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French Road Trip – French 3 Days

We have an aversion to Scottish JKs (big UK Easter Orienteering Festival), when I lived down south it was too far, the weather is often iffy at Easter and there always seems to be a nice alternative somewhere warmer. This year we were trying to go to Spain, but could just not get any info on the event. In the end Cath discovered a French ‘3 Jours de Paques’, just north of Bordeaux on the l’île d’Oléron.. Sand dune forests, French food, what more could we ask.

http://3jours2012.club-co17.com/index.html

Im not sure it was a great decision to go for just the weekend and drive! meaning it turned into a bit of a major road trip (1600 mile weekend) but overall we had a great time and I believe the orienteering was OK too (cath’s map shown) The area was actually quite runnable and not as green as the map suggests.

The club took 3 cars out and stayed in a posh resort caravan park with a fantastic spa pool we all lazed in when not visiting light houses, orienteering or eat ice creams and crepes. The 3 juniors who came out did us proud and it was a struggle to get the 8 trophy’s into the car for the return journey.

I had a word with my physio before I went (he was really not happy about the drive) and said that I could take a bike a go for a few poodles for my mental health rather than just sitting there moaning. In the end I had 3, 45 minute, lane and forest road rides on the Whyte E5 and I am starting to like it. I still wonder whether it is slightly too big for me and that I might need a small but overall its good, particularly pedalling over the bumpy stuff. The rest of the time I took photos and enjoyed the slightly windy sunshine thinking of friends getting cold and wet in Scotland!

 

 

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Sorry for the lack of Postings !

Apologies to my avid readers for my lack of posting, life has been rather hectic. The area of Architecture and IT I work in (BIM or Building Information Modelling) has become an extremely hot topic over the last few months and I am stretched somewhat dealing with it all. I seem to be giving presentations up and down the country every other day! I have also started tweeting a fair bit possibly some of the stuff I might normally do little mini blog postings about.

For those on twitter I am @stodgeblog

So hopefully this will be the first of a flurry of small blog postings but expect a few things slightly different from the norm as I am still not back on the bike so am up to other stuff !

I have cleared out the garage recently (didn’t do my back much good) so as to make easier access for all Orienteering kit we look after for the club but also for access to my Spitfire, a new turbo trainer setup and even a workbench which will make bike maintenance easier. Cath has commented recently that a side effect of my injury is the poor state of service of her bike (that’s me told).

With getting the spitfire on the road I obviously addressed the most important item before bothering with the MOT, that of carrying a bike. It really does show quite how small the spitfire is. I am looking forward to getting to a few of the later Dark and White events if my back gets fixed in time using the spitfire to enjoy the White Peak views.

 

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Injury update

Well its now been 6 months since I last rode properly. The new racing season has started and I am missing it big style. I was meant to be in Denmark this weekend at the MTBO training camp!

I’ve finally had my consultant appointment come through with the Birmingham Royal Orthopaedic Hospital for the 14th May so not long to wait now. I had another physio appointment today. Essentially I have plateaued in my recovery and am just making sure it doesn’t get any worse and am keeping the pain away as much as possible. Although the disc is much better he thinks the facet joint will not mend without some form of direct treatment and thinks they will probably want to inject it, which should then let it heal if I behave and don’t over do it.

In the mean time he has given me a ‘backlife 2002’ to try for a couple of weeks. Apparently its normally used to relieve pain for arthritis sufferers. Its like a combination between a food mixer and 70s weight loss machine!

It reduced the family to giggles earlier when I first showed them so its worth it just for the comedy value.

I have also finally turned 40. This year was meant to be the culmination of 3 years training where I was to go after a medal at the World Masters. I was also going to learn how to unicycle, so those have been put on hold. In the old days mid life crisis involved buying a sports car. Now it seems to be the thing to get a posh road bike and be a MAMIL. So I am going with the old trend, not being able to cycle I have decided to get the other long resident of our garage out and on the road. The tax disc shows the last time I had it out was 2002 !

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Erik rides Cape Epic

MTBO superstar Erik Skovgaard Knudsen is currently down in South Africa competing for http://www.racing29ers.com/ and doing well against some awesome competition including the God of mountain bike racing CHRISTOPH SAUSER. It would be amazing just to be in the same race as the flying Swiss but Erik and his partner Thomas Bundgaard are keeping up and are currently lying in 9th place after the first day proper.

The 8 day 800 kilometre race with over 14,000 metres of climb winds its way around some fantastic scenery around the Cape.

You can follow Erik’s progress (in Danish so go for Google translate) at the racing 29s website or on facebook here http://www.facebook.com/pages/Racing29ers/218610998214939

Full Cape Epic details and daily results are here http://www.cape-epic.com/live/

I wonder if the winter beard has come off in the heat!

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Gadgets – Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray

I have been fed up with my iPhone 3G for a while, slow, unresponsive and heavy, rubbish photos and no video. I know I liked it when I had it first but Apple kept updating it until it sort of stopped. On the other hand I am also a little security worried about using a smart phone more and more on an OS with no updates. So what to get. To be honest I’ve had enough of Apple, they are getting a little like Microsoft did in the early noughties, control freaks. I also dont like the amount they are now charging…

So what phone to get.

My stable of standard portable gadgets whilst travelling was:

Personal Netbook (I type a lot so don’t want a tablet), Work Laptop, iPhone, Garmin 500, old ipod gen4 in the car for music, cheap digital camera (use an SLR at other times), old digital video camera. Could I replace a load of these with functionality on a phone ?

Fellow MTBO rider Ifor Powell mentioned that the Sony Ericsson Xperia (soon to be just Sony) phones had ANT+ compatibility so the possibility of ditching the Garmin was real..

Result – I now have a Xperia Ray and I am very impressed. I thought about buying outright the Active,a waterproof version, but decided on a standard contract freebie one instead.

So the review: Android – just brilliant, a bit more complicated than  IOS but you can set it up to almost replicate it if you want. Typing so much easier. The camera and screen are excellent, so too is the HD video. Its small, light and reasonably robust. (I wanted a small phone). The battery life is not brilliant requiring a daily charge if I use it a lot.

And no more itunes, just grab the folder of music and bung it on the phone, simples.

So thats the phone, camera, video camera and Mp3 options ticked.

Ifor has written an excellent App to monitor ANT+ compatable sensors (ie HR, Cadence Power etc) for the Android market which I will review in my next blog item but it is excellent. Coupled with an Xperia Active it could be a good way of getting the same functionality as a Garmin 800 (ie maps too)but with a smart phone aswell.

I’ve only tried it on the turbo at the moment but it works a treat. It even it is the ability to scan for other ANT+ devices – spy on your competitors ? No idea where that sits legally!

Oh and ive sold my old iPhone for £60 too!

 

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Hollys Sport Relief Challenge

Holly has successfully completed her fundraising challenge.

She started with a a 30 min mountain bike ride up hill to Chase Road Corner from our house. Then she Orienteered an orange standard course back through Oldacre to Chase Vista car park. From there she trail ran through Brocton Coppice back to our house.

It was then into Wolverhampton to Wolf Mountain where she climbed 6 routes on the indoor climbing wall. Another car journey took her to Tamworth snowdome where ahe firstly skied before 30 mins skating and another 30 mins swimming.

Finally it was back home for the last 30 mins of ‘just dance’ as the sun set over Cannock Chase.

A very tired Holly then tucked into a curry before bed !

So far she has raised over £350.00 if you would like to contribute please go to https://www.justgiving.com/holsers

Thanks

 

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Carpet Boa

Not really normal fare for my blog but… Holly had a creepy crawly birthday party last night. 7 friends stroked cockroaches, giant millipedes and a tarantula, held owls and snakes and generally screamed alot, as girls do.

Scary how the Boa felt just at home with his camouflage on our lounge carpet !

contact animal antics for your own party !

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