where have I gone? I want to see my old posts and apparently this is one way i can access them

Fitter?

I´m six days into training now and have been monitoring my progress. I´m using a Garmin Forerunner 735XT to record everything. It has a heart rate monitor built into the strap as well as GPS tracking, its quite a good bit of kit but it is expensive what what it is and some features are missing for the price. I paid GBP325 at a duty free shop in Gatwick. I do wonder if an iWatch 2 might have been a better choice. I might do a review of it later but for now it seems to be doing a good job of capturing and  measuring my performance.

Obviously six days isn't enough time for me to get substantially fitter nor is there enough data to be used as a comparison but it gives an idea of the effort I'm putting in. This is a list of the last nine rides I have done. 102kms in six days isn't much for roadies, they can do this in one ride. I think its a start though, and unlikely to get much more than this for now.

I havn´t got a detailed training plan at the moment and I´m not sure if I am going to need one. It´s almost impossible to train to ride 8 hours a day, 7 days a week for 6 months unless you actually do it. It is also one thing riding this much for yourself and its another when you are doing it as a job and for clients that are in a group. I don't have the motivation to ride this much on my own but once I have people relying on me its another story. 

So what I am doing is getting as bike fit as I can. With a mixture of hi-intensity spin classes, fun rides and recovery rides. My aim is to ride everyday and up the time and intensity as I get fitter. I´m also doing some strength training and this week have been to one HIIT and one weights class as well as one light gym session.

I´m not going to go into detail of every ride on this list. What I will do in a few weeks is compare the same trails with each other and maybe take some photos and do a review of them. What I can do  right now though is compare the indoor spin classes I did today with one I did 11 days ago. Todays is below.

You can see from this graph that it was a hi intensity ride.  My theoretical maximum heart rate should be 172 (if you know how this is calculated you will know how old I am) but you can see here my max HR on this ride was 183. My average HR was 147 bpm. 

This graph show the breakdown of my HR zones. So although it was a high intensity ride 50% of my time was in zone 4. The Training effect score is also interesting in that its a 4, this means that "this activity was very demanding" The app also states that I exercised for an hour and burnt 921 calories.

Now lets compare this with the spin class I did on the 7th March. Also took an hour and I burnt 931 calories.



We can see that eleven days previously my average (147 vs. 141) and maximum (183 vs 182) heart rate were lower yet the training effect score was higher, so in theory I was working harder.

On this graph I can see that although I spent about the same amount of time in zone 4 only 8% of my time was spent in in zone 5 as opposed to 19% on todays ride.

The spin bikes in the studio have power meters so I know what power I am generating while in the class and this would be another way of measuring progress. I know I am generating more power on this ride than I was previously but unfortunatley I can´t show it here.

Either way, as I seem to be able to spend longer in zone 5 : 19% vs 8% and the overall effort is lower 4.0 vs 4.2 the this means I am getting fitter right? 

I´m only doing spin once a week, anyone who says spin is cheating obviously has never done it. I would be very difficult to find a trail or a road where I could ride for an hour at such intensity. It is such high intensity that I need time to recover. I have a yoga class booked in the evening and tomorrow´s ride will be a recovery ride, probably along the beach front. I will post some photo´s. Yeah it sucks being me.

New Bike

When I started my last guiding job, back in the day. I was so determined to be hardcore that I only rode a hardtail. I was so dedicated that four months later, having broken a Whyte 19 I bought another hardtail, MBR magazine had stated that the Titanium version of the On-One was like riding a 6-inch full suspension bike. I bought the steel version of the same frame. It is written that steel, although heavier has a less harsh ride than Ti It was also about a 1000 pounds cheaper. I was sold!

I had met the MBR staff in Whistler a few years before. Even though they took the piss out of me (in print) for saying that the B-Line trail should be tackled before the A-Line, I held them in high regard. Now I see these magazines for what they are, glossy product catalogues. Although it can help, you also can´t learn to mountain bike by reading an article. Trail maps can be useful but I never read the magazines anymore as I just see them as shameless brochures. 

I´m not saying that the On-One was a bad bike, it wasn't and in fact it is still being ridden in anger by a hard charging friend. However, plush is not a word that can ever be applied to a hardtail and even less so to this bike.  The frame was so rigid  that when I rode it fast my eyes would be so shaken that I could no longer actually see. 

Eventually, after being the slowest guide in the world and having had several fully suspended guests complain that I was too slow I took the plunge and bought a Giant Reign. The difference was night and day. Although it could be argued that the hardtail honed my skills with full suspension I rode faster, more aggressively and obtained a level of elegance that I had never really achieved before. 

Fast forward six years and I still have the Reign, both shocks no longer hold air and the only original parts are the frame, front wheel, handlebar, stem and headset. It is still a great bike but definitely not up to a a season of riding in proper mountains.

So today I got my hands on this baby......

Training

I´ve been training. No really! 

I have to. It is now an integral part of my job.

The last time I did this job I also trained. I trained by walking in the Himalayas for a month, mostly eating pizza because I almost died from a dodgy curry. In that time I did one mountain bike ride, contracted dysentry and almost died. Did I mention I almost died? But thats another story.

After Nepal I had a few weeks in Barcelona before starting work, but this mostly involved Spanish language classes, drinking and being hit on by a guy who fashioned himself after Neil Gaiman´s Dream. At the time I was trying to pull an 18 year old South African girl. I´m not sure where the mix up was. Beer may have been a factor.

In a nutshell, I wasn't very fit. And it made the first few months of the guiding job an absolute misery. 

This time i´m going to be fit. Well, fitter.

It is difficult to understand the fitness required to be a guide unless you you have done it. If you normally ride once a week for two hours and then decide to ride twice a week you have basically doubled your riding time. This will definitely lead to an increase in your fitness.  If you triple this to six times a week you have to then start thinking about recovery time. You want your body to get stronger so that means pushing it, let it recover. Push it a bit more, recover, repeat. If you don´t recover then your muscles don´t rebuild. Without recovery your body is constantly catching up. If you don't recover you will actually become weaker.

And this is what happened to me when I started guiding. 

One of the things I wish I had done is keep a track of my weight, and measured how my effort changed over time. I was riding the same trails so a historical heart rate reading would have been able to do that. I remember making the first test ride as a guide and finding it incredibly difficult, there was a climb that I thought would never end and downhills that were barely within my skill level. Of course a year and a half later the perception was different but having a higher level of fitness in the early days would have made the job much more enjoyable.

So I am training......

Long Time No See

Wow, it has been a very very long time since I posted to this blog. 2760 days or 7 years, 6 months and 19 days.

Where to start when such a period of time has passed? I´m re-starting this blog principally because I am about to embark, for the second time, working as a mountain bike guide. My last post was about six months into the first time I did this job. Looking back it´s a shame that I only ever made one post about it.

I think this was due to the vast number of changes that were happening in my life then. I had left Asia, where I had lived for 12 years. I had lost my job, which came to represent the end of a career that had been years in the making. I was also going through a divorce.

I was almost 40. My life´s work that I had worked hard to achieve and taken for granted had been completely destroyed. In effect I had to start again. I had to rebuild my life without a country, a home, a career, a relationship or any idea how to do it. My ex used to say it was a mid-life crisis but in reality it was a crisis of identity. Who was I? What did I want to be?

My blog was a scrap book of my mountain bike adventures in Asia and at that time I didn't have any enthusiasm to re-visit this life and be reminded of it. Only recently have I been able to look at it with fondness.

In 2009 I was thought my life was over, the guiding job was a way of finding a safe place, an interim that allowed me to heal and plan what to do next. It was an adventure completely different from the expat lifestyle, the corporate career and the wife that completed the triumvirate of what I saw as "success" According to this standard my life was over.

Here, in a European mountain town, seven and a half years later things look very different. This is what I am going to write about.

Lets us begin....

Guess whose back? Back again?

Wow...its been almost a year since I even LOOKED at my blog...and I'm wondering now why I stopped it? Lets just put it down to a year long hangover that is finally clearing....

So a bit of an update. I'm now living in Spain and working as a mountain bike guide, doing what I love with people I like....mostly...


If it wasn't for the crazy dead artist gay robot police it would be great.....

So I've ridden for 4-6 hours a day every day for the last six months now...and when you go from riding once, maybe twice a week to this kind off intensity your body does all sorts of weird things to compensate....when I first arrived in Spain I looked a bit like this....


A Christmas with my parents obviously contributing....

After two months of a life that consisted solely of riding and then sleeping and then riding and then sleeping and then...you get the idea. I started to resemble this guy..



I was exhausted all the time, I don't think I've ever been so tired. Fortunaltey my fellow guide, in his secon season suggested drinking protien shakes after every ride....and I must say it has been the miracle cure to my exhaustion....the only side affect is this....



I'm gonna need a bigger bike....

Bolivian Riding Powder

So I only got one ride in during my tour of South America....but what a ride it was...

Starting at 4600 meters...yes that's right METERS and singletrack all the way down....

 

Most if it full-on poo in your pants stuff with plenty of exposure if you got it wrong...

 

What you can't see in this photo is the several hundred feet drop to my right...and the several thousand foot drop to my left....

Hence the clenched sphincter type body English seen below...

Despite being off the bike for about 6 weeks and more from luck than skill, I managed to keep rubber side down the entire time.

Hence the large smile on my face....

The following shots are from the "Ghost" trail that Cedric Gracia nailed in New World Disorder 6...

Of course Gracia may have rode it a bit more aggressively than I did.

Especially on the jumpy bits...

The best stuff was the huge blue sky and the feeling of endlessness experienced on singletrack at high altitude..

What really nailed it for me though was the beer at the end of the day......

A massive word to B-Side adventures in La Paz who hooked me up at very short notice...

http://bside-adventures.blogspot.com/

Great bikes, great people and awesome trails..

They also do the infamous Death Road ride, "the worlds most dangerous road"

This is for wimps though....ask them for the Freeride Adventure, only about 20 visitors do this trail a year and it is up there with my trip to Whistler...

The only issue I had was the Xtra Large full face helmet which obscured my vision and made me look like an alien...

I read in the lonely planet that a gram of cocaine costs as much as a beer in La Paz....

I reckon save your money and just ride your mountain bike there...

A nice surprise....

After almost two months away and a with a pretty serious typhoon hitting while I was gone, I decided to check out the trail this morning....

Well the carefully planned drainage system held up pretty well with almost no damage whatsoever.

As a bonus the weather here is just beautiful at the moment...sunny days and clear skies...

I'll be up the mountain on my road bike this afternoon.

About 1000mts higher than this point..

 

Despite all the beauty in the world and the exceptionally good karma in my life right now...someone decided to slightly upset my day by leaving this on the trail...

 

This isn't the first time either. I've been left quite a few 'presents' while building the trail.

It was in full view of the trail entrance as well (you can see the road just at the top of this picture)

Riders BEWARE!

I'm not sure if this was a strategic placement to avoid being seen or to make sure that everyone else sees it!

All I can think of is that it must be some ancient Chinese custom...

"Take crap on trail, bring very good luck!"

I think I should get one of these bad boys installed....

I took this photo while trekking in the Andes'...

It was a big hole dug in the ground surrounded by a nice plastic outhouse...perfect for my trail...

Just got to work out how I get it shipped from Peru to Taiwan..

In the meantime....if I catch whose doing it I will tie them to a tree and leave them there until they look like this...

I'm Back!

Yes I'm back..back from my 2 month summer trip that took me to places far and wide.

The highlight of which was a four day trek to this little old place.....

No this isn't a postcard...this is an actual shot taken by me on my phone...

But it wasn't all boring cultural type stuff...

I did manage to get some riding in...as can be seen here....

And here....which is Bolivia in case you were wondering....

Same trail that Cedric Gracia rode in NWD6....

He...um...might have ridden it a bit more aggressively than I did though...

Full update coming as soon as I get unpacked!

Ta Da! It's finished!

After a mad rush involving blistered hands and a broken pick axe or two the trail is finally finished and officially open!

Hoo rah! Everyone have a beer and toast the Fungus...

Here are some photos of Arron trying it out for the first time....

This is just after the entrance at the top (where the trail merges with an existing one traversing the hill)



Rock section



Rock turn (that took me two weeks to carve)



Root section (this will be sweet after a bit of erosion)



Dog sitting section



Trail hog dog



Good views



Some nice rapid switchbacks



My first full bench...all those months ago...



And a drop or two...



Not sure of length yet, I reckon it's just shy of 750m. Total height (BIG guess here) 100-150m.

One person..ME...(with a bit of help from Arron)

Around 10-15 hours a week for six months. Entirely hand built except for the bamboo section that was cleared with a weed whacker. (I still had to dig out the bloody roots with a hoe though)

I saw five piles of human excrement, four snakes, three stray dogs, two lost hikers, numerous lizards, toads, frogs and even the fresh remains of a large rodent sliced clean in two by a hawk.

Three hoes, one rake, three pick axes, one sledge hammer, two saws, one rock and three wood chisels....oh and a petrol driven weed whacker. (used once prior to oil prices and a stubborn refusal to start)

Big thanks to James, his GPS, complete disregard for personal safety and the power of his mighty legs.

Plus all the support from friends and family (you know who you are) Your encourageent made me keep digging when I was thinking "y'know this was a really stupid idea"

Dedicated to Gucci the dog for keeping me company, compacting the tread and 'testing' the trail...

Go ride!

Whacked Off!

Fellow Mountain biker Dan was getting a bit fed up with how long it is taking me to finish my trail. So he gave me this...



Which is a petrol driven weed whacker...

It turns this...



Into this....



Then using the 'tools of the trade' Which are these...



Liberaly apply what my Mum calls 'elbow grease' and you get this...



Add a bit more elbow grease and eventually, you get this....



Which is all well and good, and Dan's donation has made life a bit easier...but I really wish he had given me one of these....



Anyone got a spare one hanging around?