The Silver Lining

Optimism is a difficult notion to convoke in the midst of adversity, and even more difficult to maintain, when there is little more than a glimmer of light trickling through the faraway exit of the dark, dreary tunnel that is your world. Time is just as capable of harm as it is healing, when days turn to weeks, and all you can do is sit, wait, and watch your progress dwindle away with the minutes. And for six weeks, that is what I did. After...

Categories:

Ups and Downs

I could lie and say that - very much like my dining experiences here in the land of supersized portions - my plate has been piled a foot high with all sorts of American adventures, and has left little room for my otherwise frequent blog updates. But the simple truth is, I have been slack. In fact, I have been left with a lot more time to play with than I would have liked, due to a few unexpected, and unwelcome, hurdles along my way. Only two weeks...

Categories:

Living the American Dream

I like to live by the philosophy that things will always fall into place. Whether this is a genuine belief, or simply my way of justifying my organisation deficiency, I am unsure. Whatever the case, my first few days in Kutztown, USA have reinforced it. We arrived in our new hometown after a somewhat flurried few days of travel; it's never easy when you have your weight in luggage to drag along with you wherever you go. This included an overnight...

Categories:

24

Twenty hours spent doing one thing, irrespective of how enjoyable it would usually be, will in most cases become somewhat tedious toward the end. Even twenty hours of sunbathing on the coast of Tahiti would have a certain degree of monotony once the halfway mark was reached. So when I suggested twenty hours of solid bike riding as a fundraising idea for our U.S. campaign, I struggle to understand why we were so enthusiastic about it. We had no doubt...

Categories:

They Come In Threes

It was with an unsettling familiarity that I was thrown to the road in a brutal stack up after only seven kilometres of the Te Awamutu Tour on Saturday morning, and as I lay there with shredded hands and loose shards of stone embedded in the side of my head, I was hardly surprised at this continuation of misfortune. It was defeating at first, having to pull myself off the road to see the battered condition of my body, a broken bike and even more fluro paint scraped from the ends of my prized Sidi Wires. But in my adrenaline-fuelled state,...

Categories:

Hello, I'm Crashy Cameron

We all know confidence is a must. And some would say there is no such thing as too much. But after six years of track racing in Invercargill, and not a single crash, I'm quite certain my confidence to ability ratio had become a little disproportionate. I was under the deluded impression that I could squeeze myself through any gap I wanted to and somehow - through a mixture of good balance and dumb luck - stick it. So when I went barreling between two bikes with little or no more than twenty centimetres separating them, it never occurred to...

Categories:

Halfway There

After competing at eight track championships in Invercargill over the past six years, it has become almost a tradition in my life to pack up and head South for the summer. So it was with great familiarity and self-assurance this year that I boarded the plane for the land of alveolar trills and cheese rolls. But this time, it was to try my luck outside the mild confines of the Junior ranks. My preparation for Nationals this year was far from perfect....

Categories:

Momentum

I've been asked a lot lately of my opinion on the recent doping revelations. I suppose it is assumed that, being a cyclist, I would have one. But each time, I've found myself a little dumbfounded, and short on any real answer, simply because I've never thought deeply enough about it. I guess it was my limited exposure with doping itself; I have so far managed to avert every opportunity for the discomfiting drug testing procedure, and the cleanliness of the sport today has meant I have never encountered this dark, awry alleyway within the world...

Categories:

Takaka: Take Two

I had come to the conclusion, after last year's atrocious second stage of the Tour de Vineyards, that my twenty minute lag up Takaka hill was purely a result of what is referred to as 'the bonk', i.e. the failure to refuel your tank, resulting in the eventual combustion of every stockpile of energy that your body had stashed aside, so that your ability to turn the pedals over can feed only from whatever remains of your mental strength (usually in short supply at this stage), and whatever small insects you manage to inhale along the way. Suffice...

Categories: