Kev's Extreme Pow-Wow!

Managing to blag a ticket to the Goodwood Festival of Speed was a good excuse to catch up with Nicole and Julian down in Worthing. Thanks for the curry! What more could a man ask for than a curry and beer as soon as I walk through the door?!

Anyway, hit the festival this morning and set about checking out the paddocks. Don’t know whether it was just me but there seemed to be a strange atmosphere around the Ferraris. In previous years these have always been the cars to go and see but not today. Today belonged to Jenson Button and his BAR team. Jenson’s burnouts were second to none. In fact Fernando Alsonso managed virtually no burnouts at all but then this was his first visit to Goodwood.

Having seen the F1 cars, I trotted up to the all new rally stage where there was some fun to be had dodging the dust in the trees. Got some nice photos up in the usual place.

The afternoon was a blast, managing to be in the paddock at the right time to catch a quick word with Jenson and spotting Fernando, David Coulthard, Anthony Davidson, Marc Gene and Damon Hill into the bargain! Didn’t have time to ask Damon why he didn’t manage to win the two races that Dad and I went to in 1996! One day I’ll see a Brit win an F1 race and the world championship in the same year!

The funniest thing that I saw all day was the Toyota scooter that was controlled with ski boots. There are some photos of this in the usual place but I managed to get some cool video footage too. Notice that I am fairly critical of the skiing style demonstrated, buth then I am a registered downhill ski instructor!

Just got back from a scorching day taking part in the SPAM Solstice Ride for charity. It was forecast for 32 degrees celcius and it certainly felt like that on the way round.

Burts and I were taking part in the 55km route whilst there was a 90km route and a mini 35km sprint too! In those conditions the 55km was more than enough with both of us feeling ok but overheated by the end.

Not too much technical stuff on the course although the section through the trees was great.

Water stop 3 was manned by Ivor from Red Planet Bikes who promptly spotted that my Eli has a cracked frame. I’d heard some complaints about this on a couple of forums but didn’t think that I had a problem with mine. How wrong I was. Ivor’s going to get me a new frame and I’m hoping that a full rebuild can be done in the three weeks between now and when I go to the alps. Fingers crossed!!!

The big question is what colour to replace my frame with. I am sorely tempted by the blue colour new for 2005 (see here for more details). What do you all think?

Having taken part in the Marin Rough Ride and having felt suddenly very fit, I was raring to do a bit more endurance biking. Therefore I had a look at the old interwebnet for some decent biking events to find that the Bristol Bikefest was scheduled for the following weekend. I remembered spotting some photos and reviews of last year’s event a while back and thinking it looked good. Therefore there was nothing to do but to get involved at the last minute.

So the first issue was that the event was focussed on a 12 hour endurance event, for which I had no team to rely on. As a result, I was faced with bike racing by myself for 12 hours, or not biking at all. An obvious choice for most, yet I decided to race anyway!

I got up at 5am on Saturday in order to reach the event in time to enter and register, having reserved a place the previous night. No sooner had I attached my race number to my Tomac (more about this in a minute) did I find the race start was looming large.

Now I’d taken a number of precautions for this race. Firstly, I decided that racing off road for 12 hours was not a good idea on a hardtail mountain bike so Canyon stayed put in the dining room whilst Eli, my beautiful full susser was called up once again. I softened the suspension and fitted the narrowest, slickest tyres that I could find (apart from racing bike tyres), hoping to roll along faster and further. The bike looked quite bizarre in this configuration but it seemed to work.

At the race start there were several hundred riders lined up and for some reason I was lined up in the front 50 or so! Realising that this wasn’t your average 3 lap cross country sprint, I edged slowly backwards falling behind as many people as my pride would allow. Having done sprint races since I started mountain biking a few years ago, pacing myself for 12 hours was very difficult.

Just as I was trying to work out when I would want to stop for my first pit stop (rather like Formula 1, I had opted for a multi-stop, short fill and sprint strategy) I clobbered my rear mech on a sneakily positioned log to the extent that the gear cable was torn from its housing. So after 3 laps I was faced with a potential mechanical nightmare. Having no pliers in my emergency race kit, I did a quick makeshift fix that would allow me to at least choose from three gears at the front and pushed on to the end of the lap.

The pit stop was a welcome break and I soon realised that regular pit stops would be suit my racing style well. After 15 minutes I was back on track for another 4 laps, which were increasingly stressful as the number of racers in my vicinity remained large and the pain in my lower back increased. After the 4 laps, the pain became unbearable so I stopped, choosing to pop some ‘bufs.

Strangely the next 4 laps were my most comfortable, after which I chose to stop again. Pushing on for another 3 laps afterwards led to another uncomfortable break by which time the time was closing in and I could afford a longer break, predicting that my laptimes would drop off but I might fit in another couple.

By this stage I felt at one with the course, which was a welcome blend of open track (where the pain seemed to become more noticeable) and fun downhills and fiddly singletrack. On the downhills and singletrack I was practicing leaving off the breaks and finding this was more condusive to a smooth lap as long as I could get the front tyre to stick. Some of the downhill bits were really great fun, taking my mind of the pain and resulting in fun jumps and some carefully calculated high speed near misses with tree trunks.

The last three laps were awesome in that mentally I felt I was on the home straight and this allowed me to push hard and finish with my fastest lap (the only lap of mine to break the 30 minute barrier).

By the end I felt better than at any stage in the race, but at that point it hit me. It was just as well that I packed up and left straight away, chucking my stuff in the car and speeding off back home. This was because by the time I go home I felt so tired that I literally parked the car, went upstairs and fell asleep for the night.

I had a look at the results yesterday and was delighted to find that I came 9th in my category, having completed 17 laps in the 12 hours. The winner of my category completed 22 laps; which is a stunning effort, but most impressive was the winner of the competitive solo category who finished 26 laps. That means that for 12 hours, this guy consistently beat my best laptime and took virtually no break. I mean to beat me is pretty impressive the first place, but to do it quite so convincingly is just inhuman ;-)

As predicted throughout the race, I spent 12 hours convincing myself that I would never do this again, but now, with a couple of days to look back on the experience, I am already working out strategies to improve my performance next time… And in the meantime it’s off to Salisbury Plain for some more endurance biking on Sunday.

This is my favourite album for ages and ages. Been listening to it over and over in the car after getting it through the post yesterday and not only did I love it straight away but it gets better on every listen. Go and buy it now!

This was a first for me. Burts spotted it last year and finally we got round to booking ourselves in. Not only that but Rach and Lou came along.

The options were 40km ir 70km off road over hilly terrain near Kington in Herefordshire. When it came to deciding we didn’t have any difficulty settling for the ‘shorter’ distance!

Although the ride was quite hard work for many, the course was varied and interesting. The final climb was a long one but the descent back into Kington was well worthwhile.

The weather forecast was pretty poor and last night we spent some of the evening in one of the local pubs and then drank a box of wine until the early hours. That didn’t leave anyone (apart from the abstaining Lou) feeling quite 100% but everyone did really well and kept going for the whole ride.

The best thing for me was that I felt that I’d finally hit the fitness that I’d been aiming for a couple of months ago. I’ve been quietly getting distressed about not feeling quite right on the fitness front but having done the half marathon and an epic bike ride last monday, the way I felt on the hills today was awesome. Hope I can carry this fitness into the alps trip and I might well look to do an endurance race in August.

Wow what a month May was. I’m now back into the full swing of life in the office after spending 3 weeks working with Microsoft in Reading. A very intense three weeks of work was made fun by working with Darren and a great bunch of colleagues. By the end of the three weeks we were seemingly working in our own language made up of quotes from Fawlty Towers, Tenacious D songs and our esteemed leader, The Doctor.

Anyway, not content with working 10-12 hours a day, I managed to do a couple of training runs for the Chester half marathon by visiting Nick and Liz in Rickmansworth. This was great fun and it was lovely to get out of the hotel for at least a night a week.

Halfway through this intense three weeks, I was due to do the half marathon itself and was getting paranoid as a number of people came into the office with terrible colds. Somehow I managed to survive this onslaught relatively unscathed and on race day I had little more than a slightly tickly throat and tight chest. My recommendation if you feel like this is to run 13 miles, because by the end, you won’t notice that you had a cold in the first place.

Having run the half marathon last year I was hoping to better last year’s time of 1h 36mins. Publicly I was hoping to beat the 1h 30min barrier this year but a number of things conspired to prevent this; namely 2 weeks of skiing, 2 weeks of chicken pox, 2 weeks of living in a hotel and a couple of instances of excess alcohol consumption. Therefore when I finished in 1h 34mins I was delighted. What made me even happier was to proudly watch my Dad finish in just over 2 hours. Last year he was disappointed with his time but this year he was back on form, and it was great to see.

After three weeks of constant work and running etc, I hit the bank holiday weekend like it was a brick wall and rather than heading towards Devon on Saturday afternoon, I found myself snoozing on the sofa! The same thing seemed to happen on Sunday and I just decided that I obviously needed to take a break. Fortunately given a bonus weekend day, I felt well enough to head out towards Uffington on the Ridgeway resulting in an off-road epic bike ride clocking well over 40 miles!

Getting used to life back in the office is a bit strange at the moment as things are as frantic as ever. Am enjoying a lot of what I’m doing at the moment but having seen the effectiveness of the working environment at Microsoft, I am having some difficulty returning to the daily hurdling exercise that is dealing with the policies defined seemingly with the sole purpose of preventing me from doing my work effectively.

I’m looking forward to catching up with Nick, Liz, Neil and Lou again this weekend as we take part in the Marin Rough Ride in Herefordshire on Sunday. This is another step along the road to Alpine Biking preparation. The most important thing to consider is what surprise bike decoration we can take to adorn Lloyd’s prized Gary Fisher in July!

Finally, does anything think it would be a bad thing to spend a week of one’s summer holidays skiing in New Zealand? Does that defeat the object of a summer holiday or is it quite reasonable? Answers on a postcard…