DAY TWENTY-ONE

Ok – it’s been a few days and I realise that if this idea is going to get any traction then I need to be on top of trying to share it. The excuse I would give is that I’ve just moved house and have no regular internet access but, as I live in one of the tech centres of the world, that’s clearly a feeble attempt to mask laziness. And that goes against the purpose of the blog.

Speaking over the last couple of days with the few people that have taken a look at this so far I’m feeling slightly more content with accepting that - yes this idealistic but I shouldn’t be too conscious about trying to avoid clichés as the feedback so far has been positive. But, quite reasonably, I don’t get the impression that many quite believe that I’m going to follow through. Equally, a year’s worth of gym updates and so on is going to provide extremely boring reading. The balance with sharing the progress is to be honest enough to allow people to connect with the themes of the idea but without sharing too much and it all getting a bit self-helpy and awkward.

So…

I hope it’s pretty obvious that this blog is going to be all about the “journey”, not just the transformation from novice cyclist to continent beater or the trip itself but also the progression of someone excusing why things aren’t a certain way to someone doing something about it. 

A caveat to all of this is to say that in no way am I trying to say that things haven’t turned out extremely well for me and, although it’s probably impossible, I don’t want to come across as an ungrateful, relatively affluent, twenty-something doing the whole post-materialistic identity crisis thaaaang (I think I did that earlier this year with 3 weeks in Thailand). The core of this idea is more than just a long bike ride; it’s about being open to shunning the easy and conventional path in search of something else. And yes, I should be grateful that I’m able to do all of this without fear of starvation (except for somewhere in South America) but I don’t think it’s something to be apologetic about.  

Ultimately doesn’t everyone’s dream to please both the 10 year old and 80 year old inside them? I remember reading one of those wise quotes recently (I’ll find it later) that you’ll regret the things you didn’t do far more than those you did. That sums it up better than I could.

I’ve probably covered this already within the first two rambles but anyway…

What I want to do is to try to express coherently everything - from the training, equipment and nutrition (the boring side) to the feelings of doubt and frustration as well as the elation from seeing progress (the human side). Obviously I haven’t got a clue how this will turn out and whether there will be any coherency to it but if nothing else hopefully it’ll be fun for you to read about a bloke giving it a go. I think so far it’s sided more on the boring side – so let’s try and address that over the coming days…