Julien's fuzzy blog

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 !

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 !

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.

This bank holiday week-end, I went to the North Wales to walk around the Ogwen Valley in Snowdonia.

The last train line to get there (Llandudno Junction to Betws-Y-Coed) is really nice. It's a single track, with stops in the middle of nowhere. You may have to make a sign to the driver to request the stop . It reminds me my favourite French train line in the Vosges mountains Colmar-Munster-Metzeral (more modern coaches have been introduced around 10 years ago). And it's so nice to stop in a station where you don't have a "Warning: CCTV in operation" sign even in the toilets ...

First afternoon was really windy. I sometimes even couldn't step forward, and fell a couple of time on the side. I scrambled up to Tryfan anyway (in the second gully from the left in this picture). It's a bit steep, but the rock is really good, it's a nice scramble. As the summit was terribly windy, I just climbed on Adam but couldn't even stand up on it so I didn't jump on Eve. I'm not that brave...

I slept my first night in the Cwm (cirque) Bochlwyd, near the Llyn (lake) of the same name. It was a really good spot ! I first tried my new tent The North Face - Mountain Marathon in windy conditions. It's an ultra-light (1.67kg), ultra-compact tent, sleeping one. It seems to be quite good quality, well-finished with even fluorescent zippers so you can find them in the middle of the night . It resisted quite well even to stray winds. Unfortunately, I couldn't test it in heavy rain conditions...

Second day was long and hard (I kinda expect some comments on that...). With long steep downhill parts especially from Glyder Fawr (my knees formally acknowledge my walking poles). And a nice ascent with easy scambles to Carnedd Dafydd and Llewelyn. Weather was rather nice, I got tanned (some would say sun-burned). Scenic ridges were great.

I slept the second night in Cwm Bychan, got woken up by a sheep, and then everything went (too) fast (*): I was back in London, enjoying the sun in Hyde Park...

Thanks to Rachel for the bibliography regarding to this trip

(*) fast is a nice word, as in fact I took 6h (1 bus + 3 trains + 2 tubes) to get back home ...

Pictures and video of the Belfast trip are available on Charlee's web site. I particularly like the following:

• The off (11MB)
• Andy finishing (22MB)
• Peepshow

I let you discover the other. Nice stuff ...

An official waiting list has been set up for the runners that couldn't enter the trail (limited to 2000 participants). Today, they're already 112 runners in this list. If some runners withdraw their subscription, organisers will take people in the waiting list.
I wanted to enter this list yesterday, but I need a medical certificate. And at the Imperial health center, an appointment is required for that. Two weeks to wait ! Hopefully, the position in the waiting list can apparently be set according to the date of 1st request for a bib on the forum (on the ultra-trail TMB web site). This was quite early in my case. So if organisers don't close the waiting list till then, I may have my chance...

I've refined a bit my selection of marathons for this autumn. Athens has been rejected because of a strange organisation and registration process. It's all done by a US company that does its best to sell a 1-week trip with the marathon. New selection is the following:

My mark	Date	Country	Marathon	Runners (approx.)	Price	Deadline	Comments
9.5/10	16/10	NL	Amsterdam	5,400	55EUR	22/09	Seems to be appreciated by runners we met
9/10	31/10	IR	Dublin	10,000	50EUR	01/08	Seems to be appreciated by runners we met
8/10	25/09	D	Berlin	36,000	70EUR up to 30th June, then 90EUR +6EUR for the chip	05/08 (mind runners limit)	Could be nice to go 1 week to visit the city
6/10	10/09	F	Médoc	8,000	80EUR	limit 8000 runners	wine, oysters, cheese tasting along the race - costume is needed - the first gets his weight in wine

Please let me know if you consider to enter one of these races. Note that if I can eventually register for the ultra-trail TMB, I won't probably run a marathon.

Some pictures from the sportcam website (official photographer).

   

Yes ! 2 days after Belfast, I already think about the next one. We'll have to subscribe earlier to be able to choose. My first selection:

Date	Country	Marathon	Runners (approx.)
10/09	F	Médoc	8,000
25/09	D	Berlin	36,000
16/10	NL	Amsterdam	4,500
31/10	IR	Dublin	10,000
06/11	GR	Athens	8,000

I also though about the following ones: Robin Hood, Loch Ness & Munchen. Any other idea ?

If you're interested, subscriptions must be done ASAP (eg. already 20,000 runners in Berlin).

The official results of the marathon have just been released. You can find them here. I'm 165th (out of 1418 arriving) with a time of 03:34:24. Pictures should be available soon.