Team mates, Kayaks, Wheels, Maps and Milkshakes

Liam made it safely to the UK on Saturday so Team Ixion now has its full complement of racers and support crew ready to go.

On the way back from the airport we call in to visit Ivan Lawler the UK importer of Epic Kayaks to collect a V10 surfski they have loaned Liam for the race. A lovely piece of kit which exudes "fast". It makes my nice safe sea kayak look bloated and overweight (9kg vs 27kg!), but equally it looks so narrow I'd struggle to paddle it on a calm river, let alone in the sea. With the boat safely back home we now have, in theory, a complete set of kit, but I'm sure there'll be a very long list of last minute panics.

The race has a mixture of road and off-road legs, so ideally we'll each have two sets of wheels, one with slow knobbly tyres on, one with narrow slicks on. We have four set of wheels between us, but fitting them to the bikes is proving tricky due to axle and disc alignment issues. Our frien Bryan Rozier is making us up a set of spacer so we can fit a second set of wheels to Liam's bike, but it looks like we're out of luck getting the second set fitting mine. It's a long and complicated tale which isn't worth recounting, but the combination of weird spacer layouts on the Hope forks and centre-lock discs on two of the sets of wheels combine to need a fair amount of work, and time which we haven't got. Not a disaster, and I'll just ride with very light knobblies, or if it's dry semi-slicks which are quick on the road and tolerable in dry dirt.

More of an issue is the saddle height on Liam's bike - it's steadfastly corroded in place and so far no amount of persuasion has freed it off. This is a bit of a problem as Alex, who has leant us the bike, clearly has legs a few inches shorter than Liam's. Not quite sure who this one gets resolved at the moment.

The final route book came out on Friday so from that and the wonder Anquet mapping software we now have a complete set of maps with our planned routes for the event. The fact that they extend to 24 sheets of A4 at 1:50k highlights that this is fair trek. Just need to get them laminated and that's another box ticked.

The lovely folks over at ForGoodnessShakes have been kind enough to sponsor us for the race and have supplied a stack of their great recovery drinks. Recovery is critical in multi-day races, so these will be a real asset. They're also great during regular training - a good-tasting drink at the end of a session which is specifically designed to help you recover. You also avoid all the messing with mixing up powdered drinks that comes with most recovery products - I can't recomend them enough (and that isn't 'sponsor talk', I normally buy them with my hard-earned pennies, so am immensely grateful for their kind supply for this race).

Think that's all for now - today's mission is to get the directions for my support crew (mum and dad) sorted so that hopefully my bike and boat will be in the right place at the right time.