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It’s the Barebones 300 this weekend. I arrived at Llanbrynmair a couple of hours ago. Got parked up. Ate some food and packed the stuff that I’m going to be riding with. It’s pretty breezy at the moment, raining a little bit. Forecast for tomorrow is rain,  hopefully clearing up for Sunday. 

Looks like it might stop raining tomorrow afternoon, which means riding through Saturday night will, hopefully, be dry. As normal feeling apprehensive and unprepared for the ride ahead. 

Actually that’s no different to any other year, you know, not feeling fit enough. Not being prepared enough. Weather not perfect enough. Storm Amy rolled in last night or was it tonight, brilliant timing. Anyway, we’ll give it a shot. 

I have done a few of these, so I kind of know what to expect. I know I’m going to have some low points, I’m going to have some high points. It’s comforting to know that it will end. And in reality, it is only a short period of time. No matter how uncomfortable it’s going to be feeling.

I seem to have everything I need, except I left my 2 water bottles at work. I left them right by the door so I couldn’t forget them.

Strategy wise, I need to get to Knighton, which is 100km in, before 8 o’clock. That’s when the co-op shuts. That’s going to be my main refuel. So I’ve got food to get me there.

I don’t pack super light, but I don’t pack heavy either, I’m not fast enough to race. I just need to get round in 36 hours. So, steady all the way. I tend to aim for 10 kilometres every hour if possible, which gives six hours to play with.

That can soon disappear, whether that’s a snooze, or allowing for some segments that may take longer, such as hiker bike sections. And yes there will be a lot of those.

I’m going to be wearing the clothing I went for last year, which was 45nrth boots, waterproof boots that are no longer waterproof, but I know they’re comfortable. On top I’m going to, I think, wear my Alpkit Jura fleece fibre pile instead of a waterproof. It’s probably too hot for most people, but I don’t like to get cold. I can undo the zips for venting, and if it’s wet and windy I want something that I know I can just wrap up in, and it’s gonna get me through. I kind of go for reliability. 

I’ve done enough of these to know how cold I get, and I’d rather go slower and more comfortable than faster and lighter, which I just know I haven’t got the fitness for. 

Another thing, that really helps during the night section is decent lights. Previously, years I’ve had my Revo dynamo light, which is fine on the roads, but as soon as you go off-road, or push your bike uphill very slowly it doesn’t provide much light. So I back that up with a light on my helmet. Last year, mine conked out, so I’ve got a new one. I’ve got the Alpkit Kula this year. It mounts securely with a single cable tie and it will be super bright. I’ve also backed up the Revo with another high powered Alpkit Hadron light and battery pack on my bars. It just makes those night sections faster, safer, and the more light you got, the more comfortable you feel. 

I am back on my Sonder Broken Road single speed. Last year I was on the Pinion Broken Road which I enjoyed, well, as much as can enjoy the Barebones. So, Back on the single speed. It’s fine. Done it before slow and steady. Expecting lots of pushing. Hope we get a bit of sunshine. Just want to be in a a good place after the first 100 K. Refuel. Easy through the night. Maybe a snooze. The last couple of years I’ve had to take a snooze around, ooh, I think, 160 kilometres, maybe I pushed it a bit more last year, maybe it was 170km. It would be nice to get through to 200. 

I think only once have I gone right through and that was tough. I slowed right down to a crawl. Even just taking an hour’s nap does refresh you. It does help push you on.

The wind is picking up again. It has stopped raining though.

The rain has started again. It always sounds worst in a metal box.

7 o’clock depart. Looking forward to the meal at the end. It’s important to have something to look forward to.

# Saturday

I am done. Major route finding error. Using my Wahoo Roam for the first time. Did I even turn up? Legs tired. Windy. Big hills. Singlespeed wrong choice, always the wrong choice. 30 hours to go. Dark, it gets so dark. Hungry, haven’t drunk enough.

And so ended another Barebones 300. Just 2 hours in, sharp thoughts shooting through my head like crazed bubbles on a brainstorming diagram.

As I stood in the petrol station forecourt in Llanidloes trying to work out what had gone wrong.

Slowly the bubbles started to connect.

I was following the orange line, which was fine, until I got into a town where there were lots of orange lines. I had been following the road, I hadn’t turned on follow route.

Zooming out I could see where I should be. I was 20k off route.

I was feeling like I expected to feel after about 100k. That’s when those mid journey doubts surface. I know if I ignore them for long enough they will go away. The long night will be over and the sun will rise again.

But not today, I am a long way from that point. No drive.

I plot my next move, I really don’t want to head into the headwind along the road. Too hilly, long climbs, exhausting.

So I head back along some B roads towards the Hafren forest. I recognise it, of course I do the Barebones and Welsh Ride Thing have passed through here countless times. I imagine a multiverse in which I can see my self criss-crossing this terrain over the years, and various times of the day and night in various states of fatigue. A quick break at the Hafren Forest car park to take on food. The rain gets heavier but I have shelter now. It passes.

Back on to the road, route 8 on the Sustrans cycle network and a lovely ride. Turns out this was the outward leg of the BB200. No sneaking back unnoticed for me, but it didn’t matter. I had made peace with myself now, I was over it. What a great bunch of people BBers are – everyone giving a little nod or wave to say ‘everything ok?’.

Getting back to the point where I should have turned off I stood for 5 minutes thinking.. 30 minutes downhill and its all over, or another 34 hours of you know what….

I threw in the towel, this year I just didn’t have the fight.

Well done everyone who started, and especially everyone still out there. It felt gustier than the storm of 2018, and that rain (hail at times) was colder. I can’t speak of the river crossings but anyone who finishes will have earned their badges and some. What a fantastic event.

Down by the Monsal Trail, we had a hug

We had a hug, yeah a hug

Beer and ale, wines and spirits

Music and inspiration

Yellow orange a few leaves on the floor

Yellow orange falling down

Yellow orange crunch

Easy run today

Easy run, easy breathing

Time standing still, passing Chatsworth

Looping round onto the Monsal Trail

Back onto the White Peak Trail

Not gonna overdo it, just listen

Just breathe and then a steaming bowl

Of apple crumble with double cream

When I get home, home, treat myself

Running through the golf course

Running into Bakewell town

Running, always running on

Trail washed away

Trail slippery, rocks beneath

Trail enters Bakewell just above

Just above the station there

Loop down, over trail

Right turn, straight through the station

Back up under the old bridge

Like threading a needle through

Threading through onto Monsal Trail

Onto the trail again

Towards Darley Dale now

Now the rain is falling still

Still raining, still running

Still moving through the puddles

Stop for a bit, puddles building

Building up along the trail

The trail runs out towards the end

A blocked off tunnel, shoot off right

Back left under the old bridge

Cross country piece of trail, that’ll take me up

Up where I started from

From Rowsley hit the White Peak trail

Follow the train track back down

Back down to Darley Dale again

Back down, back down again

This Monsal trail, so important

So important during lockdown days

We used to come

All the time with the buggy running

Pushing Luca along the path

With Harry and Ami running

Running alongside us always

Honestly, without that trail

Without that trail I’m not sure

What we would have done

To keep ourselves sane

Stretch now

Tired legs at the top

Back at the top of the hill

Overlooking Derwent Valley

Down to Rowsley in the distance

Still raining, always raining

Apparently there’s an Alsatian

On the loose somewhere near

Just past the blackest mushrooms

Darkest mushrooms I’ve ever seen

Blackest, darkest mushrooms growing

Under a hawthorn bush they stand

Tall stems and dark black heads

And lines and little bunches

Shiny tops under the rain

Light glinting off them strangely

Dark, dark black or dark brown

Amazing mushrooms in the rain

Yellow orange a few leaves falling

Still raining on the trail

Still running through the valley

Still

Swimming for me has never been for fun, it’s been a battle for survival. 

I learnt to swim as a kid, but I guess I did the bare minimum to get my certificates. I even got a photo of me sitting next to the British Olympian David Wilkie.

Clearly there was more that I needed to do if swimming was to feature in my future, which I didn’t, so it wasn’t.

I don’t float I tell people. I sink.

Now that’s a real confidence blow, a weight on the mind if you like. A reason to stay in the safety of the shallows or attach yourself to the magnetic reassurance of the poolside.

This isn’t to dismiss watersports. I like floating around on the water; canoeing, paddleboarding, kayaking all get a big tick from me. But in these sports the buoyancy comes from the toys.

I don’t float I tell myself, I have got to keep moving but this comes at a cost. High energy expenditure, short breathing, constant awareness of how deep the water is, nervoulsy monitoring how far to the nearest bank takes it toll.

Everyone can float is what I read on the internet. Boy that just makes it worst. Just relax is what swimming friends say. I AM relaxed I glug back.

No I haven’t done anything to debunk my ingrained belief. I haven’t sought out the advice of a swimming coach or joined a club. I have done nothing because swimming just wasn’t fun.

I have thought for the longest time that swimming just isn’t for me, but a couple of recent experiences have made me reconsider.

The first was in Anglesey this summer. I was fooling around in the bay, fully clad in a wetsuit as I always am when confronting water in the wild.

This year it felt different, there were warm patches in the shallow water that felt, dare I say comfortable. After I had fulfilled my duties of paddling the kids around in the canoe I grabbed the full face snorkel and proceeded to scope the bay.

Never getting out of my depth, head down I swam parallel to the shore. I could see the sandy sea bed clearly, right down to the ripples in the sand. I saw a couple beady eyed crabs scuttle away as I floated over them. Yes I was floating.

As I got closer to some rocks I was met by seaweed suspended vertically from the ocean floor, swaying in the gentle tide. It was beautiful, a million miles away from the creepy mess that washes up on the beach.  It was like something out of a natural history programme, was I enjoying this?

The second time was in the public bath. Can you believe the non swimmer had been designated swim tutor, a task I had been dutifully carrying out weekly for some months with a break over the winter.

We were getting somewhere. Luca had discovered he could put his head under the water and it was still there when he came back up. The key was accepting goggles. 

Our swimming sessions became as much about exploring the underwater world as it was trying to propel ourselves across the surface.

I was also taking full advantage of what ever floatation devices came my way, and as Luca was becoming more confident I could float up and down the pool just finding my own space.

It slowly dawned on me that instead of fighting my body to do something it clearly didn’t want to do, a small amount of additional buoyancy was completely transforming my experience in the water.

I could float without expending energy, I could breathe easy, I was relaxed. 

Now my time alternated between floating on the surface, nattering away without a care in the world and diving under, enjoying the experience of swimming underwater. I challenged myself to see how long I could go without touching the bottom.

I caught myself rethinking the activity of swimming. I had always seen swimming as either lane swimming or free chaos. But I was enjoying something different, the shear pleasure of weightlessness, of suspension in the liquid medium.

Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if I could go to a pool and just float around. No one would frown at me if I chose to wear a wetsuit or a buoyancy aid and there were no lanes, no balls flying over my head and I could just paddle around with a snorkel.

There would be activities to keep me interested of course, floating platforms I could swim around, arches for me to swim under, tunnels I could swim through and objects to explore underwater. Yes that’s it a water exploration park.

I was liking this. Bubble columns and foam kelp gardens to swim through, caves to swim into, irregular shaped pools, areas of light and dark, still water and moving water.

My vision, no doubt a health and safety nightmare. As a climber I can see parallels with the kickback to indoor climbing . Why do you need to turn something that exists in real life into something artificial and indoors?

Is all of this just a distraction, am I just fooling myself and trying to avoid the hard work of learning to float?

The candles have been extinguished, the pumpkins look more sad than spooky. Another Halloween has been and gone.

When I was little we didn’t get passing zombies, our house was off the beaten path, they never made it far enough along our road.

Trick or treat, Halloween is a festival that’s leaves me cold. I am not big on fancy dress and I don’t like the expectation of treats on demand.

I drop into survival mode and wait around at work until the ghouls have departed. I avoid the mobs and get to see the stragglers working their way home, weighed down by their bounty.

To be fair some kids really put the effort in, some parents too, and that’s a joy. But others of an awkward age just use it as an excuse to kick something up in someone’s garden. This disrespect of property bugs me.

Pulling in to our drive I was both surprised and impressed to see we had made a cardboard sweets dispenser. This ingenious mechanism limited how many treats each group of zombies could take.

Unfortunately some kid helped himself to the torch that lit it up. A ghastly affair.

Are you ready?

Not yet you’ll see, so forgive me I’m just stuck in the seat.

Let’s talk about the traffic show, it essentially talks about the traffic.

Okay, wait two minutes okay. Wait a minute let me just look at the map. Okay, let’s talk about the traffic.

It says there are lots of cars.

Yeah, what can we do?

We need to sort it out, maybe you can when you’re bigger.

You can sort it out now, you tell me what you’re going to do.

You give me a good idea and I will give you a good idea.

Okay, I’ll give you a good idea. We can push the car out of the way.

It is actually a good idea. Okay. I have another idea. We can make the cars smaller. Is that a good idea?

What did you say?

I said we can make cars smaller. Make cars smaller, then we’ll have more space on the road.

That’s a good idea what else can we do?

We could make the roads bigger. Is that a good idea?

I don’t think that’s a good idea. Because then we’ll have to cut down more trees. That’s a bad idea. What else can we do? Have you got any ideas?

Okay, we can make cars fly, that could be a good idea, give them wings to fly. Yeah, we’ll give them some buttons.

Yeah, they definitely need buttons to fly. And what colour should we make them?

Should we make them all red?

Okay, we’ll make red flying cars.

That’s a good idea, isn’t it?

Right can you think of more good ideas?

Do you have a good idea?

We can give everybody bikes, if we gave everybody bikes then there will be less cars on the road.

I don’t know. I think people don’t like getting wet or exercising. We could make bikes with roofs so people don’t get wet.

What else can we do?

We could make more trains. Everybody could go on the train instead of in their cars. Is that a good idea? Oh we can make trains that carry cars. You could drive onto a train and then the traIn would take your car to wherever you’re going. And we would sit in the car.

What did you say?

I said we could put the cars on the train. It just seemed like a good idea. Right look, I can’t hear you when you’re making that noise. I’ve got another idea. We could have special buses that go to everybody’s house and take you wherever you want to go that’s a good idea. And maybe, maybe they don’t have any roofs so you get a really good view of where you’re going. Yeah.

No thanks. More ideas.

Okay. We could have special taxis. That you phone up. You say ”I want a taxi” and a special taxi comes to your house. It’s a little bit like a ski lift. The doors open, you just jump in and it carries you via cable cars all the way across the traffic to where you’re going.

That’s a good idea. Isn’t that many ideas?

We’re doing lots of ideas today. Okay, well here’s a good idea. We could have really clever lights that told you when to stop and go, telling you how to avoid all the traffic jams.

More things.

Okay. Here’s a good idea. We could all start working at different time. Or schools can start working at different times. So that not everybody does the same thing at the same time.

And.

We car, Oh shared cars. So there would be less cars on the road because we’d all be sharing and you’re just paid to someone excuse me where you go. And they might say ”Oh, I’m going to London”. ”Oh, I want to go to London too, can we share the car?” and then instead of two cars going to London, there would just be one car going to London.

That sounds like a good idea and more things.

I’m trying to think of all the things you haven’t had many ideas yet.

…

Okay, I’ve got an idea if we lived by a river. If we lived on the river, we could use a boat instead of a car. Like a river taxi that’s a good idea isn’t it?

Taxi Yes. I think that’s a very good idea.

Say that again, what was your idea? You have got to speak louder because I can’t hear anything.

…

That’s better. We’re going to Newcastle… Newcastle.

Driving to work today Luca politely asked if i could put something in my calendar to remind him to check his dinosaur egg later that day.

I was being managed.

Firing up the coffee machine has become a daily ritual in our household over the past few years. It was purchased to save us money on buying coffees out and about.

We are not coffee nerds, but I have grown attached to a milky, cappuccino-esque coffee in the morning.

Disaster struck a month ago when the machine refused to perform plunging us into a coffee crisis.

Rummaging through the kitchen cupboards an old mocha was dusted off and quickly rejected for having no rubber seal. A small cafetiere finally surfaced from the camping box and we had time to gather our thoughts.

Whilst not a major investment, it was still quite an expensive item, an object with moving parts, and who isn’t aware that we should be repairing rather than rejecting and buying new.

When we bought the machine, a De’Longhi Dedica Style in case you are interested, we were impressed by the number of spare parts available. It was part of our [[purchasing decision]]. But this problem looked like it needed someone with a few more spanners in the toolbox.

De’Longhi have a service centre on their website where they promise to collect and repair your coffee machine for a one-off payment. We just needed to call a number and have our serial number handy.

So that’s what we did. 1 week later at a cost of £50 and the machine is back in the kitchen pumping out the coffee rather than sitting in landfill.

Of the adventure is over

The body recovers but the kit lays

Muddy, dirty, covered in sweat and smell

There is no gutter away

Wash and begone

A few weeks ago, I visited a pizza restaurant in Edinburgh. It was close to the hotel I was staying in. I was lured in by an offer on their website that indicated kids eat for £1.

The meal was fine, we enjoyed it, and the service was good. The kid was entertained, and I polished off what he couldn’t finish. Obviously, this didn’t include the ice cream, which he finished off with space to spare.

When I came to pay, the waiter told me that the offer did not apply to all restaurants in the chain, so I had to pay full whack.

Despite my good experience, I felt cheated. I paid the bill and stepped away, but the sour taste has been bugging me.

I was keen to understand this more. Was I acting rationally to have these feelings?

I went looking to behavioural insights for some answers:

1. Expectation and Reality Mismatch: I had an expectation based on the advertised offer, and when the reality didn’t match, it led to disappointment and a sense of being misled.
2. Perceived Injustice: Being charged full price when I expected a discount felt unfair, particularly as I believed the offer was misrepresented.
3. Impact on Trust: The incident eroded trust in the restaurant’s advertising, perhaps stretching to the brand as a whole.
4. Cognitive Dissonance: Fancy term. My positive experience with the food and service conflicted with the negative experience of the payment issue.
5. Emotional Response: Emotions like anger and feeling cheated are responses to situations where we feel we have been treated unfairly, deceived or put on the spot.

So, my reaction was rationally irrational. Expectations set by the restaurant’s advertisement were not met. This triggered feelings of injustice and a breach of trust. The old Amygdala kicks in, and emotions are heightened.

So I am good; I didn’t make a scene, and I haven’t left a negative TrustPilot review. But I am still not going back, so I win.