herneweb

Springtime

[ posted by iain Sunday, March 05, 2006 ]

Three signs of spring for me. 1) You get days like these more than once a month. 2) I can climb my favourite hills without bursting a lung. 3) Cycling comes back on the TV.

Two good rides in the sunshine this weekend and although the wind was pretty nasty everything is pointing to the start of better weather and longer hours in the saddle. Woohoo!

Not too much to write about today. It was good to watch the Paris-Nice prologue on the TV. Once again CSC have already shown they are the ones to beat this year. Boonean was looking super strong, his TT technique isn't particulary elegant but his sheer power got him a creditable 5th place. I would have liked to have seen Bradley Wiggins take the lead but it wasn't to be. To think that Julich was thinking of quitting a few years back, he has made an incredible comeback with Bjarne Riis.

I have managed to get hold of a copy of the 'The Climb', Boukreev and DeWalt's account of the 1996 Everest tradegy and so far it's a really good read [more on this when I finish].

That and a couple of Everest DVDs lent to me by a colleague had me thinking about what truly original feats there are left for 'explorers' to acheive. It strikes me that the new challenges people set themselves are becoming more and more contrived in an effort to do something original. Not wishing to take anything away from the truly accomplished explorers but before long a solo attempt to the poles will have to be done with one trouser leg rolled up to distinguish it from all the others. I put this to a friend over a beer last night and he proposed that the deep oceans would be the next zone for measuring human accomplishment. Although, this is really more about the progress of technology rather than man's limits, there's not many land-based challenges that don't require advanced technology to achieve either.

Can anyone think of a great natural feat/challenge that has yet to be achieved?

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