharing the day and the night; some food and some drink. It would be so great to really live in a moment and not in the continuum of the race. I wanted the ease of the understanding and the bright thoughts of others.

    And I wanted to ride with others. I wanted to chase and race for no reason. Face the bad weather with humour, face the dry and fast trails with anticipation. To have someone laugh at me when I fell off. Have someone to goad through the corners if they backed off.

    But in the first couple of weeks of being back, the “alone” has continued to pile up. In riding I’ve missed people with good excuses (training for national champs) and bad excuses (feeling a bit tired) but it meant that even after being home for two weeks I hadn’t shared a single ride.

    So my return to the UK was plodding round the same old places. Not fast, not training. Just feeling like a ghost who didn’t know any better.

    Thank goodness Sam asked me to race for Singular: a weekend of bikes, beer, and hanging out? Yes, please.

    We had a team of 5 for the 24 hour race at Bontrager 24/12 and it was fantastic to meet the guys. It wasn’t a group ride, but it was something just as good. There is some common thread connecting those of us who race solo endurance events and it was a fun change for us to work together. They spurred me on harder than I have raced in a long time. To the point of riding that fine line between success and disaster, to the point of effort that I can only just sustain crank up towards the finish so that I collapse straight after crossing the line.

    Part of the reason I want to do things like the Tour Divide is because they do make you appreciate what you’ve got. I appreciated that I was able to be there, in those beautiful places and travelling huge distances. But more than that, I appreciated what is here at home. It looks like I won’t be writing a blow-by-blow account of riding the Divide, but bits and pieces like this will probably escape along the way…

  • Post Tour Divide Answers

    Well, the Tour Divide is over for me in 2010. It was an outstanding experience. From meeting other riders in Banff, to the varied environments of the trail, to the many people in businesses along the trail who encouraged me despite the smell and the voracious appetite, it was great. I’m going to try to tie some thoughts together more coherently over the next few days, but first some answers to questions people asked on here or elsewhere while I was riding:

    What the heck happened in the first few days?

    As a few people guessed, I forgot how to set up the SPOT in tracking mode. My brain was pretty addled, and they’re not super accurate in some situations anyway so the track the SPOT showed didn’t really reflect where I had gone.

    My rear tyre, a Kenda Small Block 8 tore away from the bead about 15 miles out from Elkford. It had been a very tight fit on Stans 355 rims (tyre levers required to fit it) and just went bang on a flat gravel trail. I bodged it with gaffer tape and toothpaste tube to get to Elkford but when I got there I was told there was no bike shop. In the words of the woman at a campsite, “We have to go out of town to buy underwear”. As it turned out, there is some bike servicing there from Shem at Elkford Bikes. He didn’t have any 29er tyres, though (he will for next time!) so I had to stop early for the night and he gave me a ride to Fernie in the morning. I managed to get a Maxxis Crossmark which fitted much better and I was back on the road from Elkford by 12.00pm.

    It was frustrating sitting in Fernie, waiting for the bike shop to open but it was great to meet Shem and being at the back gave me a chance to meet lots of other riders and I made my way up the TD.

    Why didn’t I call in much?

    To begin with, I just wanted to get going and get into the race. After that, I was finding it difficult even when I wanted to. Thinking about what to say on a call-in was something that passed the time on some boring sections, but then it would be ages before I could manage to call and I would forget everything. I think it’s one of the difficulties of not being American when you’re doing this. I don’t automatically know where to look for phones and I didn’t have a US mobile phone to call in from.

    I know that the call-ins add to the race, but I just found it hard to do!

    The bike and the recovery drink

    I took about 2.5kg of recovery drink with me because I’ve found it makes a big difference in training. It was good to hear from Matthew Lee in Banff that you can’t really train for the Divide, but the first week adapts your body to the demands of the trail. That had been my thought with the recovery drink, and that’s why I carried it. It was also handy to be able to sup a few hundred calories straight away to keep the stomach-beast at bay before going on to find real food. I was using chocolate orange Torq Recovery, which usually seems quite thick but just seemed like a normal drink on the Divide šŸ™‚ I did ask them for freebies and they said no, but you can’t deny, it’s good stuff!

    The bike was an absolute joy. The Singular Swift is a well finished, lightweight, lovely handling steel frame. The EBB performed perfectly, I tightened the chain once during the race (and it was getting a bit slack again by the end). Tyres aside, that was all of the maintenance I did. To be on the safe side, I got Orange Peel Bikes in Steamboat to replace the drivetrain and I absolutely needed a new rear tyre by then. The full spec was:

    • Singular Swift frame w/ Phil Wood EBB (standard on the frame)
    • On One rigid carbon forks
    • Hope Pro 2/Stans 355 29er wheels
    • Kenda Small Block 8 tyres, then Maxxis Crossmark, then WTB Vulpine. Crossmarks were the best
    • Chris King headset
    • Hope 90mm stem
    • Easton EA90 bars
    • Cane Creek Ergo bar-ends
    • Thomson post
    • Flite Saddle
    • XT disc brakes with 160mm Ashima rotors and Ashima pads
    • Hope BB
    • Shimno XT cranks
    • Shimano M520 pedals
    • On One 32t steel chainring (swapped for Salsa 32t at Steamboat)
    • On One 18t cog (swapped for Surly 18t at Steamboat)
    • SRAM 9spd chain

    Tyres aside (again!), there’s nothing I’d really change from that. Money-no-object, I could shave off a few grams with lighter cranks, pedals, and brakes. Tyres-wise, I’d start with Crossmarks or maybe Nanoraptors. The Vulpine is too much of an XC race tyre and didn’t have enough grip for the odd bit of steep dusty/gravelly climb on a SS. The Small Block 8, clearly let me down badly but maybe I was just unlucky.

    That’s it for now… Thanks for all the encouragement!