My Five Most Recent Blog Entries

Syncros Endurance Team Manager Rob Lee has announced the date for his attempt at the X1 UK End2End offroad. The route, which travels the length of the country connecting the traditional UK end to end locations of Lands End and John o'Groats, covers some 1200 miles and follows the most obvious 'spine' of high ground running up through the country.

The X1 route is available for anyone to follow (from the CTC) and is the most commonly used End2End offroad route for Lands End to John o'Groats. The route can also be viewed HERE Most people tackle the challenge over the course of 23 days although some have covered it in as little as 17 days. Rob will be trying to complete the route within the window of 10 to 14 days although acknowledges that this may be pushing the limits of his riding ability to it's extreme. To put the attempt into context it is the equivalent of attempting to ride the Montane Kielder 100 repeatedly for ten straight days!

This ride will be the 7th, and final, ride in his Seven Deadly Spins project (7ds) that aims to promote ultra-endurance mountain biking in the UK. Other rides in the series include the West Highland Way Double, the Welsh Coast to Coast and riding all of the 7Stanes Red Routes in one hit.

The attempt will start on Wednesday September 1st 2010, to coincide with the release date of cycling film 'Find' which features the second ride in his Seven Deadly Spins series, and Rob hopes to complete his ride some time before the 14th of the same month. Find is the second film from Reset Films that focuses on UK riders and their exploits (the first being Home) and will be available from September 1st directly from www.resetfilms.co.uk It features riding by riders from all different backgrounds and disciplines and includes: Rob Lee, Rowan Sorrell, Clive Forth, Steve Peat, Hans Rey and Danny Macaskill.

The attempt will be covered by live tracker, regular Twitter updates and a daily blog which can be viewed here. As part of the challenge Rob hopes that he can use this opportunity to raise £1200 for children's charities.

On Monday, I sped my way around the country to do my work thing. Monday morning saw me in Grimsby. Monday night in North Wales, ready for a ferry to Ireland in the morning.

Obviously I took my bike, so had a spin around my old temporary stomping ground of Valley and the hills on the mainland. My chest behaved itself and I came back to the hotel all set for a nice meal and a good kip.

Tuesday came and a big trip across to the west coast of Ireland followed, whilst I also had another chance to ride the bike. The chest behaved nicely (that's 2 days in a row) although I had another problem. For some reason, the rear derailleur cable pinch bolt decided to shear off at the head, meaning I couldn't select any gears. Never mind, I just single speeded it and worked through the small and big front rings. It was "fun" when the hills got really steep, but I nearly survived and made it back after 2hrs for tea and medals. Actually, it was Guinness and seafood as I slipped back into work mode until about 2am; talking , teaching, planning.

Then I headed back South East, for a Ferry home. But in the meantime I spent the evening with Nick Hand as he rested from his mammoth ride around the Irish coast line. This is a 5 week trip where Nick stops, takes in the scenery, interviews people with special skills and publishes it on his site. The people he's met are really interesting, and the whole, appealing, project has provided me and many others with masses of inspiration. Selfishly, it's made me think differently about my next project. It's also shown me how it's possible to do a great and challenging ride whilst actually enjoying yourself with stimulating surroundings, people and their stories.

Nicks bike is a bit special as is the pannier system. I'm quite jealous...



I was also able to join him for a ride in between work stuff. Imagine the sinking feeling in my chest as we ride out into the rain, heading for a school?

But this was no ordinary school: it was the best cookery school in Ireland. I kid you not when I tell you that we were treated Royally. We had the full guided tour of the organic farm, dairy and cheese making room. The 2 acres of glass houses held delights in the form of vegetables, herbs and a cute little Jack Russell puppy. Rory even went and found some "Holy" or "Thai" Basil for me to try, as I had never been able to find it for my own clumsy forays into cooking.

We even got to pull tomatoes off of the plant and compare different types, back to back.

Marvellous.

We then spent a while touring the busy kitchens and talking with students on their 1 week intensive course. Without exception, they used words like "exceptional", "brilliant", "superb" and "fun" to describe the experiences that they were having there.

Next up was food time, and we were invited to sit and share the food that had been grown, picked, foraged, fished and cooked fom the farm or a mile offshore (a mile from the farm).

Heaven.

Absolute heaven.

I've already spoken to Jo, and I think we're going to book a place at Ballymaloe Cookery school soon!

I kid you not and we can't wait.

Last weekend was my best mates chance to shine: Matt Page and his Fiance, Nia, had spent the last few months burning the midnight oil in an attempt to organise the Single Speed Uk Champs. They were helped on this task by Andy (ex Trek Team 69er rider)who now works his magic at Hotlines. He, Andy, used to work with another close friend at MMA, who are one of my personal sponsors. It's a small world, isn't it?

So on Friday night a group of us, including Jo, pulled up at a farm near Llandovery and set about having one of the best weekends we've ever had. The group we were with was the old faithful bunch of lads and lasses from Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. This is a "crew" of Professionals from all walks of life (which includes some of the fastest riders in Britain) who's main aim is to mountain bike, enjoy it, and to support friends and their families through anything that they may need help on: Somebody moves house and half of the crew will help. Somebody decides that they have a cupboard full of beer that needs drinking? You got it; we are a sociable and supportive bunch.

These folks are very important to me, and I think it's fair to say that we all feel the same way about the group.

I'm going to cry! :)

So, we all got drunk on Friday night.

It was our job to wear the Morvello t-shirts designed for the marshalls at this event. You could tell that we were marshalls because they were a very distinctive bright green with the words "Responsible(ish) Adult" emblazoned on the back.

Huw and I went for a ride around the moorland for a couple of hours before he race and at one point we stopped because I was coughing so much I nearly barfed. Huw looked worried, but then we realised that we had done a 2hr route as done the previous day in the dry in 1.5hrs when it had rained all night. We got carried away, my throat played up a bit, and then we descended back to the arena to prepare for our responsible(ish) duties.

We got farmed out to our marshalling positions after arranging some bikes (hiding them) to make the start more exciting. Singlespeeders expect this (and beer) during a race. Nutters.

I did, however, find a bike that had gears that weren't disabled and took a little delight in the fact that when I had finished with it, the guy could be seen struggling to get it safely out a trackside tree as all of the others came by on their "Le Mans" start.

SSUK 2010 Start Line Carnage from Rob Khoo on Vimeo.

The racing started, and it was great to watch. Mark Spratt, Melanie Alexander (Spratt), Rich Lansdowne (Scamp), Pippa Lansdowne and lots of others that we knew raced like their lives depended on it, and got the results to show for it. Only 2 people climbed the "Climb", and only one of those managed it twice (Mark Spratt). Rich Lansdowne was the other. The above are all members of our local group.

Johnny Pugh (KCNC) pushed until he had a good lead and seemed to really flow on the downhill (which is great fun). Mel won the Womens race and Pip was 2nd.

Simon Smith, however, road past asking for more beer! (local group member- raise eyebrows and sigh)

Afterwards, we all got drunk again, and ate more of the good food in the "Drop Off Cafe Bus."

As I was getting slowly enebriated, with Huw, we watched as Jo, Mark, Pip, Scooby and Scamp (Rich) all played on the Tug O' War in a couple of teams. I honestly didn't think that I would enjoy this, but 10minutes into it and I was joining with all of the shouting and cheering coming from the throngs gathered around. It seemed that the whole campsite had come to watch.

How can a bit of rope do this to people?

The best fun we've had at an event for years, or ever, in fact.

Well done Matt and Nia. It was a real treat.

Ok, so the return to form didn't last.

What followed was a bit of a battle with the Health Service and their waiting times. I asked to be treated privately but was told there was no need. I was due to have functional tests for exercise induced asthma, but that would take a few weeks and in the meantime I had another chest X-Ray to rule out any lingering infection or other problems...
A chest X-Ray, yesterday
...My lungs had "stopped working" again the day after my PB at Cwmcarn. I was Ok walking around and working, but 10mins after I got on my bike I started to cough and wheeze. It didn't happen on the couple of occasions I mustered up the energy to go to an indoor spin class in hotels I was staying in.

Rich Holmes could see (as could everyone around me) that things were getting a little tiresome, so he did some asking about. Then his Girlfriend, Jan, did some asking about, too.

2 days later I had the results of a spirometry test, done at a local University, in my hands. It said that my lungs are still 23% bigger than the norm, and that they work fine: No asthma.

Phew.

I originally went to the doctor with my chest infection and a request to upgrade my hayfever meds since I didn't think they were working.

Back to the doctor: "You've got asthma."

"No I haven't," and I show the test results.

The chest X-Ray was clear, too.

"Well the only other thing it can be is acid reflux."

"Your notes should tell you that you've been treating me for that for the past 3 weeks, and it's made no difference."

"Oh yes, so we have. It must be hayfever."

Imagine my head bouncing off of the desk, 4 times in frustration. It's taken nearly 3 months post chest infection to get to this point: the same point I talked about with them 4 months earlier when I had the infection.

10hrs later, after taking my new medicine?

No cough.

The G.p's have all been great, but the notes systems let them down badly.

So 4 months wasted; fitness lost and weight gained.

But it seems like my new "prescription only" hayfever meds are working a treat, although I'm loathed to get too excited for now. Time will tell.

Wish me luck.

Last Friday was the Premiere of Reset Films' "Find." It's a gently tempoed celebration of all forms of cycling and includes our Rob Lee, Danny MacAskill,Peaty, Hans Rey and local Hero Rowan Sorrell.

It's really funny in places and the audience seemed to enjoy it. I did.

It was slightly ruined by the fact that Rob and I did the film intro, along with a little presentation on the 7DS. I felt a bit of a fraud: I'm not in this film (but am in the extra scenes, being grumpy) and we were stood there "lecturing" to most of the other guys on the film- and the audience. When you see these guys ride and realise that Rob and I are XC queens you'll see why I felt this way.

But we were very well received, or tolerated, so that's ok.

Buy the film, it's great.

Alongside all this other activity, someone else has done The WC2C! It was a group from VC Melyn in North Wales and they did it over a few days. Initial reports from Justin say that it was fun and that they really enjoyed doing the route as it was actually intended.

To add to the excitement, two friends (Rich Holmes, and Huw Thomas) did Twentyfour12 with some great success. Read about it on their blogs. They have now become officianados of "The Christmas Pudding Chamois" preloading trick, which reduces friction to such an extent that you don't need to change shorts at all during a dry race. It also helps reduce ingress of mud and stones through the chamois. Rich Managed 20hrs in mud, in one pair of shorts!!

Huw being the clever type, realised that adding a coating of anti-monkey butt powder on top stops the clammy feeling you can get in hot weather with the preloaded chamois. Everyone says it works! We have the happiest bottoms on the scene!

I could give up cycling now, happy in the fact that someone has done the route and enjoyed it and the "Christmas pudding chamois" works. But I'm not going to do that, I've got "The Hobbit's Tale" to prepare for if coughing and chest allow!

The new website design is up and running. The Blog is a little behind, but it will soon be back. It pays a certain level of homage to the pseudo superhero that is "Indiana Jones" and Lucas Films. It's also a fairly well concealed (ahem!) micky take of the dynamism I try and portray of myself by writing in a self promoting stylee. It's all show as I'm just like everyone else. I sometimes lack confidence, I get scared; but diffidence in others confuses me; procrastination sends me into orbit. You know what I mean.

Last time I wrote, I mentioned that I was taking 2 weeks off of training. Nothing, nada, nought, nil, zero...

..Except when I was bored in a hotel and felt the need to do a couple of little sessions on the cross trainer. I just couldn't stop totally, but it became apparent that I was ill as I couldn't even keep up with Jo on the bike: She was going at an easy pace and I was breathing out of my ears!! Time to have a talk with oneself.

In the meantime I did my interview at Bike Radar Live, with John Stevenson of Future Publishing. He's the big boss. The audience was small but it was well worth it as the hit rate on the site has gone up considerably since then. John was also the consumate professional, thanks.

Then, on Monday, I started light training again under Chris Eatough's guidance as usual. On my first ride I struggled to get my legs going, Jo was still waiting for me a bit as I was also suffering with a bit of bronchospasm and was coughing and phlegming again. I started to feel a little worried. But as the days progressed and I completed my 4th training ride of the week and was starting to have less and less coughing and feeling more human.

Saturday came and it was time for a quick 2.5hr ride at just under XC race pace (85% of max effort). So I rode with Jo down to Cwmcarn and was surprised to see that she was struggling to keep up. (Jo is riding really well at the moment, too.) It was then time for a couple of 85% efforts around the track with 10min at endurance pace for a "rest".

I'm amazed. I took nearly 4 mins off of my PB (which was a lungs on the bars type of ride) and I had a relatively easy few minutes as a rest. But I'll be the first to admit that I probably didn't do the resting phase properly, but hey?

It's time to work. Maybe I can make my PB a competitive one by the end of the year? Jo also beat her PB by about a minute, so tea and medals all round?