Where do I want to go?

When you're planning any trip or holidays sometimes you know exactly where you want to go, and what you want to see. Well… that’s not my case! I know the kind of trip that I want to make, and I know which kind of experience, but there’s not only one place to do that. At this time, there’re 3 possibilities for me: north of India, Nepal or Bhutan. The three of them have very rich culture and things to see and are hilly but which one should I take?
Besides the country and things to see there’re other issues, like how difficult it’s to get there, how good guides can I have in one place or the other, and there’re always one more issue, yes you know it, it’s the money!

Well, I don’t know yet which one I’ll take, but I found a picture of a Katmandu street in the Wikipedia that looks like it’s calling me. Can you see why?

Training without noticing it!

This last bank holiday weekend I hadn't schedule any cycling training, so when I met Pilar for the cinema and she told me about a weekend plan in the Peak Dictrict, I joined the team immediately!
The whole weekend was fantastic, featuring local pubs, British breakfasts, palaces, gardens and art, but also some sport! We did a nice walk around Wetton to visit an amazing cave.
The walk was around 10 km long and it was quite hilly at some points, though it was not enough to be considered a real training and lasted for less than 2 hours, I think that everything counts and everything helps!
Now I'm looking forward to come back to the Peak District for some cycling training, and also next Evans Cycling Events.

Up & Downs

Basically, the conclusion of Saturday's Evans Cycling event is that I need to train more.
Since very early in the event I felt cramps on my legs and this wasn't good news... and as the event progressed I had more and more cramps... so I can't be happy about that.
This was due to my high heart rate, that it was causing loads of lactic acid on my muscles. Actually I was surprised that I maintained such a high heart rate during nearly the whole race, most of the time it was between 150 and 170 with some peaks of 180 bpm. I thought this would be a good signal, meaning that I have a good cardio condition, but it was causing me big problems.
I also think that I pushed harder than I should, cause I said I would take it easy but didn't and you always pay the price for that.
I also said that I wouldn't look at the time... but I did... I finished in 3 hours 32 minutes, which is an average of 11.9 km/h.

The up side of all this is that I had a massive time during the event and I enjoyed a lot, specially the downhills that were a bit technical with some small jumps, but definitely not easy, and I'm happy I didn't had any problem.

As I said at the beginning of the post, conclusion is that I need to keep on working.

Testing event for Saturday

I've just booked an Evans Cycling event for next Saturday so I can see my actual status. I'm gonna take this first event of the year very easy, so I'll not push to the limit or look at the time at the end. My only target is to get to the end, to recover the feelings on the bike and have some fun.

By the way, on my second day at the gym I have no muscle fever which would be normal after all that time without training... but it's better this way! Maybe it's because I'm following Erin's advice to stretch all the time:

1. Before the exercise
2. After the exercise
3. Before going to bed

Thanks Erin!!!

PD: I'm going for my 10 min of stretching before bed :)

Every big story has a start

Today, a day after Spanish climber Óscar Pérez was left on his own at the Pakistani mountain Latok II at 6200 meters due to bad weather conditions to continue with the rescue, I've started my own challenge.

I still need to define precisely when and where, but the idea is to spend between 10 and 13 days cycling around the Himalayas. But I won't do it alone. There will be a guide and a support team with me all the time, and much more people will be pushing me all the time from Spain, UK and some other countries.

The routes that I've consulted on the internet talk about a maximum altitude around 4500m or 5000m over the sea level. I'm aware that this is a lot of altitude and that I'll need to get used to the altitude and to the lack of oxygen. Maybe this is one of the biggest problems.

I've consulted different travel companies for this travel, and the stages vary from 40 km to 90 km. To be honest, I've never cycle 90 km in a day... I did 60 km once and at the end I was very tired, not to mention it wasn't as hilly as the Himalayas.

Yes... it's going to hard, otherwise where would be the challenge??

As I said at the begining, I started today my challenge, cause today I joined the gym, but in fact I started many days ago when I make my mind up for this travel and gave up smoking.