Category: Stories
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How coaching other people made me faster
I’ve been coached for a long time. It’s made me a much more committed athlete, but beginning to coach other people was a big turning point in getting the most out of my training. When you’re following a plan, the gains materialise slowly. The fitness creeps up, along with a creeping doubt that the plan […]
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Running out of time
There is a undercurrent of panic among my Mountain Biking friends. The clouds descended last week, covering Boulder in a film of dew, coating the trees in an erie layer of humidity. The temperature dropped and the wind blew in the smell of fresh, wintery air. It barely dipped into trousers weather, but the change […]
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Road riding on Exmoor – a biased review
The Exmoor coast is the most primitive shoreline left in England. The huge cliffs have protected 35 miles of coastline from development, and the result is one of the most one unique landscapes in the UK. The cliffs role inland onto huge flat-topped hills. The relentless atlantic storms and long winters have scoured the vegetation from […]
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A few days in Edwards
Christa and I had a mini “work from home” holiday last week. As Christa’s dad was getting a new spine put in, and therefore was forbidden from doing pretty much everything, we stayed up in Edwards to be house servants for a week. Among the standard cooking, a little bit of cleaning, and plenty of […]
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Ride like you eat: a protest against calories.
It’s a mystical thing, that little calorie. It’s the unit of measurement of adventure. Life runs on it. Each pedal stroke and foot strike is calorie driven. The places I go happen because of the calories I consume. But it’s still a mystery to most. Maybe it’s best that way. I overheard a conversation about calories […]
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The Green Season
Bikes. Bikes. Bikes. That’s what I talk about all the time. When I went back and read a couple of my older posts, I found another enduring theme: Weather and the Seasons. Growing up in Combe Martin, weather was the talk of the town. It changed often. More than anything else in the village’s thousand year […]
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Prescott, Arizona.
I collected up most of my friends and went to the Whiskey 50 last weekend. Prescott, Arizona is located half-way between Phoenix and Flagstaff, tucked into the northern edge of the Bradshaw Mountains. A high desert outcrop of hills covered in Conifers and scrub oak trees. They stick out from the Sonoran Desert, a strange bump on the cactus […]
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Moab in Bloom
The mountains parted, letting us escape their grasp as we drove west. The finger like cliffs of the western slope releasing us into the reddened desert beyond. The wintry clouds hung over the book cliffs. We ignored them. We were Moab bound. The junction off of I-70 towards Moab is indistinct. Don’t expect any services […]
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The Sunrise