TRANS ROCKIES blog ...

Follow Isporty founder Chris Ward and team-mate Bill Gilbert's daily blog as they participate in this years 7-day Trans Rockies mountain-bike race ...

Bill's Blog

Left London Thursday afternoon on 9th Aug. In the morning packed up the bike, and checked the weather for Calgary and Fernie to decide how many layers to bring. The forecast was good 23-27 degrees C. Additionally the organisers had sent out an email stating that due to forest fires and warm dry conditions they may have to change the route slightly.

Based on that I packed for summer but put in a couple of alternative provisions just in case.

Following the 9-hour flight to Calgary, arrived at 6.00 pm where it is 52 degrees, raining and a strong wind, with thunderstorms threatening!

It was like a London November day.

After checking-in met Chris in downtown Calgary - he arrived on the morning flight from london - had a bite to eat and then went to bed.

In the cab back to the hotel the cabbie told us to stop complaining about the weather, saying that in the winter its minus 35 degrees! He has lived in Calgary for 10 years having arrived from India - hardcore! If the weather stays this cold and wet its going to be problematic for the race, additionally getting clothes dry for the next day will be impossible as each stage stopover is a tent city. But I guess there's no such thing as bad weather - just bad clothes.

Chris's Blog

What's he moaning about?! Bill's got twice as many warm clothes than me - I've got the same waterproof gear that got me from Lands End to John O'Groats in a warm September week - and even then I nearly got hypothermia when we reached Scotland. Think I might be doing some warm clothing shopping to cope with a week over the mountains. Through the low cloud and rain we can only just see out of the coach window on our 4-hour journey to the middle of nowhere (or 'the start' as we've come to know it.)

Also I notice Bill is missing out the important info from his blog. Things like the fact that the place we had our bite to eat in last night just happened to be the one place where the 38 beautiful twenty-something women that live in this weird run down oil industry run middle of nowhere hicksville city - actually go for a drink - which therefore enabled us to stay awake while we attempted to eat our 'tea' at (the UK equivalent time of) 3 o'clock in the morning!

The main challenge of these 7-day, miles from anywhere, forever-changing weather, too tough assents, too dangerous desents, 2-man tented mountain bike races - is actually whether you can remain mates with your one team mate (who's actually mainly there to call your next of kin to tell them you're coming home early - with your arm in a sling - or coming home late, with your body in a box (with grizzly bear teeth marks on it!) - so watch out for the changing tone of this blog from mutual support to mutual loathing.

I'll start it now by mentioning that Bill is doing this race with a rib he cracked on our only day of proper training for this event!

At the moment he reckons the three painkillers he is planning on taking every morning to encourage him to get out of the tent should be enough to stop him using it as the excuse as to why he'll be following 'my' arse all day - but I'll let you know...

Just looked up - can you believe the weather can get much worse in the time it takes to write a blog entry? Probably.