‘ello folks,
Let's start with something positive, we had an awesome start to the day with a perfect Japanese sun rise a lovely deep pink, that for about 15 minutes you could watch without sunglasses and without squinting.
We are through the Dell Latitude Rugged Ocean Sprint North and soon to round the islands.
We are now just over the halfway mark of the race and I'd like to share a message from a friend that I've read quite a few times.
'Oi Oi Josh, I was reading the Metro every day following the Tour de France which I don’t normally do but it’s easy when you have the Metro, and Bradley Wiggins won, and unlike other roadies he’s a bit of a cool dude, anyway... he’s into his music and keep on keeping on by Nolan Porter is one of his songs to inspire him. It’s Northern soul, the songs are good but those words stuck in my head when I was raging it on a 'rubbish' bike down Hamble Lane to the train station at 5:30am. Also stuck in my head is British cycling's philosophy ‘the pursuit of marginal gains’ the idea of making small improvements to be successful, did you know that putting duct tape over the lacy bit of your shoes to reduce wind resistance can equate to a 0.15 second quicker time over a kilometre, now if you’re going 30-40kmph then that could be a metre or so, in a bike race that’s quite a margin. Anyway, exact figures on all that maybe wrong but you get the idea. PS I forgot to say in my pursuit of marginal gains riding down Hamble Lane, I took the brakes off because it was faster than them rubbing on the buckled wheels, also I pumped the tyres up as hard as possible, one exploded while I was pumping it up and I near on **** myself!
Luckily for us Hugo has a ton of duct tape in his Aladdin's cave, so we're considering taping our deck with duct tape to imitate Alex Thompson's new boat... just a thought.
So for now, keep on keeping on folks....
Josh, Hugo and the crew of Ha Long Bay, Viet Nam song of the day - Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison