The past three weeks have been spent partying with the stars at the Cannes Film Festival, attending our friends' wedding in the beautiful seaside Italian town of Santa Margherita and finally moving into our new London pad. We have moved in with one of our friends who had a spare room and it works quite well for all of us because he gets to live with his friends for a few months and we get cheap rent! For the first four days after we arrived it rained non-stop and the skies were a horrid grey. Yesterday the sun came out and the weekend has been beautiful, we have managed to spend most of it out on the park throwing frizbees and snoozing under trees.
I am having some trouble finding a new job (welcome to Credit Crunch Britain) and so have been having to find new ways to fill my time. I have taken up cooking for the boys so that they have a nice dinner to come home to although I think after my watery soup escapade on Friday they would prefer to cook for themselves! I have also had ample time to go out running in the common although there are no hills here so thats a shame its boring to run along the flat all day... We have huge outdoor swimming pool just around the corner so I have paid that a couple of visits too - it's amazing how enjoyable sports are when you are not actually training for anything. I think I will try to find some voluntary work to take up some of my spare time and make me feel a bit more useful...
Caroline x
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Back to Reality
So we made it through the road trip in one piece. Utah is incrediblely beautiful - who knew? I thought it was all just deserts and churches! So we had to cut it pretty short but we managed to make stops in Goblin Valley, Calf Creek, Zion National Forest, Gooseberry Mesa, Sands Hollow and St Gerorge! Phew. We managed to get a lot of hiking and mountain biking in as well as a few desert runs.. that sand is a killer it gets EVERYWHERE!! We saw antelopes, deer, a wild cat maybe a jackall and a lot of goblins in Goblin Valley. Gooseberry Mesa is amazing for mountain biking, someone has gone to the trouble of marking out various routes of varying technical difficulty over the rock. Yes I said Rock. The whole trail is slickrock. Which is so weird because I have never ridden on rock before and its amazing just how grippy it can be. Basically you can ride up or down much steeper things than you could if the tracks were dirt because of the high grippage (yes thats a word) which makes for a much hairier ride but definitely recommended for anyone who likes to ride.
We finished up at Mount Pleasant and then flew home from Salt Lake City on Monday. So here are a few photos whilst I get over my jet lag!
A Goblin!
Camping at Gooseberry Mesa
Riding the Slickrock
Caroline x
We finished up at Mount Pleasant and then flew home from Salt Lake City on Monday. So here are a few photos whilst I get over my jet lag!
A Goblin!
Camping at Gooseberry Mesa
Riding the Slickrock
Caroline x
Monday, May 5, 2008
Road Trip
We are finally going! We got the car back today all fixed up so tomorrow morning we leave for Goblin Valley followed by Bryce Canyon, Gooseberry Mesa, Zion and then to Salt Lake City from where we return home. We have had to cut it short as we originally were planning on taking two weeks over this trip and now we only have 6 days. So Arizona and Nevada have been chopped to keep the mileage manageable.
Hopefully we will be able to camp along the way and we have our bikes, trainers and climbing shoes with us so we are both really excited although at the same time sad to be leaving Colorado. It's only for 8 months though and then we will be back for a bit longer as long as we can find some work to do! I will miss this place though its so beautiful and it is so nice to walk out of your front door and be able to do pretty much every sport you love without traveling anywhere.
I will put some photos up of the next week once we arrive back in the UK.
Take care,
Caroline x
Hopefully we will be able to camp along the way and we have our bikes, trainers and climbing shoes with us so we are both really excited although at the same time sad to be leaving Colorado. It's only for 8 months though and then we will be back for a bit longer as long as we can find some work to do! I will miss this place though its so beautiful and it is so nice to walk out of your front door and be able to do pretty much every sport you love without traveling anywhere.
I will put some photos up of the next week once we arrive back in the UK.
Take care,
Caroline x
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Broken Down Car!
Argh! The Road Trip that we have been planning for ages and that was supposed to originally take 2 weeks has now been postponed again! The car has broken down (great timing) and now it won't be fixed until Monday... which means we now have to cover 1000 miles in 5 days rather than 14! Very annoying eh?
So we are sitting here with all our bags packed around us the flat cleaned and nowhere to go! Oh well.. at least the sun is shining again the last two days it snowed and snowed and snowed! In May! So we had around 2 feet of snow but no mountain to go snowboarding on. Frustrating!
Well two weeks from now and I will be sunning myself at the Cannes Film Festival with some of my girlfriends - much planning has gone into the "which bikini shall I wear with these shoes" debate! I am really looking forward to it.. now if I can only get out of here!!
Caroline x
So we are sitting here with all our bags packed around us the flat cleaned and nowhere to go! Oh well.. at least the sun is shining again the last two days it snowed and snowed and snowed! In May! So we had around 2 feet of snow but no mountain to go snowboarding on. Frustrating!
Well two weeks from now and I will be sunning myself at the Cannes Film Festival with some of my girlfriends - much planning has gone into the "which bikini shall I wear with these shoes" debate! I am really looking forward to it.. now if I can only get out of here!!
Caroline x
Friday, May 2, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Injured
Well about a month ago I started my 12 month MdS training plan... week 1 consisted of 5 x 25 min runs with a back pack. Well on the 5th day after my run I decided to go out snowboarding we had 2 feet of snow in 24 hours and it was a great end to the season. Until... I had rather a bad accident. Well technically someone had a bad accident on ME. I was videoing my friend go off a jump but somehow it all went wrong and he landed on me (I was kneeling on the floor) and did some very bad damage to my legs.
It has taken me until now to (almost) recover. I couldn't even really walk for the first week and after two weeks I managed to start cycling which seemed to do my legs a lot of good. Finally two days ago I managed a ten minute run through the desert lands of Fruita. Today I managed 35 minutes. I am not going to push it so I am just taking it slowly but it has been immensely frustrating. I still have a fair amount of scar tissue but each day it recedes slightly.
We are now coming up to the last couple of days in Colorado so we are busy packing up the house and tying up all our loose ends. We are going on a ten day road trip starting here and stopping in Moab, Goblin Valley, Bryce Canyon, Gooseberry Mesa, Zion and finishing up in Salt Lake City where we will fly home to Manchester from.
I'll put up our photos of the trip as soon as we touch down in the UK.
Caroline x
It has taken me until now to (almost) recover. I couldn't even really walk for the first week and after two weeks I managed to start cycling which seemed to do my legs a lot of good. Finally two days ago I managed a ten minute run through the desert lands of Fruita. Today I managed 35 minutes. I am not going to push it so I am just taking it slowly but it has been immensely frustrating. I still have a fair amount of scar tissue but each day it recedes slightly.
We are now coming up to the last couple of days in Colorado so we are busy packing up the house and tying up all our loose ends. We are going on a ten day road trip starting here and stopping in Moab, Goblin Valley, Bryce Canyon, Gooseberry Mesa, Zion and finishing up in Salt Lake City where we will fly home to Manchester from.
I'll put up our photos of the trip as soon as we touch down in the UK.
Caroline x
Friday, April 25, 2008
The MDS 2009
March 1 2007
I have been AWOl again for a while due to vast numbers of visitors descending on us these past few weeks. Well it has all been great fun but this morning I opened the newspaper to see an article that briefly mentioned the MdS. The MdS is something I have been trying my utmost to forget about for the past couple of months but today was a warning. If I dont face up to my responsibilities and start preparing for it NOW then I will never finish that race. So you may be wondering what exactly is it this MdS - I borrowed the following paragraph from someone else's blog and it does sum everything up nicely...
"The 24th Marathon des Sables will take place in March 2009. This ultramarathon has been consistently acknowledged as 'The Toughest Footrace On Earth'.
The event takes place in late March/early April and crosses around 150 miles of the Sahara Desert over 6 days. The terrain varies between rocky trails, mountain slopes, and steep sand dunes. Temperatures can hit 40+ degrees celcius during the days and plummet to almost freezing point at night.
During the event we will have to carry all of the food, clothing, sleeping bag, and emergency equipment that we will need over the 6 days. Water is strictly rationed at around 9 litres a day and accomodation is a Berber tent.
Each year around 750 competitors take part in the Marathon des Sables with the largest single contingent coming from the UK. Perhaps we have more masochists than average!
In the 2006 race, widely regarded as the toughest yet, 146 competitors failed to complete the distance. "
Right so there it is... and for the first time I actually feel nervous about the whole thing. In preparation I am going to/ have already entered into a couple of marathons this summer just to get the whole process kick started. But there is so much more to train for in this competition. Its not just a physical race it's going to be an emotional and psychological one too. And there are so many factors health wise that I need to learn about and prepare for from ridiculous blisters (people have had toes amputated), to hydration and energy consumption, to scorpion bites (YIKES!!!).
And as if that wasnt bad enough I have to carry all my own food and kit so the sleeping bag has to be just right the food has to be the exact right amount my footwear and blister care techniques have to be well practiced.. aaargggghh!
Oh well today is the first day of the rest of my training plan. Luckily I am not doing this race alone Le Berb my Crazy Californian team mate has also signed up and he is leaps and bounds ahead of me on all this stuff already...
OK well I have written it down now I need to just get on with it. I am going to post training plans, diet plans. medical info on here so that anybody else doing it can see my ideas and hopefully give us any advice!
I'm off for a run ;)
Caroline x
I have been AWOl again for a while due to vast numbers of visitors descending on us these past few weeks. Well it has all been great fun but this morning I opened the newspaper to see an article that briefly mentioned the MdS. The MdS is something I have been trying my utmost to forget about for the past couple of months but today was a warning. If I dont face up to my responsibilities and start preparing for it NOW then I will never finish that race. So you may be wondering what exactly is it this MdS - I borrowed the following paragraph from someone else's blog and it does sum everything up nicely...
"The 24th Marathon des Sables will take place in March 2009. This ultramarathon has been consistently acknowledged as 'The Toughest Footrace On Earth'.
The event takes place in late March/early April and crosses around 150 miles of the Sahara Desert over 6 days. The terrain varies between rocky trails, mountain slopes, and steep sand dunes. Temperatures can hit 40+ degrees celcius during the days and plummet to almost freezing point at night.
During the event we will have to carry all of the food, clothing, sleeping bag, and emergency equipment that we will need over the 6 days. Water is strictly rationed at around 9 litres a day and accomodation is a Berber tent.
Each year around 750 competitors take part in the Marathon des Sables with the largest single contingent coming from the UK. Perhaps we have more masochists than average!
In the 2006 race, widely regarded as the toughest yet, 146 competitors failed to complete the distance. "
Right so there it is... and for the first time I actually feel nervous about the whole thing. In preparation I am going to/ have already entered into a couple of marathons this summer just to get the whole process kick started. But there is so much more to train for in this competition. Its not just a physical race it's going to be an emotional and psychological one too. And there are so many factors health wise that I need to learn about and prepare for from ridiculous blisters (people have had toes amputated), to hydration and energy consumption, to scorpion bites (YIKES!!!).
And as if that wasnt bad enough I have to carry all my own food and kit so the sleeping bag has to be just right the food has to be the exact right amount my footwear and blister care techniques have to be well practiced.. aaargggghh!
Oh well today is the first day of the rest of my training plan. Luckily I am not doing this race alone Le Berb my Crazy Californian team mate has also signed up and he is leaps and bounds ahead of me on all this stuff already...
OK well I have written it down now I need to just get on with it. I am going to post training plans, diet plans. medical info on here so that anybody else doing it can see my ideas and hopefully give us any advice!
I'm off for a run ;)
Caroline x
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