Field notes:
Bikepacking expedition number 2: exploring an underwater prison building!
My second bikepacking expedition to prepare me for the Silk Road Mountain race comes quite possibly as a result of playing too much Tomb Raider as a teenager when I hear about a sunken prison building in the middle of a lake that’s around 40 kilometres away from Estonia’s capital city, Tallinn that I’m exploring as a digital nomad.
My first bikepacking expedition - Riding to Keila waterfalls near Tallinn, Estonia
In my quest to train for the Silk Road Mountain Race, I decided to squeeze in an 80-kilometre, 2-day mini bikepacking expedition during the week to test out my bike’s setup, find gaps in my preparation, build conditioning and more fitness, experience Estonia’s summer temperatures, and see what kit I might need for bigger bikepacking trips (like tackling the 500-kilometre Eurovelo 11 route that I want to do later this year).
The 7 principles I follow for taking on physical challenges that intimidate me
82 years old and completing an Ironman triathlon. That’s a 2.4-mile (3.8-km) swim, followed by a 112-mile (180-km) cycle, and finishing with a 26.2-mile (42.2-km) run. Just think about that for a second longer.
It’s stories like hers that motivate me to keep going when the journey ahead seems impossible to move forward.
In the next few years, I'll be aiming to complete the Silk Road Mountain race, a 1700-kilometre continuous bikepacking race in Kyrgyzstan, and one of my biggest personal challenges since a mountaineering accident in 2019 almost permanently stopped me from doing things I love altogether.
There are the 7 principles that I use to fit training to previous adventures that I’ll use to get myself to the finishing line.