Julien's fuzzy blog

You can find some more pictures and videos of the ride on Charlee's website. On the pictures labels I'm called "carot" or "le carotte" (*) for some reason - unknown to me. At least it's not "the nazi" and nobody's called "the rabbit"

(*) in French we say "la carotte".

Rachel's pictures of the BHF London to Brighton Bike Ride. Enjoy !

             

Thank you Ray !

I now have 2 months to take at least 3kg (1/2 stone), in order to have enough stored energy for the ultra trail. It's quite a challenge ! And hiking the GR54 in the French Alps between July and August won't help with that matter... Thanks to you all that offered to give me some of yours, but the exchange may be a bit complicated ... Let me say 2 things to the ones that told me or thought I was underweighted (*):

1. It's not an easy thing to hear. On one hand, overweighted people are quite protected because nobody dares telling them. There's a kind of social taboo behind that: overweighted people already suffer enough, it's not their fault or whatever. You can't decently tell to somebody he(she)'s fat. But on the other hand you can easily make fun of skinny people. It doesn't seem to be a real problem, they're not supposed to suffer because of that. It seems assumed that they could put on weight if they want. It's just fun...
Can you tell me the real difference between a skinny person that can't put on weight and a fat one that can't loose any, both being angry with their scale ?

2. If you believe it's so easy to put on weight, send me your recipe at recipe@vosgesrandos.org. I'm already eating 4 meals a day plus snacks. I'm having plates of 250g of pasta with loads of full-fat cheese and crême fraîche (32% fat). But I guess you think it's not enough, don't you ? So let's make a deal. If your recipe schedule is balanced enough (I don't want to finish like Morgan Spurlock in "Supersize Me"), I promise you I'll try it for two weeks. And we'll see ...

(*) I'm not underweighted: at the moment I'm at my minimum weight and still have a BMI (Body Mass Index) of 20.3 - normal BMI being between 20 and 25.

What is then this ultra trail I've been talking about since a while ? The Ultra Trail Tour du Mont-Blanc is a mountain "race" of 158.1km and 8639m of positive ascent (according to the last profile) in 3 countries - France, Italy, Switzerland. If I'm able to finish (which is not sure at all !), I'll probably take 30h to 45h to complete the loop, half of the trail being run by night. The difficulty is more due to the ascent rather than the actual distance. Obviously I won't run full-speed all the way long ! I'll try to walk at good pace in the uphill sections and to run in the downhill ones.

This sounds crazy isn't it ? So why trying to do that ? First of all, I like hiking in the mountains. I like to see the as much landscape as I can in a hiking day. I also enjoy running, especially long distances (although a marathon is quite a short distance in this context ). I like the challenges. I like to touch my limits, and I've been a quite disapointed not to really see these limits at the Belfast Marathon. So it was natural to me to be attracted by such an adventure.

My training will be slightly complicated because there are no hills around. I'll then go cycling to some hilly places and run repetitively the slopes. My weekly schedule will look like the following:

• running 3x 1h-2h (15km to 25km)
• swimming 2x 1h (2km) - the arms will be useful with the hiking poles
• cycling 1x long distance (probably 150km or more if possible)
• circuit training 1x - for fun

In the mean time, I'd like to put on weight to store energy - 2 to 4kg. This won't be easy with so much exercice ....

PS: if you want to see the pictures of the London to Brighton Bike Ride, don't hesitate to spam Rachel by e-mail or text message to ask her to take her camera and the cable and the drivers

After waiting so long without any answer, I started to forget about running this trail. I'm now registered for the Ultra-Trail Tour du Mont-Blanc ! This "race" will take place in the Alps the 26th to 28th August, consisting of 155km and 8,500m of positive ascent - gloops !

I'll write later an article about why trying to run such a trail. I've to go training seriously from now !

I've taken my old CD case and found this album of genesis, Mama. If my memory is good, it's one of the first vinyl I've listen to when I was a kid. I remember very well looking at this yellow game cubes on black background for hours...

This is the end of the lyrics of the last song of the album, It's Gonna Get Better.

If it's gonna get better, it starts with a feeling If it's gonna get better, it's gonna take time If it's gonna get better, we've gotta start now Cos I know, everybody can feel it And I know, everybody will see it Cos it shows, and that shows I'm not dreaming Cos you know, and I know, it's time for change

Yesterday the VIP team (Andy*2, Fani, Julien*2, Karim, Rachel) went to cycle the BHF London to Brighton Bike Ride - 86km of pure pleasure ! Rachel designed and printed out some really fancy T-shirts (girlie flowers vs boys stars) with our nicknames that most of the team was very happy to wear:

 

The first 10 miles were quite annoying. Imagine 25,000 cyclists launched on the road in just 3 hours... That's a pretty nice mess, believe me ! We had to stop very often and even to push the bike in the first slope... Little by little things went better. The sun was shining (over 30°C), roads started to melt and skin to get red. The route was slightly hilly all the way long and there was a very nice steep uphill portion at the end, frightening people in advance but that was only psychological, of course .

We didn't stop for a big lunch meal as planned, but we took quite a long time to complete the route anyway. We started at 9:30am, and finished late in the afternoon. All this time eating only a few cereal/energy bars ... Unfortunately we couldn't really cycle all together, because of the crowd and split up in smaller groups. Karim fell down of his bike in undetermined circumstancies (to my knowledge). He was pretty hurt and couldn't really keep on cycling. But I've been told that he recovered quite quickly in the first aid tent...

It was a nice ride for a first test of my new bike ! Everything went fine. As I'm more used to moutain bike, to break down and turn hard, I was not very confident at the beginning which such tiny tyres. Especially full speed in downhill sections while trying to avoid the small button lights in the middle of the road. But at the end I was fine, even maybe a bit over-confident...

Pictures should come very soon.

Many thanks to Andy for the organisation of this great trip !

Thanks to Mommas, a nice bug was fixed today !

I've just bought a very basic road bike (Decathlon 7.1) to get into road cycling. I think it's better to train for long distances by cycling rather than running, because this should keep my knees quite safe. I've immediately baptised it on the way back home, with short ride including the Tower Bridge . Riding in London at 6pm is great fun . I'm not very good at crisscrossing between cars and motorbikes yet, I just tried to avoid beeing squeezed by the buses ...

On Sunday, with the VIP team, we'll cycle the BHF London to Brighton Bike Ride - 86km. I hope everything will be fine.

Miscellaneous hiking pictures that I've scanned today.

   

First one from Lake District, I particularly like the perspective with Andy's head Two last are from North Wales - Ogwen Valley - introducing my new tent.

When I go walking or running in Hyde Park not too early in the day, I see more and more often strange groups training there. It's always the same scheme. The trainer wears military-style trousers and carries a small backpack. Follows the group of trainees, often wearing football-like numbered tops. The trainer generally speaks very loudly or shouts at the trainees.
He gives some orders such as "20 push-ups" and then leaves, walking rather fast. When the trainees finish the exercice, they have to run to catch him up. And they get some new orders, etc ...
At the beginning I thought there were only military groups, but actually looking at them, I now really have the impression that they are not. They are so heterogenous and some of them so untrained, that I can't believe they're soldiers.

I thought making soap using grease from liposuction only happens in Fight Club. An artist said he used Berlusconi's grease to make soap ... Is quite funny though, isn't it ?

- original article in French
- google-translated article - fair enough to understand

PS: I know the post frequency has dropped last weeks. I'm sorry about that, I've nothing more interesting to write at the moment...

Ok, sorry for the bad joke ... After 2 weeks of bug tracking, I eventually achieved to get a fairly good result. As you can see it's not perfect, in particular in the uncolored parts (white, grey or black). I'll now work on the improvement of these technics.



This was generated using only 3 low-resolution images of the real fish (the fish size is approx. 100-150 pixels). It was carved in a bloc of approx. 2Mvoxel (voxel size: 1mm, rendered 1.5mm to fill holes) in 5 minutes.

Many thanks to Dan for the camera calibration.

Yesterday night, I went to see (and listen to ) a concert by the Imperial College Choir (Maria sings in it) and the Imperial College Symphony Orchestra.
"And what do you know, my brothers and only friends, it was the 9th, the glorious 9th of Ludwig Van" (guess the movie it comes from...). Listen to a CD is rather nice, but listen to hundred of singers is completely great (c) Brice ...