By admin on 28/04/2006

Having participated last year as well, I decided I should find out what La Louis Caput actually means.The dictionary kindly explained to me that "Caput" means a head or a knoblike protuberance. Not, of course, to be confused with kaput: "rendered useless or unable to function". (Overlap of the two being somewhat suboptimal). However, it turns out that Mr Louis Caput was in fact a cyclist from the region who, prior to his death in the 1980s, was champion of France, won two stages of the Tour de France and was a pretty good classics rider. Fascinating...! Fortunately this year the weather was spectacular which meant we did not have to abort. And even better was the fact that we made it to the start line prior to the start of the race (despite attempts at faff sabotage) - hearing the gun fire last year while messrs Omar and Kelso were still pumping up their tyres was not an experience I wanted to repeat.

So at 7.30 on Saturday Sarah, Fran and I started the 101k version of the Louis Caput which has approx 2,000m of climbing. There is a 150k version as well but .... whatever. The course winds its way out of Roquestron, about 10k from Nice on the Cote d'Azur, up to Vence and then over the Col de Vence which you hit after 23k of climbing. I had the pleasure of some old chap pulling me over the top of the col (no comments, please) but unfortunately found myself about 700m off the lead group without any help to make it up.

...

Read More »

By admin on 14/04/2006

The easter weekend saw the conclusion of what has been labelled as the toughest edition of the Marathon des Sables so far. More people have dropped out than any other year as it turned out: 150 out of 723 thought better of it. It was an amazing experience, not so much because of the scenery, but because of the people you meet, friends you make and all the surrealistic situations you find yourself in; from never ending sand storms to running in the night in the middle of absolutely nowhere whilst making polite conversation with an elderly French couple you happen to overtake. The trip starts out with a boring 5 hour bus trip into the desert followed by a day of admin related issues, general faffing and re-organising your backpack until you can do it blind. This could all have been very relaxing and therapeutic, but the force-5 sand storms made this actually hard work. The start on day-1 was a great moment as you will rarely have seen a more psyched up crowd of 'nutters' than this. After the 1st checkpoint at 12k...

Read More »

By admin on 08/04/2006

After some very specific "pace" training I was headed out to the States to compete in Ironman Arizona. This wouldn't have been complete without taking a month off work and doing my last few weeks training up in Boulder (CO) - a place often referred to as the "Triathlete's Haven!" I was also lucky enough through sending out some random emails to be staying with a couple of pro triathletes, one of which was going to be doing the race in Arizona too. The first morning Tyler Johnson took me out trail running up one of the mountains. This was the first time I had trained at altitude and as soon as we set off I was gasping for air (much like when I swim). It felt weird, yet good and in my mind I just kept thinking of the benefits. The next few days (well weeks really) I found my relatively low HR rate to be through the roof... I was going threshold at a jog and my bike power, which I'd built up to quite a strong 300watts at functional threshold (60') had been sliced in half!! A few days later Jimmy Archer arrived back...

Read More »