4 weeks to go

Change of plans because of injury. On Friday I went down some stairs and when I got to the bottom, my left ankle wasn't right. In fact it was so painful I needed to have a bit of a sit down. It did improve quickly though: walking on it is fine now. Going up stairs is fine too. But downstairs is definitely not fine: there's some warning pain when it's bent too far forwards, like when coming down off a step.

On Friday night I went out for a careful test ride around the block, to see if I can cycle without my ankle complaining. It was possible: so if I was out in the wild, I could keep going. But I have time to take a break right now - so I'm going to, to be safe. The ankle is improving noticeably each day: on Saturday I needed to go downstairs one step at a time, on Sunday it was nearly back to the normal range of movement.

But that's why I'm not going for a long ride to Germany this weekend.

So let's talk about the NZ route instead. This is it:

I've based it on the Tour Aotearoa (http://www.touraotearoa.nz/p/home.html), which is a popular end-to-end NZ run that is actively updated. I'm just riding the South Island part, I expect I'll take about 16 days. I'm planning to start in Picton on the 5th or 6th, arrive in Te Anau on the 20th and spend a week there with the family for Christmas, then two more days to finish in Bluff on the 28th.

I'm heading down the west coast, because it has more spectacular scenery. This mean mountains. A lot of mountains. I just checked and there's 30,000m of climbing. For comparison, Ushuaia-Santiago was about 24,000m over ten weeks and it ran the Andes. So I'm expecting some amazing views. And to use low gear a lot.

The Tour Aotearoa route is put together for cyclists, so it avoids traffic where it can. But there's really only one route down the West Coast: State Highway 6. I've arranged things so I'll be done before the Christmas break starts, in the hope that I won't be there among heavy traffic. It is part of the South Island tourist loop though, so maybe it'll be campervans all the way...

That's all there is. I could talk about road surfaces (State Road 41% of the distance, cycle paths 4%) inclines (regularly over 10%) but that's cheap drama so I guess it's a short update this week.

Next weekend: Germany. If the weather, and my ankle, are OK.