Aidan Harding

Blog

  • Celebrity Adventure

    So, Helen Skelton is going to “become the first person to use a bicycle to help her reach the South Pole”.

    A few exaggerated claims in this BBC article are causing some annoyance on the internet. It claims that in the 500 miles trip she will “hope to set a new world record for the longest bicycle journey on snow”. Bad news for her: I and numerous others have already completed the 1000 miles Iditarod Trail Invitational race in Alaska. It doesn’t invalidate her trip, but it does show a lack of respect and understanding for the existing state of adventures on bikes.

    It is often observed you can test your motivation for a trip very simply. Would you do it if no-one is looking? If not, then maybe you shouldn’t be there. When the road gets hard, how will you respond if the reason to keep going is not inside you?

    That test gets muddied by the issues of sponsorship and charity, though.

    Regarding sponsorship, I just wouldn’t be able to go on some of my adventures if I didn’t have the support of some great companies sponsoring me (cough! bottom of the page! cough!). It is only fair to them that I return their help by trying to get them some exposure in the media. Many people find themselves in the same position.

    Regarding charity, the best way to raise money for the charity is to really sell the adventure.

    Both of these are legitimate reasons for getting your story out there. They are reasons to seek nice soundbites; claims of records that you will break; whatever else.

    That’s fine as long as you can stay factually accurate and use no sleight hand to present your trip as harder than it is.

    Celebrity adventures do nothing to diminish those of people that don’t get to appear on BBC Breakfast. The experience of riding my bike to Nome was so overwhelmingly intense that I would never be able to fully explain it anyway. The likelihood of people mentioning Helen Skelton when they hear about it in the future doesn’t harm my fundamental experience of it. The ride burns brightly in my memory.

    I would love to have the kind of financial support that celebrities get to achieve their goals, and I’m a little jealous of it. That’s probably why people get so excited about the subject. But I do get by and I do get to keep going on adventures, so I can’t complain.

    Good luck to her in her trip. (But I rather suspect that a bike with a 80kg sled will be about much use to her as the ponies were to Scott)

  • SSUK and the elephants

    This is the first blog post for a while. Primarily because I was organising SSUK in what would have been any free time that I had.

    And this is going to be a bit of a rant. An indulgence of having a blog, and something to do since I can’t get to sleep.

    I’d say most things at SSUK went pretty well. People at the event were happy and that was the main thing. But, I’m left with a bitter taste in my mouth. In the interests of being fair, I thought we should just refund anyone who wanted to cancel. I always thought it was unfair that events kept your money even when you didn’t turn up and use any services.

    So, in the final briefing email, I offered full refunds for cancellations. And when I opened that door an inch, a herd of elephants came through. I spent almost an entire day refunding people. All of my contingency in the budget was gone and still the cancellations kept coming. Eventually, I stopped answering them. I made the decision that the many people who were still coming deserved my time more than the few who backed out at the last minute. There was plenty still to do, so I got on with that and I would deal with cancellations afterwards.

    Post-event, lots of people were kind enough to say thank you for our efforts in organising and running the event. But the cancellation emails kept coming:

    I’ve noy yet recieved the refund that was promised, yet a few mates who also had to cancel have recieved theirs. I’m sure its just an admin glitch, but could I kindly ask you to look into it.

    I hate to break this to you, my friend, but SSUK is run at no profit to the organisers. I took a week off work in the run-up to deal with the event, and now I need to work to pay the mortgage. Having just finished 3 days of working 14 hours for £65/day, you’re not top of my list of priorities. Just because you expect next-day service when you order your shiny parts from Wiggle, doesn’t mean you’ll get it from a race being run on the cheap.

    Should I put my hand in my pocket, deepening the losses on the race? It pains me to be “unfair” to people. But the alternative is to pay for the privilege of hosting the race by racking up bank charges on an overdraft. The costs were largely unaffected by late cancellations: I’d already paid for services to deal with the full complement of racers. But, I set an expectation of full refunds.

    Two lessons learned, then:

    1. Don’t offer refunds
    2. If you give people your time, a certain percentage of them will take the piss with it

  • An Experiment in Bike Commuting

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    With various sites and smartphone apps offering to provide friendly bike routes, I thought I’d give one a try. The results were interesting rather than straightforwardly successful…

    One of my jobs is teaching Bikeability courses at schools in Harrow. That means my commute ranges from 15 to 18 miles, depending on the part of the Borough I have to get to. Normally, I just ride the same route to Harrow and then split off to the specific school. That way, I don’t have to think about directions until the last couple of miles. My route uses a lot of main roads – they allow you to ride pretty fast and some have bike/bus lanes to speed past the traffic. The middle third of the journey is on bumpy, tight, segregated bike lanes that avoid dual carriageways with slips roads, tunnels, and large roundabouts. It seems like a fair compromise, but is a bit of a puncture minefield when I use road tyres instead of Schwalbe Marathons.

    Cycle Streets claims to offer bike-suitable routing that can make use of bike lanes. It has nice looking options of “Quiet”, “Fast”, and “Balanced” routes. I rode to work today on the Fast route, and then home on the Quiet one. I was on my road bike, so I wanted smooth roads, no broken glass, and minimal junctions.

    The route in was pretty good – 2 miles shorter than the way I had planned myself and it did save me time. There were a couple of annoying bits of residential road where I had to keep slowing down for T junctions, but it did save me 5-10 minutes over my usual route. There was one junction where the required turn was impossible, though. I had to go past, make a U turn, and rejoin the route. It is also the school holidays right now and I suspect that some of these roads would be choked with school traffic in term-time.

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    Steps

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    Glass on the ground

    The route home was a whole other matter. It had me riding down alleyways which seemed to be essentially pavement (i.e. illegal). It had me carrying over railway bridges. It had carpets of broken glass. It crossed main roads on offset crossroads (i.e. right turn, short hop, left turn). And after 11 miles of riding from Harrow, I saw a sign saying 5 miles back to Harrow! It was pretty quiet on some of the roads, but the ride home took 40 minutes longer than usual. Trying to navigate all the complicated over/under passess, weird spirals from bike-only underground roundabouts back up to street level, park edges etc. was difficult. And then to really top things off, the route sent me down an off-road bridleway near to my house. In the winter, it would be far too muddy to ride on a road bike.

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    Singletrack on a road route?!

    It’s nice to see these services trying to encourage cycling, but using them is baffling. They can provide some general ideas of where to go but without a good GPS (including detailed street mapping), the routes would be impossible to follow. Even when you are on-track, it defies belief that the track is supposed to be a cycle route. I think my standard tactic of using Google Maps to get directions and then Streetview to check for cycle lanes is much more effective. More often than not, the direct A road route has bike lanes, priority over minor roads, and fewer wrong turns.

  • West Highland Way and more frustration

    It’s hard to know how to look back on the year so far. I’ve managed to get pretty fit, met some great people, and been to some incredible places. But… and it’s a big “but”, I’ve ended up being the plucky loser. Which is certainly better than being a diffident loser, but it’s still inescapably disappointing.

    My second effort on the West Highland Way Double continued the tradition. Last time I attempted this trail, it was winter and I was ill-prepared. Scotland kicked my ass and that was pretty much what I needed it to do. This time, I had residual fitness from the Tour Divide and a free weekend so I thought I would just give it a punt.

    To keep it low key, I only told one person (for safety). I packed a cut down version of my Divide kit: sleeping bag and bivvy, tools, arm/leg warmers + waterproof, food. My normal rear wheel had a cracked rim, so I was on a Mavic Crossmax that I had borrowed from Sam Singular with (for reasons unknown) a Bontrager mud tyre. In my rush, I just left it there and that turned out to be a mistake. Most everything else was normal, except that I was going to try taking caffeine pills to burn through the night.

    I headed off to Bristol to go see some new Chris King road wheels on behalf of Singletrack Magazine. In the back of the car I had my Singular Pegasus, the old prototype Singular road frame, a pile of food, and my synthetic sleeping bag for the night before the WHW.

    The King stuff was shiny and nice – not going to sway me from Hope but I’m sure fans will love it. We got the chance for a test ride with some pretty decent roadies who admitted that, upon seeing my lugged steel frame with mudguards, they expected me to end up in the broom wagon. Needless to say, that didn’t happen but we did average 20mph for a couple of hours and I tried hard to keep a lid on things. You can read the article on Singletrack’s website here, but I was back in the car at 4pm to reach Glasgow before sleeping.

    When I got to Milngavie, I had already eaten so all I had to do was find somewhere quiet to park. I pulled up in a secluded lane and put my bivvy down between my car and the verge. Perfectly dirtbag! In the morning I made espresso with my camping stove, repacked the boot of the car, and was excited to hit the trail around 7am.

    The first few miles are easy. Their flat, easy-going nature could easily be mistaken for gentle English countryside rides. Things changed a little as Conich Hill took me over to Loch Lomond. It was a lot easier this time than when it had been coated in ice, and I could chuck the lighter bike over boulders on the way up.

    I had built up the shore of Lomond in my mind to be one gigantic swearing hike-a-bike. That’s what I remembered of it, so I was pleasantly surprised to see how much of it was rideable. Again, less weight meant that I could hike the bike more easily and was less often required to. Short rises and pokey roots were not a problem. Except that the stupid Crossmax wheel had come unseated from the tyre. I put a tube in and carried on past Rowardennan. Now I was frequently putting my bike onto my back and walking briskly between clambering efforts.

    By the end of the Loch, I felt a whole world better than I had in the winter. I had collected water as I went, so I had eaten enough and was ready to go all day. The weather was so bright that I was beginning to wish I had suncream.

    Steep ups and downs took me to Tyndrum and, despite the volume of walkers, they were fun and pretty rideable. I was absolutely flying! Before I knew it, I was at Glencoe ski area. This is where I had bailed before and it felt great to ride through. But things soon started to come unstuck.

    On the way to the Devils Staircase, I took a drink on a flat trail. With my bottle still in my hand, I spotted a drainage channel. Its square edges were going to require a hop and I had no time to put the bottle away. I stuck the bottle in my mouth and totally failed the hop. My rear wheel smashed into the square edge, pitching me over the bars and face first (bottle still there) into the ground. It was no great surprise to find that I had pinched the tube. I had no more spare tubes, so I put a couple of patches onto it and got ready to continue.

    I was taking it easy now. Couldn’t afford more mistakes, and my lips hurt from the landing. The trail heads up and over to Kinlochleven via some mighty rockiness that is pushy on the way up and picky on the way down (if you have 4 patches to last > 100 miles). Still, I messed up another drainage and hit full frontal onto a square edge. My Stans/Maxxis Ikon front wheel was still tubeless and shrugged it off. Phew! But damn, why couldn’t I have two good wheels?

    I took a couple of the caffeine pills (about equivalent to a decent cup of coffee) and rode on. The run-in to Fort William was long, but joyful. Sweet trails snaked towards the dropping sun. Another pinch flat irritated me and took another couple of patches, but couldn’t stop me for long. I weaved between abandoned farm buildings, whizzed past walkers’ campsites, rumbled over rocks, and eventually shot down into Fort William itself.

    The petrol station I had hoped to shop at was closed but I replenished my water and ate some of the food I had. Light was fading, but I was feeling good. On a bad out-and-back, the turn-around point can often be a real source of self doubt. Can I do all that again? Not so this time, I was itching to get back on the trail. I figured that I would spend a lot of the darkness pushing over the Devil’s Staircase. Perfect: By dawn I would be riding faster trails just as I needed my vision back.

    It took a while for the light to fade completely from the sky but, as soon as it did, I hitched up the arm-warmers. I was working hard in places but, without the warmth of the sun, I wanted to keep what I was generating. My mind divided the remainder of the ride into manageable chunks. Pushing back over towards Kings House was perfectly fine and I could see some light returning as I reached Glencoe.

    Riding through the night does make the sun seem mythical. On the whole, I was warm, but small chills now and again made me long to feel that radiance against my skin. The slow sunset was balanced by a slow sunrise and pedalled harder as if I could hasten the day. Climbing hard, though, the rear of the bike became squishy. Another puncture. Not a pinch this time, so I only used up the 1 patch in the pre-dawn cold. One of the existing patches had come loose as it was trying to repair a cut on the seam of the tube.

    This delay was eating into my quota of wakefulness and making me cold when I could have just pedalled into the light. I was frustrated and worried. With one patch left and the existing repairs looking suspect, I was beginning to face the possibility of failure. Failure for stupid equipment reasons. Surely not.

    Sure enough, mere minutes later and still on the Drove Road between Glencoe and Inveroran, the tyre was down again. One patch left and certain that I wouldn’t be able to ride the whole way back, I pulled out my bivvy kit. It was a bad area to bivvy – no tree cover and damp ground but I didn’t care. As I unrolled my bag, the midges started to come in. Not so bad, but I was glad to get my body zipped up and away from them.

    I grabbed a couple of hours sleep, but the midges were coming in through my air-hole in the bivvy. I blocked it up with my silk liner, but with the warmth of the day beginning to come on, it was time to get up anyway. Poking my head out, everything was covered in midges. A thick layer of them on my bag, my shoes, and my helmet. A cloud of them above my bivvy.

    Moving as fast as I could, I packed up. I paced as I stuffed dry-bags, trying not to inhale too many insects. Flicking them from my head. Swearing and sighing. I used my last patch on the the rear tube and, shoved remaining kit away and tried to ride from the little blighters.

    Again, it was only minutes before my tyre was down again. I wasn’t surprised, angry, or anything really. I was just trying to figure out options to get home. The journey back to the car was long (about 8 hours – longer than riding without incident would have been) and pretty much sucked.

    Trying to drive home after this, I napped frequently in service stops and tried to eat away my tiredness. That reached stupid proportions when I vomited a load of sugary junk onto the M42, but the naps got me home in the end.

    The WHW double is completely do-able and actually quite enjoyable in the summer. It’s pretty rough on a fully rigid bike, but not impossibly so. I’d like to go back, but the reality is that I almost certainly won’t have the time or money to do it this year. I was certainly encouraged by my overnight performance (felt fine when I bivvyed after 21 hours of riding) so maybe one day I’ll be able to challenge the likes of Kurt and Jefe 🙂

  • Tour Divide Kit List

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    I don’t normally do kit lists. But, my Divide kit worked out pretty well this year and there isn’t much I would change. So here’s what I took:

    The Bike

    • Singular Pegasus singlespeed frame
    • On One carbon fork
    • Hope Pro 2 / Stans 355 29er wheels
    • Maxxis Crossmark LUST rear tyre, Maxxis Ikon EXO front tyre
    • Hope headset
    • Hope 90mm stem
    • Easton EA70 bars
    • Shimano XT brakes with 160mm Ashima Air rotors and Goodridge hoses
    • Thomson seatpost
    • Selle Italia Flite saddle
    • Hope ceramic bottom bracket
    • Shimano Deore cranks
    • Velosolo 34t chainring with Velosolo 19t cog
    • SRAM 8spd chain
    • Shimano M520 Deore pedals
    • Race Face grips with Cane Creek Ergo bar ends

    Bike Accessories

    • SPOT tracker (original)
    • Garmin Dakota GPS (tied to the SPOT and around the bars to avoid losing either in rocky sections)
    • Cycle computer – the 2nd cheapest in Mountain Equipment Co-Op
    • 2x Specialized Z bottle cages (side entry to give more space around the frame bag)
    • 2x 800ml bottles
    • Spare inner tube cable tied to the bottom corner of the main triangle
    • Flashing rear light

    Front bag

    • 5L Lomo drybag held on with a Wildcat Gear harness
    • Rab Neutrino 200 down sleeping bag
    • Silk sleeping bag liner
    • Terra Nova Discovery Light bivi bag
    • Balloon Bed sleeping mat
    • Mosquito net
    • Spare inner tube
    • Toilet paper (with bag to pack out used paper!)

    Frame bag

    • One-off bag made by my friend David Kleinjan
    • Topeak Mountain Morph pump (duck tape wrapped around it)
    • Allen keys and torx keys
    • Leatherman Juice
    • Park pre-glued patches
    • Park tyre levers
    • Toothpaste tube (for use as tyre boot)
    • Cable ties
    • 2x brake pads
    • 2x power links and spare chain section
    • Bolts: chainring, disc rotor
    • Spare socks
    • Plastic bags to use on feet
    • Warm hat
    • Sock for chain cleaning, White Lightning Epic chain lube

    Rear bag

    • Bag made by Revelate Designs, borrowed from Chipps (of Singletrack magazine fame)
    • Drybag full of Torq recovery drink
    • ACA maps of the route in plastic map cover
    • Gore softshell arm warmers and leg warmers
    • Gore Alp X jacket
    • Spare shorts
    • Fox antifreeze gloves
    • Hope Vision 1 Adventure head torch
    • Singular long sleeve jersey
    • Camera strapped to outside
    • Bits bag:
      • Toothbrush + toothpaste
      • 2x 9 Bars as emergency food
      • Suncream
      • Nappy rash cream
      • Iodine tablets
      • Ibuprofen
      • Bandages
      • Steri-strips
      • Spare AA batteries

    Clothing

    • Specialized BG Sport shoes
    • Singular socks
    • Sugoi bib shorts
    • Singular jersey
    • No summer gloves!
    • Giro Athlon helmet
    • Endura Mullet glasses
    • Bear spray in jersey pocket until Jackson, WY

    NB I also carried a lightweight backpack to keep food in. For the dry sections, I carried 2.5 L of extra water in Gatorade bottles (2L in the front of the saddle bag, 0.5L in the backpack).

  • My Tour Divide in Pictures

    My pictures with slight commentary. Mostly taken when riding with Josh (hence not much after Silverthorne):

    Robin shows me around his local singletrack in a Banff shakedown ride.

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    Josh pushing through snow on the Whitefish reroute. I think it was over 10 miles of snow, but at least it was well packed and we could chat along the way.

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    LONG train on a beautiful misty morning at a level crossing in Montana.

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    Taking water from a good-looking source. I like to be choosy over where I take it from and drink it untreated wherever possible.

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    There was an extra reroute around this flooded road, but we couldn’t understand the directions and just went straight through the water. Josh was pushing in an attempt to preserve his bike. I just rode through like a buffoon (with dry feet!).

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    Zooming down towards Polaris with Parker and Rob (the Georgia boys).

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    Looking back towards the sunset as we finish off Montana with a 180 mile day.

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    After the rail trail in Idaho, some well-earned nice trail.

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    The Divide Basin is one of the first big, remote stretches. But don’t get cocky… once you finish the off-road, you’re faced with this flat road, and then another Divide crossing before you reach Rawlins. One of the most mentally taxing sections when it comes at the end of an already big day.

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    A couple of pictures of a serious land-slip on the road going from Wyoming into Colorado.

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    We pushed on past Steamboat Springs to avoid the gravity and cost of a hotel room. Unfortunately, drizzle became rain and I set my bivi bag next to Josh’s tent sort-of under some trees.

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    Getting my frame repaired at Kent Eriksen’s workshop (Kent in the green t-shirt).

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    The result of the repair: new welding along the crack, and an extra strut between the chainstay and seatstay.

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    The final road to Antelope Wells. Not much fun on a singlespeed and passing this mountain is about the only thing that happens in 65 miles.

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    They are constructing a new building at Antelope Wells. That meant there were some workers there instead of the usual emptiness. And that meant, they happily gave me food and beers to celebrate the end of my ride. True Zuni Indian hospitality.

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    Everyone has to take this picture 🙂

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  • Tour Divide Decompression Begins

    It’s all over and I came in 6th place. I’m currently staying at Jamie’s house (Jamie seems to know everyone in Silver City) along with Kurt Refsnider. It’s a very nice place to be hanging out post-event. There are all kinds of thoughts, pictures and words to get out there. First, something that I spent a lot of time pondering in the second half of the event:

    When I had problems with my frame, I was in 4th place. To get it fixed, though, I had to get a bus from Silverthorne, Colorado to Steamboat Springs. Having found the problem the night before, I didn’t get to Steamboat until about 4pm. The clock was ticking. Fortunately, some of the best Titanium welders in the world live in Steamboat and Kent Eriksen made time to repair my bike as soon as I arrived. Fantastic, I was back on the road.

    Race rules and allow you to travel back up the route in a vehicle, but forward movement must be under your own power. Since I had already ridden the route to Silverthorne, I could pedal the road but it still left me with 87 miles to cover and a nearly 3000ft climb on the way out of town. I had to get on with it, though, I wanted to sleep in or near Silverthorne and be just one day behind.

    As I rode along in the dark, I had my head light on, a flashing rear light and reflectives on my jacket, shoes, and leg-warmers. Nonetheless, I was stopped by a local Sheriff. He told me that reflectors were required in the US and he was concerned about my safety. So he drove me to the county line – It was kind of tense inside his car. I was overheating after the cool of the night and he seemed pretty humourless. When he dropped me off, I tried not to hum anything from The Dukes of Hazzard.

    It was otherwise uneventful. I slept in a rest area, and got up in the morning to make Salida. I was pounding out the miles and trying to figure out why cruising wasn’t enough. The race for 1st was beyond me, and my chase was pointless. But Divide racing as a whole is pointless unless you put your body and soul into it. Only then is it elevated from just being a long ride into being something that can change and inspire you. So I had no choice other than to ride with everything I had.

    Had I not had problems, I would have attacked that hard then anyway. Until that point, I hadn’t felt physically ready to kick on hard. And the terrain of the re-routes didn’t favour me. I like mountains, and obvious challenges. I can get disheartened when there’s nothing to deal with. Looking at how it panned out, I may have given Ethan a real push for 3rd place if it hadn’t have been for the delays. Who knows how he, Rob, and Parker would have responded. We’ll never know.

    I must pay a massive tribute to Kurt and Jefe, and Ethan for pushing the boundaries of what is possible on The Divide. Their stamina and determination are an inspiration. All credit to Rob and Parker too, for a fine ride in their first multi-day race. They claimed to be no good at toughing it out – you’re not fooling anyone. Best of luck to everyone still on the course. I hope the NM fire diversions don’t take too much away from you.

  • Good bye Canada roll on Wyoming

    So everyone has started the tour divide and with diversions to the normal route due to snow and floods they are all doing well.  Aidan is storming along and doing really well.  Whilst I am writing this, it appears that Aidan has bivvied for the evening with a guy called Robert Gianni just alongside the trail at Henry’s Lake.  This means that with 6 days of riding Aidan has covered a Whopping 917 miles!  Amazing!  This is averaging 153 miles/day.  That is pretty much commuting from London-Wales everyday.

    I haven’t really heard from Aidan to know how he is feeling or finding the trail but he seems to have the strategy of eating and sleeping well and he appears to have had no mechanical issues.  Currently he is in 5th place and the front runners have been napping for only about 4 hours/night.  There is a lot of speculation on the tour divide forum as to whether or not these riders can keep going with that game plan.  Aidan gets stronger as these rides go on, I think we are going to see him start closing the gap, how exciting! Tomorrow we should see him enter Wyoming so keep your fingers crossed and keep pushing him on, I will update you in a few days time or if I hear from him before then.

  • Unwise Training

    Possibly not the best formed words ever, written on a phone in a coffee shop:

    On Saturday, I went for what could be considered an unwise training ride. 5.5 hours of Surrey Hills singletrack in warm temperatures with all my Tour Divide gear on the bike. Probably 50 odd miles, but my GPS fell off and it was a few miles to recover it so I can’t be sure. What made it different from the normal was that I deliberately pared things down to 1.5L of water and no food in that time. Quite a lot like times when I got caught out on the Divide.

    To know the effect is interesting. I was just reminding myself that I could do this, but it was still tough. The legs kept going but the mind went on a little trip. I kept forgetting where I was and I was riding without being conscious of it. Often riding OK, but my only thoughts were of Coke and burritos, not of roots and corners. Drink became a complete obsession and I could feel my body compensating: less sweat, less energy going into the riding, but still going forward.

    It’s not a great way to train the body (I was pretty trashed the next day) but getting past the imagined barriers is a good way to train the mind. People are way tougher than we think we are.

  • Getting the right attitude

    The Tour Divide is approaching (starts on June 10) and it’s slipping into just about every thought these days. Getting the kit right. Organising logistics for before and after the race. Figuring out the navigation. Training. Fretting. It’s pretty consuming, but that’s half of the fun.

    The Divide this year is quite a different prospect for me than anything that has gone before. The only reason to revisit it is to go fast. Yes, there are all kinds of great things on the trail and great people to meet. But if the primary reason was not racing, I could go on a different trip. I could see new people, new places.

    So, if the only reason to go back is to improve on last year’s performance, the whole mentality is different. Nature will play its hand and records may be put out of reach by snow, fire, or a hundred other factors so “improvement” means an improved placing. So, now I’m down to beating other people. Or as I would prefer to think of it, finishing in front of other people. I don’t want to negatively defeat them but, instead, to see the best man (or woman) win. The hope is that I’ve done enough to be that best man.

    I feel fitter than I’ve ever been. 95 miles of hills and singletrack was a mere 8.5 hours at the weekend and didn’t leave me too beaten up. Last week I ran further and faster than I ever have before (objectively not that amazing, but 8 miles in an hour is good for me!). And then last night, as on a number of occasions recently, I absolutely flew on a 2 hour ride. The numbers from the power meter on my turbo trainer are also higher than I have ever managed before.

    Now, I haven’t ridden with some of my quicker friends recently (you know the type, elite XC racers… sickeningly fast) but there’s no arguing with where I am relative to my past self.

    So it all looks good to make better progress than last year.

    My equipment is also way nicer. The Singular Pegasus is lighter, more comfortable, and even more fun to ride than the Swift was last year. I’ve managed to get some brilliant Maxxis tyres to start with, minimising the chance of another early tyre failure. I’ve got a lighter drivetrain from Velosolo, and ceramic bearings in my Hope BB. A Hope light could turn out to be a crucial factor, expanding the options for riding at night by providing real brightness from AA batteries.

    But what of the other racers? Well, I just try not to think about them too much. Judging from history, many people will leave the race in the first week. Some people are going to be mighty fast. But, I’m not going to make one mistake that I made at the Iditarod: I was 2nd to Jay Petervary in my head before we even started. He probably had the better legs anyway, but expecting nothing more than 2nd was no way to race. I don’t disrespect the other riders out there, I just intend to keep them as an unknown quantity until we are slugging it out in the second half of the race.

    So that’s the “plan”: Grab the bull by the horns and go hard in the race. No fear about burning out. No worries about riding the whole darn thing by myself if that’s what it takes. Be nice to the people on the trail, but tough on the miles that make it.