Discussion: Many thanks

For brightening my day and reminding me why I'll never do AR!

haha - youre welcome - however my blog is exactly why I love it - It pushed my mental and physical boundaries - so whilst the first say 1.5-2 hours was painful the rest and the post event feeling still has me charged up for the next event :)

I loved reading it too, especially the concept of riding with cleats for the first time on a new bike in a mtb race :-) but it did also make me very nostalgic for AR

Yeah well - I would have been a lot more comfortable had the cleats worked lol - see my next day note - suffice to say I never clipped in and was only ever using the front of the cleat :( -

I'm surprised that a few people have made that comment - why do people think its so crazy?!

Ps glad ppl are enjoying the read - I shall continue poorly written blogs of epic length :)

It's not 'sensible practice' to try anything new in a race, especially not a long duration race and particularly with equipment that if poorly set up can injure you long term. In fact, it's slightly more ignorant than stupid so you're excused. Being relatively young and resilient you can get away with it. It's like the fools who buy new shoes a few days before doing fun runs, or try the race's energy drink for the first time on race day, or wear a new back pack for the first time, or new socks or... well, the list goes on.

welcome to my sunday.

haha.

and none of it was setup correctly and I was sore.

That said cleats aren't new to me going back to non cleats on a bike would be more abnormal for me (whilst road and mtb are different) the last lets say 10k km's I have done on bikes have been in cleats, jumping back to regular shoes would have been the weirder thing for me. Although having only bought the bike only the afternoon before the event was ambitious or 'ignorance'.

I agree with your general sentiments as you'll find most the time the stuff I am using at the longer events are very well tried and tested. this was a rare exception.

Enthusiasm is a good thing to have - and you have it in spades! :-)

Yeah but it's a significant diminishing margin of return that turns to stupidity pretty quickly. Eg I'm thinking about going out to the camel skills park tonight and smashing it out in the dark with my fenix headlamp being the only reliable light... Could end in disaster (fits within my risk tolerance)

Ha anyone would think Tooms had never done anything silly. Like putting a couple of non-paddlers on a double ocean racing ski hired the day before an overnight race on the southern ocean.

What are camel skills?

Camel farm skills park.

What's wrong with that - apart from getting abit wet they would learn pretty quickly :)

Mmm something like that!

Camel skills involve how to make them corner without them spitting on you. Bactrian or dromedary?

Probably bactrian, because I've got the hump with this thread.