Ben Saunders

How to win a double-Ironman. A riveting (and informative, if you're daft enough to be considering a 21-hour triathlon yourself) blog post by the hard-as-nails Hywel Davies.

— Filed under Aside

Racing Vicariously

My brother's currently competing in the Surrey League Revolutions five-day stage race ("Around 100 of Britain's top riders will be taking part in the gruelling 5 day long race. Each day they will cover around 100 miles – as well as climbing some of the steepest hills in South East England.") He's been giving me a blow-by-blow account over the phone every evening, and he's posting daily update's on his cycling team's website.

"The strong riders wouldn't let things go clear, until the second lap of a big circuit… where Rob Hayles slipped away and opened the gas up… I looked at the moves and thought "If I don't get across to that, it will be even more GC time and the stage over" so I took a deep breath, shifted up and went for it. Steve Golla (Sigma) and one of the Irish Team Ras Mumhan racing came with me, and gradually we worked together for a hard five minutes get across. The last 200 metres to the break was pure pain, but it was worth the effort as this now large group (including the earlier move by Hayles) of about 20 worked to put some time into the bunch."

To give you an idea of the standard of racing, many of these guys are pros, and Rob Hayles narrowly missed selection for the GB team pursuit squad (that I've just watch win Olympic Gold, setting a new world record in the process). I couldn't be prouder of my little brother, even if it does mean admitting he can officially kick my arse on a bike.

— Filed under Cycling, Inspiration

"Frost in Arctic sleeping bags" – a 24-page PDF of a Canadian Military study into improving sleeping bag design for Arctic use. Admittedly this is probably of interest to less than one percent of my readership, but I still haven't found (or quite figured out how to make) the perfect North Pole sleeping bag yet. See also 'Improved Infantry Winter Shelter Project'…

— Filed under Aside

Milo Radcavic, the chap that nearly beat Michael Phelps in this morning's 100-metre butterfly has already written a blog post about it.

— Filed under Aside

Inspiration for the Week

T.S. Eliot's Geneen Marie Haugen's (whoops) The Return (thank you Jerry) and a sublime advertisement from Mercedes…

Some day, if you are lucky,
you'll return from a thunderous journey trailing snake scales, wing fragments and the musk of Earth and moon.
Eyes will examine you for signs of damage, or change and you, too, will wonder if your skin shows traces
of fur, or leaves, if thrushes have built a nest of your hair, if Andromeda burns from your eyes.

Do not be surprised by prickly questions from those who barely inhabit
their own fleeting lives, who barely taste their own possibility, who barely dream.
If your hands are empty, treasureless, if your toes have not grown claws, if your obedient voice has not
become a wild cry, a howl,
you will reassure them.

We warned you, they might declare, there is nothing else, no point, no meaning, no mystery at all, just this frantic waiting to die.
And yet, they tremble, mute, afraid you've returned without sweet elixir for unspeakable thirst, without a fluent dance or holy language
to teach them, without a compass bearing to a forgotten border where no one crosses without weeping for the terrible beauty of galaxies
and granite and bone.

They tremble, hoping your lips hold a secret, that the song your body now sings will redeem them, yet they fear
your secret is dangerous, shattering, and once it flies from your astonished mouth, they—like you—must disintegrate before unfolding tremulous wings.

— Filed under Inspiration

Fight and Flight

"Bicycling is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds. The airplane simply carries a man on its back like an obedient Pegasus; it gives him no wings of his own."

Louis J. Helle, Jr., Spring in Washington

Hill reps in Richmond Park yesterday afternoon (on my 31st birthday), photographed by the brilliant Sam Christmas for a forthcoming piece in Huck Magazine.

— Filed under Cycling, Training

Transformed

"I don't know what sort of general significance running 100 kilometres by yourself has, but, as an action that deviates from the ordinary yet doesn't violate basic values, you'd expect it to afford you a special sort of self-awareness. It should add a few new elements to your inventory in understanding who you are. And as a result, your view of your life, its colours and shape, should be transformed. More or less, for better or for worse, this happened to me, and I was transformed."

- Haruki Murakami writing in the Observer

— Filed under Running

Martin Hartley – Another Day in the Office

Martin Hartley photographing me at -45 degrees C. in Resolute Bay, Arctic Canada this spring.

This was a couple of days before my departure for Ward Hunt Island, the start point for my North Pole speed record attempt this year and we were busy getting some decent footage and photgraphy for my sponsor. Martin took a few hundred photos in the space of a couple of days, and his brand spanking new Nikon D3 (to my amazement) never missed a beat. You can see (and hear) how cold it was – Martin got the camera stuck to his nose at one point, an unexpected occupational hazard in those climes.

There's a HD (High Definition) version of the video on my Vimeo page.

— Filed under North Pole 2008, Photography