Rob Lee

OK, where to begin? I'll start by saying Don't try this at home! I'm not a doctor, a dietitian, nutritionalist, or in any way qualified to give you advice on how to eat for health, sport, or otherwise. These are purely my own experiments, to see how my body reacts, provided here as something people may be interested in reading about. My personal interest in the subject comes from years dedicated to racing a bike and the need for a high power-to-weight ratio in the hope of moving my mass faster than my opponents on the race track..

"I'll start by saying Don't try this at home!"

Phew! That's that out of the way, now I can get onto the why, how, where, when and anything else I think I can add to the mix. Like I was saying: power-to-weight = a deciding factor in the outcome of bike racing, and in particular my main passion - offroad bike racing, and more recently running - where speeds are lower, drafting less of a factor, and rolling resistance at a premium. The heavier I am the more my tyres are gonna drag through that mud we seem to get at the majority of UK enduro events (and on the main, due to our weather, most of my long-distance challenges) I know the limitations of manipulating the amount of power I can generate -ie: just how much more training I have to do to see incremental gains - so for a guy like myself - one who likes a lot of food, likes a drink, get's overweight quite easily, and considers himself fairly lazy compared to opposition - manipulating my weight seems like, and has proven over the last 19 years or so, to be the quick-fix to getting some good results.

Some of you may remember the images above - from last year when I reached an all-time sports high weight of almost 84kg, and then dropped back down to 76kg over the course of a month. This is fairly typical of me, and my racing life, although rarely to this extreme. Well this time around, at the start of April, I stood on the scales and weighed-in at 79.4kg. I then upped my riding massively by riding 1000 miles, I did little to my diet, and by the end of April I stood on the scale again and weighed in at...

...79.3kg!

Er?... what's that you say? "pretty much no change for a massive increase in effort and energy output?" Yup, that's right folks: No Change. I even went so far as to take some measurements before and after and although there were the smallest changes nothing stood out. This pretty much backs up everything I've experienced throughout my racing career. The only times I can say that an increase in volume has lead to a decrease in weight are the following:

1: When I first started endurance sport

2: when I massively overtrained

3: when I manuipulated my diet at the same time as increased volume

Given what I know about my own body, how it reacts to exercise and food, and all the things I have read and processed I have come up with a "strategy" that works for me if I want to reach race weight in a hurry which, I'll admit, is just about every time! I'm sure there are folk out there who will say "it's just like this or that diet" and it probably is seeing as I've read and tried most of them at one time or another. The difference here is that I'm not looking for a long-term change to habbits, or a diet for life, as basically I don't believe in the concept. My thought is that there is a reason my body can store fat and that is that it was supposed to, and evolved around, humans losing and gaining weight every year, based on the seasons and the food sources that were originally available to it.

"I believe evolution is smarter than I am, and that if my weight wasn't supposed to go up and down then there would be no reason for it to have the capacity to store fat in the first place"

So my desire for diet is purely to make me light enough to race fast enough to be in with a shout. Race done = stand on podium = diet done = give me that cake coz I'm gonna eat it! Anyway, enough background and onto the nuts and bolts, what do I do when I want to get lightweight and race-fast?

The first thing I do is cut out anything "fast". The reason sports nutrition products work so well for sport is because the body can process them very fast. They are, on the most part, fuel of which we have primarily two sources: Carbohydrates, which the body burns easily but can only store a limited amount, and fat, which it burns less easily but can store much greater quantities of. So I save the race fuel for race race day and very kindly ask my body to reach for it's stores of fat instead.

"Fast" foods are not only limited to pre-designed and packaged race fuel in handy sachets. From my experience they also include anything that wasn't originally on the menu - ie: processed grains and such products - and anything that was on the menu seasonally that the body adapted to eating lots of, in season, in order to put on bodyfat to get it through the Winter months and lean periods. So I'm off all the stuff like cakes, bread, rice... and anything natural that is full of sugar and encourages my body to put on fat - mostly fruit. Which means most of my meals look something like this:

"Fast" also includes any calories that come in the form of fluid. So I'm off the drink in every sense of the phrase except the obvious - water - and those are the very simple basics I like to employ as my foundation for getting to race weight in a fairly shart space of time. As a usual rule-of-thumb I don't count calories - either in or out - I don't regulate the size of my meals, and I don't regulate the number of meals I'm allowed. I just slow the whole thing down. On average I drop 1/2 to 1kg per week, and on on average this is on less than 6 hours of "training" or exercise each week.

However...

...I'm as impatient as the next man when it comes to just about anything so there are a few tricks I like to trial and play around with that can, and usually do, speed up the process. So, in my next blog I will write about some of these things, how they have affected my weight-loss this time around, and the means I use for tracking my progress... 

 

 

 

April turned out to be rather wet, something about the most rainful in the UK during April in the last 100 years? Summat like that at least. I got wet, a lot, most of my rides it seemed, which was a bit of a bind as I'd talked a bunch of people into a group commitment to try and ride 1000 miles each that month. Oh dear! Anyway, quite a few folk took me up on the offer and most of them sprinted ahead of me whilat I got distracted by various talks, running and general work and life commitments. Then the rain got heavier, as it always does, and I thought about throwing in the towel.

Then I thought about all the other folk who were putting in the miles and decided failure wasn't an option. Problem was there was only 10 days left to go and over 400 miles yet to cover. I decided to knuckle-down and commited myself to living in damp/wet cycling kit far as many hours as possible each day. In the end I made it with about 24 hours to spare! All-round it was a great effort, with quite a few folk who have never done that sort of milage doing the lot, and quite a few more having a damn fine crack and covering more than they've ever done. From some of the blogs I've read, and some of the messages, it seems quite a few folk had a good time despite the weather aswell.

Onto the prizes...

When I announced the challenge and invited people to join in I also offered some prizes. So without futher delay the winners of each are:

1) The random draw from everyone who registered for the challenge: Rebecca Sutton

2) The random draw from everyone who completes the challenge: Graeme Warren

3) My favourite story someone writes about their experience, or one of their rides, during the challenge:

Goes to Sean Brassil for pretty much all of his blog posts which I found very inspirational, and in particular his short movie about his first 70 miles on the challenge.

4) My favourite photograph that someone posts from one of their rides during the challenge:

Goes to Naff Judge for his image of two shoes stuffed with newspaper! Not the most inspiring image but the image that most captured the way I was feeling with a few days left to go!

 

So that is that: 1000 miles done and dusted... all I need to do now is work out what each of them has won...

You'd be forgiven for not knowing what the picture below is all about. Futhermore, even if you had identified the half-moon stain from an energy drinks bottle, you'd be hard pressed to come up with any significance other than the fact that someone had stood a sports bottle there at some time recently. It's the only real-world trace, other than the dull ache I find in all the joints of my body, of my latest experiment in endurance. Venture into the virtual world and more evidence can be found as to who made the mark and when it may have occured. 

But what is this? I hear you cry, and why is a man so addicted to the forces of two wheels suddenly venturing out on foot? A simple answer really - to prove, or not, my theory that much of endurance is a case of attitude and strength of mind. I know I can ride a bike a long distance, fast, and I've shown as much over almost two decades. It's easy for me to say that much of endurance is much less than riding a bike for hours-on-end in training; after all I have hours-on-end on my bike in these legs! But running, now that's a whole different dynamic ask on the body. 

So yesterday, with just 2 runs under my belt since February (a short 3 mile flat run from the house, and the other an Endurancelife coastal half marathon as pictured above) I entered a competition on Strava called the Strive for the Summit run Challenge: the ultimate goal of which is to accumulate 10,000 feet in elevation across the month of May. I did my first run at 10am and got things off to a reasonable start - something I thought I could keep to over the course of a month and finish the challenge by the end-of-May deadline. I thought this was reasonable considering I rode my bike for 29 hours last week and was feeling a bit jaded. We then went to the beach for lunch and I put the thoughts of running to the back of my mind.

It was a lovely day to be out by the coast and I'd taken my gps with me just as an experiment really - to see what sort of distance and elevation we cover on a typical walk - and the data got me thinking about endurance and the age-old question of time-against-speed. Time and speed are dirrectly related and endurance as an athlete is measured in just such things. The speed at which I could complete the run challenge was dirrectly related to the time I let myself do it for. I've questioned this many times relating to my own challenges - The Seven Deadly Spins - the main question being: at what speed, or time elapsed, does completion of one of these challenges no longer justify the tag "completed". Or to put it another way: if you go slow enough then does it still count as a challenge? I guess it depends who you are going to compare yourself to and what you are going to call yourself.

I call myself an endurance athlete. OK, so I'm not an endurance runner, although I do run occationally, but as an endurance athlete is gaining 10,000 feet over the course of 31 days really something I can really hold my hand up and say was a genuine challenge when a pleasure walk with my wife, on the coast, nets me 825 feet in one hit? So as the sun started to set decided to head for my local hill and see what I could actually put myself through and call it a challenge. 

Today I'm tired and a little bit stiff because yesterday I covered 29 miles on foot and completed the challenge of gaining over 10,000 feet in elevation. I was the first person to complete the challlenge. I did it on next-to-zero run specific training and on fatigued, tired cycling legs. I'm carrying 4kg more than I raced with at my best. I carried this off with the power of my mind, because I believe that endurance comes from belief, to embrace the task and by "enduring" (the clue is in the word: endurance) the task that I'd decided to undertake; I didn't need to run a 15 mile training run to prepare me to run 29 miles any more than an athlete needs an 8 or 12 hour ride to prepare them to ride a 24 hour. Base fitness is essential to health, advantageous to sport, skill goes a mighty long way to magnify that, but everything else, the essential essence critical to success? well that is the attitude you carry within.

If anyone is in the Heddon Valley area tomorrow and fancies listening to me do a short talk about my racing and projects then pop along to the Endurancelife Live More Lecture. I will be one of three people talking about their passion and the evening starts at 6pm. After my talk I will be showing my section from the film "Find" which Mark at Reset Films has kindly given me permission to show. There are still a few tickets left and details can be found HERE

It was never going to be easy was it? Riding a 1000 miles in a month isn't something I ever really did consistently even when training and racing were my biggest motivation in life. I guess that's part of the appeal of the challenge really: it is a challenge to do this many miles around the busy and enjoyable life I like to lead. Just knowing that other folk have joined me on this quest has been a great motivation to get out the door more often than I know I would have done otherwise. It's also made me think a lot better about making time where I've got into the habit of wasting it. So how did my first week go?

Well leading into it March kinda tricked me into a false sense of security, what with the good weather and all. The California Trip helped me bank a load of miles and then I spent the rest of the month recovering from that, trying to heal my ankle and then doing a few hilly rides to keep me focused before the start of April. The first two days followed in the same vein and I figured I'd get ahead by logging twice the required daily miles. First two days and I'm 60 odd miles up: great start.

Then it got cold again in the morning and, although I did get out of bed and get ready, there was ice on the car so I went back to bed. Riding in the ice was something I promised myself I'd never do again once I stopped racing all year round. I race maybe a dozen times a year and I pick when I'm going to try and win, so I don't see the point in risking six weeks in plaster for fitness I'm not going to use!

Then we had a dirt demo for the staff at work: the guys from ATB came over and brought the Whyte demo fleet so we could all go for a bash after work. It was all going sweet until one of the guys took a heavy fall in a gully out in the Somerset hills at about 10pm. When he didn't get up I knew we had a problem as he's a pretty tough cookie and I'd have expected him to shake off most things. In the end it was a stretcher job and a long night for most of us involved. Turns out he had a broken collar bone and no less than 8 broken ribs. At 2:30 on Thursday morning I was still at the hospital with him and the doctors said they were keeping him in. Jen and I visited him yesterday and they were just moving him out of the ICU and onto a regular ward, although he's still on morphine and an oxygen pipe until his lungs start working again. Tough times and a timely reminder of just how fragile we can be when it goes wrong. 

The sleep depro then had me on a back foot and that, combined with things hotting up at work and a couple of athletes I'm helping having a couple of important races coming up, I dropped my focus for a couple of days. The days seemed to be slipping away and the miles were not being ridden...

Lucky for me my friend, and work mate, Oliver has decided to join me on the 1000 miles and so between us we managed to cajole each other out the door on an after-work-catch-up ride to end the week much less behind than it had started to look. Almost on target even. It was a good ride and we went down to the coast, over a few tough local climbs, and then rode back in the dark.

So that was week 1 and I ended up less than 10 miles behind schedule. Not sure how I managed it but it showed what is possible if you focus on something just enough. Both the riders I've been supported had great races, with top results, so that was great news to cap the week. Week 2 looks to be just as busy, but for different reasons, as I'm doing my first running event since folding my ankle in the Stinger back in February, and also have to prepare my talk and presentation for the Endurancelife Live More Lecture that I'm one of the speakers at on Saturday evening. Hopefully I can pull it out of the bag a second week running...

Those of you who have been follwing my blog for a while may remember a project I announced back in March last year called Season19. Some of you may even be wondering what has happened to it and have I got anywhere with it over the course of a year. Well the basic answer is yes it's still in the pipeline but no I've not got very far with it at all. That's not to say that I've not done a lot of work and research on it, because I have, but as sometimes happens this project is not working out anything like how I'd imagined.

My inspiration for the project remains the same - the memory of Terry Thomas who inspired me to get back on my bike and find myself again - but the plan I had just no longer works in a country so changed by the automobile. As you will see from my previous blogs the idea I had was to replicate some of my local club's point-to-point time trials from the 50's and 60's. I figured that the routes would still remain albiet slightly busier and with a lot more road furniture to negotiate. As I've researched each route it's become apparent, to me at least, why many of these old school time trials have long been abandoned to the history books: they are so heavy, with such fast moving traffic, that they are way too dangerous to be running an organised cycle event on. As an individual I have no desire to spend prolonged periods of time on such routes, and as an ambassador for my sport I feel it would be unwise to promote such an idea to others. 

But the desire to do something in the memory of Terry still remains; what to do? Well Terry gave me a lot of inspiration, he brought together several guys in a bike shop to adopt an idea that got them out on bikes. I'd like to propose something similar to anyone interested in doing something collectively and supporting each other along the way. A bike community project if you like. Next month - April 2012 - I'm going to ride 1000 miles in the memory of Terry Thomas, and I'd like you to join me in a collective goal by riding 1000 miles on your bike too!

The rules are pretty simple - make a note, there are prizes at stake here! - so in no particular order here they are:

1) Tweet me @RobLee7ds include the hash tag #1000miles and tell me you are joining the challenge. I will add you to my Twitter list for 1000mile riders

2) Join Morvelo CC (it's free) and join my 1000mile Challenge.

3) try to ride 1000 miles in April - any bike, any terrain, alone, in a group, whatever...

4) Tweet your total miles each time you ride - include @RobLee7ds and #1000miles so that myself and other challenge members can find you - and tell us all how you are getting on. Going great? Tell us, Needing help? again tell the world, Needing help... you get the picture

5) help and encourage both myself and the other members of the challenge.

6) If you blog about the challenge, have a story to tell, or post a photo from one of your rides: If you tweet them and include the appropriate #tag and my twitter name then I will include them in the judging for prizes: see below

Prizes

Everyone loves prizes don't they? I know I do and to encourage those who like the chance of a prize of two I will award 4 prizes, nothing expensive or super fancy, just something to make the winners feel good about it:

1) The first will be won from a random draw from everyone who registers for the challenge on Twitter and Morvelo CC.

2) The second will also be won from a random draw but this time from everyone who completes the challenge

3) The third will be awarded to my favourite story someone writes about their experience, or one of their rides, during the challenge.

4) The forth will be awarded to my favourite photograph that someone posts from one of their rides during the challenge.

I hope that this is something that captures a few imaginations, inspires a few of you to ride more than you usually do, or ever have before, and also encourages some of the stronger and faster guys out there to get involved and support those riders who look to you for inspiration. I know that everyone who joins, and every tale I hear about your experiences will motivate me everyday to get out there myself and put the miles in. I can't wait for April to start...

If the first half of the California trip 2012 had been all about dancing on the pedals (or just holding on) over an endless succession of smooth tarmac climbs, then the second half was all about driving along on the flat and keep your eye on the horizon. The route mellowed out significantly which for me always feels like it gets a bit harder. Climbing and descending are very interesting in my world, all the routes I put together contain as many hills as possible. It's not to say I'm suited to them - I'm no featherweight climber - it's just to say that I find them less mentally challenging than riding long stretches in the same position on the flat.

As we rolled out on day 4 it seemed like Steve was feeling the same love for riding on the flat, or maybe he was just tired from the solid pace he'd been putting out over the past few days. Either way he was slipping off the back from the moment we left St. Luis Obispo. Chris, in contrast, was now in comfortable territory and determined to show just how many watts he can churn out on flat fast roads. The group fractured almost immediately as both myself and Simon dropped back to help Steve. I seemed to do this a lot on this trip - drop back for others - I think I do it because I don't like to leave folk behind. It's a strange feeling really coming from a racing background as I do. I spent the first 15 years of my riding trying to get fast and doing anything I could to drop everyone I could. Then I spent the next 4 years being able to drop a lot of riders but feeling like it'd be rude to do so!

So the group fractured and carried on like that for maybe 20 miles or so. It seemed a bit daft to me seeing as it was flat and 6 riders sharing the load could have gone faster than 2 groups of 3 riders. Being the main instigator of pushing the pace in the climbs though it would have been a bit wrong for me to tell the guys who love the flat not to stretch their legs off the front. As it happened the group all came back together and Chris got us working some through-and-off routines and suddenly the group gelled. It was a great feeling: we had a strong tailwind, group was flowing, the pace was fast and smooth and it felt almost effortless. The rest of the day just whizzed by in and indulgent blur and suddenly we were in Santa Barbara as the mist started rolling in off the sea and the sun decided to set. I showered, ate a small snack and then sat on the beach alone contemplating our good fortune. 114 miles (412 total)

The next stage was to ride to L.A and I'll make no bones about it I'm really not an L.A fan when it comes to cycling. Too much traffic, too much noise, too much pollution. There was much talk about navigational problems of previous years and this just added to my feeling of not wanting to ride there. Just goes to show just how wrong I can be and how it's best to just roll with it and see what happens. I had a wonderful day on the bike and there were no problems with navigation, we rode alongside endless beautiful beaches and we had a tail wind all damn day. There were some big ole grins on my riding companions faces all day long and when we got to Hermosa Beach we found a lovely hotel and went for a beer on the seafront. I wondered if I'd ever been so wrong about the potential of a day on the bike; I realised I hadn't. 102 miles (514 total)

By time we started the last day the whole trip had started to feel like a dream. It just couldn't get any better could it? We rolled out, early doors, sun already out and shining on our backs, sea to the right, hills to the left and that awesome full-on tailwind pushing us ever south. The pedals rolled over as if the bike had no chain, we stopped for coffee and later for lunch, we were covering so much distance we just knew we wouldn't be late. The miles became so easy and the end started to loom in the distance. Massive birds started drifting by on the breeze and I looked out to sea and saw surfers on every wave. It was just like a dream and I wanted it to go on forever but, like all good things, it eventually came to an end: Sat on the seafront, under the rollercoaster, watching the sun as it set on another glorious day.

The cycling was done and our trip was over, it was time for a beer. 119 miles (633 Final Total)

I've been back home for a week now, the jet lag has subsided but the tan still remains, so what better time to recap the adventure and cover it in some more detail. It was a simple plan, and one that our intrepid leader - Chris Boon, one of the owners of TriUK where I work - has exercised every year for the past decade! 1) Fly into San Francisco, 2) cycle some 600 miles to San Diego over 6 or 7 days, 3) fly back home to the UK. No guides, no gps, no pre-booked hotels, no support, just 6 guys on bikes, one map, travelling light, hugging the coast and heading south...

The adventure started at 4am with a drive to Paul's house to meet the other guys, a quick load of bike boxes into the TriUK van and bodies loaded into van and Simon's car. A relaxed journey from the west country to Heathrow turned into a mad dash through the fog after a massive detour due to the A303 being closed but we made it to the airport in plenty of time...

...or so we thought! On attempting to check-in with Virgin airways it became apparent that Tony's ESTA, for entry into the USA, had expired just one day before we were due to leave! More frantic times trying to get a new one, with various airport internet cafe trips and calls to immigration services and eventually we were all booked-in, bikes wheeled away (fingers crossed on seeing them state-side) and heading for our plane. The flight was a good 10 hours or so and most of the boys tried to sleep in that time. I just saw it as staying awake practice for some of my rides later this season and so watched 5 different films on the multimedia player!

Hey-ho, I'm suddenly in San Fran airport and all the bikes and kit have made it too: happy days. Been awake for 20+ hours cramped up in a van, and then a plane, so building our bikes in the airport, getting changed, and then riding through San Fran is a surreal experience. Great way to blow out the travel cobwebs though and something I will repeat again next time I do a long-haul journey. The journey into San Fran is short - some 15 miles or so - fairly uneventful, and before I knew it we were checked into a hotel in the middle of the city and off to bed.

So was that day 1 or day 2? I'm not sure really but anyhow the next day was the first where riding was the only real order of the day. That and eating enough and trying to keep an eye on the road whilst taking in the fantastic views. This was my first ever trip to San Francisco so the boys made a bit of a detour at the beginning so that I could see the trams, some of the famous street, the view to Alcatraz, the Golden Gate bridge and across to Marin county. It was great way to start a long ride and the first real day of such an adventure. By time we hit the scenic coastal highway I was already buzzing.

Riding felt great and not having to think about any commitments for over a week was fantastic. My legs felt really good and I probably pushed the pace a bit too hard in the early hours. We went a bit off track but everyone seemed fairly cool about it. We were heading south and we picked up an amazing cycle track through country parks along the San Adreas faultline. Steve had our first puncture of the trip but other than that it was just riding. The last 30 miles or so, to Santa Cruz, were all coastal and I started to pick up a bit of a tan from the off. It was a great start. 92 miles (117 total)

Day 2 started fairly steady but being a Saturday there were quite a few cyclists about and after the first 20 miles or so we were caught and passed by the local Saturday morning chaingang heading out of Santa Cruz. I say chaingang but it would be more accurate to describe it as an unorganised road race! There wasn't much road-craft being dispayed that I could see and it seemed to consist of 50-odd guys trying to rip each others legs off. We got shouted at to get out of the way as they passed so Paul and myself hopped on the back to see how fast they were really going! 10 miles later and we were still in there, complete with bar bags and ruck sacks, although quite a few newbies who I'd seen being tutored by one of the stronger riders at the back had been shelled out at various points along the road. I decided I'd not travelled to the other side of the planet to road race and told Paul I was going to wait for the rest of our crew.

The boys caught up only a few minutes later, along with various stragglers from the chaingang, and we continued on our journey. A few miles later our route split from theirs and Paul was wiating. We continued together for most of the day until we hit the last 26 mile stretch to Big Sur which is traditionally a bit of bun fight on this trip and Chris said go for it and meet at the end of the stage. Paul and Steve heading down the road at a rapid pace but I opted for a steadier approach and a couple of miles to build myself into the faster speeds. I suppose it took me about 5 or 6 miles to real them back in and then I took a bit of a breather for a couple of miles as Paul was clearly in better shape than I was. As the road started to ramp up repeatedly in the last few miles Paul lifted the pace and I was able to go with him but Steve had to let us go. Heading into the National park and we were both doing some really strong pulls on the front. I felt really good and it was the first time in quite a long time that I worked hard like that at the end of a long ride. It was a great suprise to be riding that well. 76 miles (193 total)

Before the start of the next day I was promised a 7 mile mountain climb to start the day with. So when the boys all started to head off before Steve was even ready I thought that I'd be fine to wait behind with him while he packed and then catch up on the climb. A 20 minute headstart was pretty generous when I knew the pace needed to catch-up would mean Steve probably wouldn't be able to help me much but I figured 7 miles is a pretty long way to ride uphill at the start of a day that promised 55 miles of hills at the start and a total distance of 130-ish miles. A mile and a half after starting the day, and as the road flattened and then clearly headed down again for a long stretch, it looked like I'd been duped and was looking at a very long day doing most of the work whilst playing catch-up.

It was really good for me and as each hill approached, each rise and descent, I started to find my legs of old more and more. Steve held on for an hour before asking me "are you going quite hard? because I can't keep this up"! I realised that I was, infact I was locked into my full-on enduro mode from years back and just bashing it out. Absolutely fantastic feeling to be riding like that on so little quality training that had me promising myself to make more time for riding upon my return. I eventually caught all but the fastest two guys of our group - Simon and Paul - before grabbing the sunscreen from Tony and stopping to apply some after a couple of solid couple of hours stamping the pedals.

So I'm sat down by the side of the road putting on sunscreen, looking out to sea, marvelling at the way my body feels, and I suddenly think: Maybe you should slow down Rob, you know? have a look at the scenery, take some photos? What do you think?...

...the next hour was much more sedate but still an absolutely fantastic riding experience. It brought it home just how much any of us miss out on if we deny ourselves something from cycling by subscribing to a "my type of cycling is the best and only one worth doing" mentality that I hear so often from riders of all types and disciplines. Riding is fantastic because it is riding, the more I do, the more alternative cycling experiences I experience the more I enjoy cycling. That's all the there is too it.

It was a double cash-back day already and then we stopped in the most beautiful location, ate gorgeous food, drank good fresh coffee, and looked out to sea. It wasn't even midday yet! That afternoon the terrain got a lot flatter and we started trying to learn how to ride together as a group. I've never ridden with Simon or Tony and rarely with Steve so there was plenty to learn about each individual, their strengths, their riding style, and so it added a third dynamic to the riding that day. Of the whole trip I'd rate this as my favourite day, the first 55 miles as one of my all-time top 10 road rides anywhere in the world, and the burger I ate for lunch at Ragged Point as the most delicious I've tasted anywhere ever! 105 miles (298 total)

Tomorrow was set to be another big day...

There is something quite special about riding from one place to another. For us this has meant riding in another country and all the cultural differences that brings. And for me it has meant seeing a load of places I've never been to before. I have a few new places in the world that given the chance I would love to return to.

Doing the journey by bike can make the whole experience feel more intimate. We smell the plants, catch or fight the wind, and get to experience the true gradient of each an every hill. The travel takes longer, we see more for less distance, it feels like quality over quantity. There are times when it seems too hard and others so ridiculously easy it's hard to explain; we learn things about our bodies.

We rode from San Francisco to Dan Diego. At times it felt like an eternity but then suddenly it was over and all the miles lay behind. Sat on a beach resting, wondering what to do next. Friday now and by Sunday I'll be back in work. I can't wait to hold Jen in my arms and sleep in my own bed, but part of me, just a small part deep down, would love dearly to just keep turning them pedals. Hold on to the memory...

We wake at seven, breakfast, pack, bottles, leave at eight. Ride until lunch: group decision, then ride until we reach our destination. Shower, food, bed. Rinse and repeat.

I don't know the day, I have to count back to the start to work out where we are. What have I seen? Where have I been? How many miles have we covered so far? I don't count down the days any more than I dare. Don't wish life away. I don't think too much; pedal, eat, drink.

I remember when my life was only this, I remember why I won the races I did. It's good to be reminded, it's a nice place to visit, but I have to be going, so I don't think I'll stay!