This weekend is the dress rehearsal, an overnight ride to go through all the motions with all the gear and check that it all works. It'd be good if the ride could include some proper hills - so it's a good opportunity to ride the Dutch Mountain Trail, if only for the lolz. (That's a real thing: 100km long, 1600m climbing. It's a route at the far corner of the Netherlands right next to France and Germany; it scrapes along the borders to pick up all the hills possible. )

But it's going to take a couple of hours to get the gear ready...

The big news of the week is that my handlebar camera broke during the weekend ride. Nothing stupid, it was securely clipped into place. I went over a speed bump, just the same as many others along the trip, and heard the clatter as it hit the road and tumbled. Hauled in the brakes, pulled over, then circled back to check the damage ... it was not pretty. There was some superficial damage to the body but the lens was cracked in three places and the ring holding it in place had been smeared out of shape - signs of a very hard hit.

I've changed the route quite a bit: I'm planning a long section through Chile.

The route I posted originally was the default route from Ushuaia to Lima, with some tweaks to the start and end because they’re tricky areas, with only a few towns. The problem was when I went back and started looking at the middle part. It's a straight line up through Argentina, and it turned out that instead of being a nice simple flat run with regular towns, it was going to be a lot of long and careful steps from small town to small town. Also tricky.

Fortunately, there's two amazingly awesome options which I totally didn't know about until I went Googling: Ruta 40 and Carretera Austral.

The washing machine has been worked unusually hard this week. It's the final and hardest week of the 4-week cycle, and every day except Friday had something scheduled.

The big one was the Wednesday fitness test. The dilemma is: push hard to get a good high number, and need to push equally hard in every class from now on? Or underperform?

I've been looking for some new shorts. The pair I wore for the European Divide were great! But they got ripped in Sweden and there's been a few rounds of repairs and repeat ripping. Also the padding has now had nearly 10,000km of use. So it's time to find a replacement.

Unfortunately, this has been more complicated than it should be.

Mixed results this week. Failed electronics. Failing timelapses. And the cat threw up.

This week is all about timelapse ride videos and shady websites. And steel teeth. 

The US training camp continues, so let's talk about training. In Washington DC.

Training continues, while on holiday in New York. Which is having a heatwave.

A very productive week, clearly indicating that everything is being efficiently worked on.

The European Divide finished up over a year ago ...