Can't Feel the Chain
In one of Lance Armstrong's books ('Every Second Counts', I think) he mentions a joke he and his team mates would play on their manager, who was sat in the team car during races. If Lance was having a particularly good day, he'd radio back to the car and say "I need a mechanic… It's my chain… I can't feel the chain".
Today, I couldn't feel my sledge. We left our second (and final) depot first thing this morning and turned back toward the coast. This meant two things: that we now had a trail to follow, all the way back to the sea, and that the cold wind we'd been skiing into was now at our backs. Our pace was noticeably quicker today – I tend to start the first 'session' of the day fairly speedily, in order to generate a bit of heat, but today we never slowed down again. We covered a half-marathon in just five hours of skiing (excluding breaks) which doesn't sound that fast, but it's double the speed we were managing a week ago, hauling our fully-loaded sledges uphill through soft powder.
Today is the first day of this expedition where I've been consistently happy and upbeat, throughout the day. Forging along, with the sledge skittering along behind me and the sun on my face, there's nowhere I'd rather have been.
— Filed under Greenland