Hello!

This August I will be joining a special horde of world class riders and adventurers in the inaugural Mongol Derby, (see http://mongolderby.theadventurists.com/) a crotch-pounding 1000km race across the Mongolian steppe aboard a series of native, semi-wild and very tough horses.   It makes the Guiness Book of Records as the longest horse race ever staged, and early analysis suggests it will be among the toughest.

I will be navigating, foraging, finding water for me and the neddies, coping with extremes of heat and cold, fending off wolves, washing in rivers (If i can afford to make a pit stop...), and introducing the nomads who have herded up some 800 of their precious horses for our racing pleasure to my Wuthering Heights rendition after a round or two of fermented mare's milk.

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I am just back from a decent run round Hyde Park.  Googlemaps says 10kms, which feels about right.  The sun was still out and strong so I worked up a good sweat and thoroughly enjoyed having no watch on, no train to catch, nowhere specific to be.  Tonight was supposed to be a riding night, but events conspired and I found myself in London, with, wait for it, a spare couple of hours.   Lloyds had still failed to send me a new cash card after purse-theft last week, and having hammered the credit card in the interim and maxed it out completely (oops!) I was once again at a financial impasse, and, facing imminent nationalisation or stealing the money from our house kitty which is supposed to be for tin foil and loo roll, i......stole a tenner from the kitty for the train home.  I felt guilty though!  And it turned out that I couldn't get any horses lined up for this evening anyway.  Actually, I don't mind.  I am sat out on my little balcony for the first time, the herbs are looking plush and miraculously the wifi seems to stretch out here.  I have just eaten my first meal not in front of an offensively cumbersome excel model since the weekend, and it tasted all the sweeter.   Now clean and showered, and ready to slog my guts out all over again tomorrow- weights circuit #2....

This week has mainly been about non-equestrian reconnaissance.  As my Dad likes to remind me, time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted, and there are a great number of contingencies which I can cover off right here in SW9.  So, from the top....

 Learning Mongolian- yes, I have been trying to get some useful language under my belt.  It was recommended to me last night that I learn the Mongol for "call your dogs off!"- apparently this is by far the most useful greeting when approaching a nomad's ger, (yurt) as the advanced welcome party is likely to consist of a slavering rabid dog, trained to attack me, and no doubt then eat me and do something very resourceful with my skin, hair and teeth.  So, repeat after me- "NOKHOIGOO!!"

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Am currently up to my eyeballs in Def14As.  For those of you uninitiated in American SEC filings, it's the really, really long one, which describes, in eye-watering detail, just how much Executive teams in corporate America are earning.  I will be mostly plugging all the relevant numbers into a clever model which will spit out, hopefully before the bell goes (and the axe falls) on Friday night, whether these Free Market Titans make our client look underpaid or not.  The deadline is already looking a trifle ambitious given the volume of extra-curricular stuff on the agenda, hence operation Data Monkey now. 

A big weekend in the saddle, with four different rides (well, five if you include a quick guest-slot on Tucker on Sunday morning- a straw-poll of two determined that the Mors L'Hotte double bridle suited him better).  I have picked up another spare ride; on account of my silky skills in the saddle on Owl, I have graduated to her very zippy stable-mate Sky, a twenty-one year old pedigree Arab who likes to party, and who piaffe-passaged round the local farmland to the amusement of her very generous owner Kate Parker.  

I also had some sublime evening riding on Thursday night, just after my last bulletin.  I arrived off the train to Basingstoke, where Mum had left me her car, complete with riding kit and little picnic basket of coffee and sandwich.  Zipped round to livery yard where Logan, who I am stealing from Tamsin Thorne while she looks the other way and does her GCSEs, was innocently grazing as the sun set.  I had a bit of a job locating the little fella as he had his fly sheet on in jousting charger style, but he gave himself away with a wary look in my direction and I fished him in and tacked him up.  Church Brook Farm is a lovely yard in Tadley with beautifully manicured cantering tracks which we took full advantage of as the sun sank below the horizon.  Had a bit of a moment.  Ah, the romance!  Snapped out of it when a deer got up and leapt out in front of us, sending Logan launching sideways and me grabbing a fistful of mane.  Drove home to Local Hero theme, all was right with the world. 

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It's Monday morning and i have landed in a heap at my desk again, though the feeling of crash landing is happening earlier and earlier with each passing week.  Over the course of the weekend I have laid waste to my parents' house in my quest to squeeze every minute of Derby training from the time I had.  Here's a quick inventory, to add to my working week of Monday circuits, Tuesday x-train and weights and 9pm ride on Tucker, Wednesday 6am ride, Thursday running sprint intervals and weights.  Zzzzz.... 

Dressage tests- 3.  Wins, 0, placings, 3.  Total times my mother expressed dismay at the professionals who beat us being "pot-hunters", and the judges who put us second being "in their pocket"- c. 12.

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People are starting to stare.  As I thundered over Hungerford Bridge to Waterloo last night for another riding double whammy in the Shire, people seemed to be giving me a wide berth, and literally slowing to watch me stride past.  No, it was not a good hair day.  Far from it.  On Monday lunch time, flush from a weekend's excess, I signed up for a circuits class called Last Man Standing at the gym.  Memories of rowing ‘land training' came flooding back, including the odd reflex which appears to happen only to me, of starting to cry when in the middle of a medley of squat jumps.  Hopefully none of the Men Standing noticed.  Anyway, time galloped on in the haze of press-ups, burpees, dead lifts etc, and I had to forego a shower and wobble back across Trafalgar Square to the office in the interests of time.  One of those special ‘get naked and wave your arms around under the air-con' showers (in the gym, not the office).  Bit scummy, I know, but all good training. 

My walk has got progressively funnier since then really.  Another gym session yesterday lunchtime didn't really serve to loosen me up.  Bruno the fitness guru prowled past and turned my cross trainer up to make me sweat a bit more.  And proceeded to grill me on my navigating and fending for self skills (as yet these only exist on paper).  He is apparently ex-military and can teach me all sorts of useful stuff besides hamstring curls.  I love this guy! 

By last night I had a kind of Simon Schama walking lunge on- and this despite consuming most of a foil of Nurofen.  Hmm.  Anyway- add to the Schama 2 hours in the saddle, with about 6 hours sleep in between, and you have yourself a very, very funny walk.   Competing Tucker on Friday and Sunday, so some useful practice under out belts this morning.  Will not be doing any more squat jumps between now and then....

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It's been a decent first week's Derby training.  In a flurry of adrenaline i went to the gym TWO DAYS RUNNING in my lunch hour at work.  This is another military-style operation which involves a series of calculations of the sort "how sweaty am i going to get/ how many more minutes can i keep this up/ when will colleagues notice i am awol/ what chance of seeing Carlos the fantasy spinning instructor if i just loiter by this here weights stack a little longer?". 

I explained the concept of the Derby to one of the trainers whilst on the ergo, and he said we could do a training session to target my riding muscles and also consider some other stuff to get a programme together for me.  So day two involved some strategising.  Obviously, losing weight will be a priority, he said.  Was that so obvious, i mused, whilst trying to make a plank with elbows on one swiss ball and feet on another.  Hmmph.  Lots more fairly undignified exercises followed, generally involving an unstable surface (half Swiss ball) and pulling a cable weight in a big arc across the body to make my core muscles work extra hard.

Other homework: all endurance work to be done outside, ideally in the heat of the day, to get used to the kind of water loss i'll be dealing with.  I was able to simulate this most effectively today by going for a long run in Oxford with a steaming hangover, hence compounding the dehydrating effects of sun and sweat to a level i can only describe as 'blinding'.  A big group of friends had gathered for the memorial dinner of Elis White, whose sudden death last year was the catalyst to my adventures in India, and hence my Derby entry.  We had the kind of night he would have thoroughly approved of, and I am sure he had a good laugh at my wobbling 6 miler this afternoon, while all my mates had another Bloody Mary.

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