[ 19 Feb 2015 ]

stalking cyclists & many thanks!

Well, the Tour starts on 21st February, and I currently aim to complete in 29 days. All of the participants in the Tour will be carrying trackers, so you can watch us “live and unedited” on this online map thing :

http://touraotearoa.maprogress.com/

If you see me start going in circles, do feel free to give me a call and tell me … though likely as not I won’t be coherent!

I also just want to say a …

massive thank you!

… for the support you have all given me in getting to the start line. I’ve had some awesome tips, loads of encouragement, way more interest than I ever thought (I just checked today that I have 128 “followers” … I didn’t think I knew 128 people!), my work has been incredibly supportive, and basically I’m just chuffed to bits – you’re all aces!! hf

[ 18 Feb 2016 ]

… and here’s the South Island

I’ve just finished my plan for the South Island, just in the nick of time! Here it is, all chopped up into ‘manageable’ pieces … including a 1,000m plus climb out of Cardrona!

HF TA ROADTRIP Route Plan SOUTH

I leave in just over 12 hours – bike packed, some new bits of wood added (I now have a dashboard to mount my solar panel on – SWISH!), some old bits of wood taken off.

IMG_4664[1] — the flashing blade – ready for action … but feeling slightly overweight!

The awesome people at Kaibosh very kindly offered to print up some of my riding tops too (maybe they realised my enthusiasm was waning lately!), so now I have a fancy uniform for all kiwis to admire – thanks Kaibosh! hf

IMG_4661[1] — flash new gear for the road

[ 17 Feb 2016 ]

planning makes it suddenly feel real

This is the last week before the start of the 3000km event. I leave Wellington on Friday, start revolving from the north on Sunday and my recent activities have suddenly made it all seem quite … “impending”! I’m trying to get organised, refine my pack list, eat too much to have fat to burn, learn some stretches … and occasionally sleep.

I’ve just been putting a tonne of time into trying to understand the trip and plan out what a not-very-long-distance-and-slightly-lazy cyclist like me might be able to achieve. So far, I have just been thinking :

“Oh yes; it’s 100 km a day for 30 days and so i’ll just stop wherever I get to after 100 km, have a spot of dinner, maybe a glass of beer and a little snooze.”

Now, while most of you will immediately be thinking “what a wolly!” I have been immediately doing nothing at all … until last week, when the 5 “P”s occurred to me : prior preparation prevents predictably pretty pathetic,poor, piffling, puny, paltry performance … alright, so maybe it’s the ELEVEN Ps now.

Here’s a link to the first half of my planned approach to the 30 days on the road, which I finished this evening (I need to try to complete the South Island volume sharpish!) :

HF TA ROADTRIP Route Plan NORTH

This has also got the 30 photos we have to take marked on it. These are ‘way-points’ that we have to send in, so that we can show we’re not cheating … and to see some interesting things on the way!

Physically writing this sucker out has really driven home what I am in for, and what I need to think about for each day. In some ways it has made the trip all the more terrifying, but in others it is also starting to relieve some of the stress that I’ve felt building of late! Knowledge is a powerful thing, and I’m starting to see places where there are hot pools, good cafes, beautiful views and choice swimming holes.

I’m going to use this in conjunction with a stripped-down copy of the Kennett Brothers’ Classic New Zealand Cycle Trails book, which is just fantastic. I hope this will give me the right balance to get me through.

I’ve found out that I have two spare days … doesn’t seem very much! When do you think I should take them? hf

[ Jan 2016 ]

the 10% test : lessons learnt

Last weekend was a long weekend for Wellington with glorious weather, so I got on a bus to Nearly Napier and spent three days cycling home. three days is 10% of the time I’ll be cycling for the whole length of Aotearoa, and with one month to go it felt like a good opportunity to see where my bike, my body and my brain is at.

rural route 52, from waipukurau to pongaroa … via wimbledon of course!

I learnt heaps of valuable stuff on this little trip, and as I lie here barely able to move I am reflecting on the 8 most significant lessons of the 10% test; do please feel free to criticise, contradict and offer further excellent advice :

01 : elevation charts rock!

Being more used to walking in the hills, I find I am understanding terrain in a very different way on a bicycle. I’ve always thought that if you want to truly learn about distance, walk somewhere; but if you want to truly learn about topography, there’s no better tool than a bicycle – you feel every little variation through your legs.

A lot of cycle routes seem to be measured with elevation charts and these are extremely useful for seeing just how tired you’ll get with all the terrain change! For the trip I just did, I found the ones below on Google (the times are a bit long), but the ones in the Kennett Brothers’ books are way better :

day 1 route 52 — DAY 01 : Waipukurau to Wimbledon

day 2 route 52 — DAY 02 : Wimbledon to Masterton

day 3 route 52 — DAY 03 : Masterton to Wellington; getting to my house at the end was a bit of a cheeky final climb!

02 : take the time to enjoy stuff

I realise now that on the tour it’s going to be hard to take side trips or a lot of time out to be a proper tourist, so I think I will need to focus on enjoying whatever comes along my way. For this trip, the first of many highlights was passing the site with the longest place name in the world …

the longest place name refers to the hilltop behind – good luck pronouncing it all at once : karawhiua!

… and another was spending an evening drinking with the local fishermen at Wimbledon Tavern, listening to their fantastic yarns and broad laughter! Their style reminded me of the first 30 seconds or so of this song from Mr. Scruff : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQIsZbm8Y4E. Enjoy whatever your route has to offer, and allow time to do so.

after a fine evening at the wimbledon tavern I was invited to pitch my tent in the garden – thanks heaps!

03 : sleeping, starting and siestas

On Saturday the bus arrived at Waipukurau at 2:00pm. I thought “hey no problem – lots of daylight and I can just keep tootling along.” Not true. I was amazed at how tired I felt after just a few hours, and I think it was a combination of the travel, feeling a bit sleepy, the later start, the heat and sun, the fact that my eating wasn’t in-sync with the activity, and so on.

So the next day after 9 hours sleep (!) I headed off sparkly early and covered loads of ground in the morning before needing to take a proper rest, and when I did I had a little siesta while my solar panel charged my music (to be discussed in an upcoming “bike set-up” post) – siestas are amazing, and great for avoiding that midday sun.

04 : beware things which begin with “h”

Yes indeed, I found hills, headwinds, heat, hedgehogs (cool creatures but vindictively spikey), and then later heverything annoying when the exhaustion set in. Maybe that’s the lesson : just avoid hexhaustion?

05 : water! water! water!

… and I’ll say again : WATER! As I said before, being more used to walking I have always found that a day out can be managed with a big 2-litre water guzzle at the start of the day, and then a smaller bottle to see you through. This saturation has also always kept my energy levels up.

Well, CYCLING is different! The middle day was long, hot and hilly, and I stopped to re-fill my 700ml water bottle 7 times before I got to the last 47km or so stretch to Masterton, where the promised water source was no more. That’s 4.9 litres of water consumed before 2pm, and I was still gasping! By the time I rolled into the camp ground I spent the first 30 minutes just drinking drinking drinking. I need to carry more water, and not trust where water sources are supposed to be.

these were black shorts 3 days ago, but now are rigid with salt – need to drink a lot more water!

06 : it’s all about timing

One thing that filled me with rage was that, over the weekend, I kept coming across shops that were closed, but clearly contained pies and treats that needed to be consumed – such waste! So, my first on-the-go “petrol stop” for coffee / hot chocolate / pastry wasn’t until Featherston on DAY 3 – OUTRAGEOUS! It was a fine stop, though, and it did make me wonder if I need to schedule the whole tour around cafe opening times.

everest cafe at featherston – a meagre second breakfast for day 3

07 : sorry about the weight

Do shop assistants say this to you too? I take it as a personal affront, but I may have the spelling wrong …?

Anyway, my bike and all the bags were heavy, and I really noticed it on this trip but all I could think of was that I need to add more : more water, more snacks, more more more. Any tips at this point would be very gratefully received for reducing weight and not ending up miserable for 30 days – ie. not too cold / smelly / wet / hungry / thirsty / bored in the evenings.

despite being a fantastic deal, my pannier bags were already at maximum capacity

Flash loaded up at the halfway point – seems too much stuff to me. The uke has to stay though.

08 : looking cool? well … feeling cool

The first day I spent wiping my brow once every 2.5 minutes, and my head got really hot. So I tried out this tuby sock thing that my excellent sister got me for Chringle, which kept my brow in control and my head cool … and not burnt – thanks so much, Maria; it’s my new favourite possession! The other awesome device was the cycle top I got on a whim, with a zip that goes down to my belly button. Having this wide open for most of the time was ace for cooling down quickly after a big hill climb.

So, the last lesson here is that it’s amazing how quickly you don’t care how you look when cycling a long way, and that’s probably okay! hf

realising I look slightly silly but not caring at all when cycling in the midday heat

[ Dec 2015 ]

padded undies of festive joy

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of recommendations to get padded undies for cycling in. Thinking these were for weirdos, and feeling smug that I’ve made it through life so far with just my own personal (and ample) padding, I thought I should at least try them out as SO MANY people told me about them.

my first padded undies – I never realised my bottom was so technical!

So the other day I wandered into Kiwi Velo just near my work and when I ‘fessed up to never having owned a pair (and was told the difference of padded-undies to no-padded-undies was “Night and day, mate! Bloody oath!”), it dawned on me that I had no idea what I was doing in cycle-related-life.

Kiwi Velo in Wellington looks so flash that I have up-until-now nipped past quickly in case they spot me and my WW1 bicycle and glare down their handle-bars at me. But once again I couldn’t have been more mistaken – the guys in there were extremely helpful, patient and entirely not patronising when responding to my silly questions; I can’t recommend them enough. We talked about different shaped padding, the numbers of panels on a pair of undies, creams (sadly not ice creams), different undies that like to be concealed or celebrated, spares, stitching, gussets … crikey! SO much to learn! I got overwhelmed, tried a couple of pairs on (VERY tight) and eventually bought them, but managed to relax before leaving as the conversation turned to the number of pies I’d be able to eat every day on such a long cycle mission – excellent!

On Christmas day, I tried these suckers out, and boy did I feel silly. But at the end of the ride my bum felt very happy indeed … and I now have a fetching pair of normal shorts that can conceal my padded undies; phew! And so I have happily become one of those weirdos, and now feel smug because I know being weird is so much more comfortable. Merry Chringle, everyone! hf

NOT enjoying the foreign feeling!

Merry Chringle from Island Bay!

[ Dec 2015 ]

training rides and riding trains

Last weekend some fine friends and I ventured out on a training ride along the Rimutaka Cycle Trail, which I’ll cover again as I come into Wellington during the big ride.

I’m planning on camping on the high plateau, if you’d care to join me for a little vino (might need to BYO) and then drift into town along the Hutt River for the ferry south?! There’ll likely be ice creams on the way too! hf