I’ve uploaded all my pics from Australia onto Flickr, although I had fully intended to self-host them here, but have run into a few problems in doing so.

Firstly, my ftp upload was ridiculously slow for some reason, not sure if it is being throttled by my ISP Plus.net, or whether I need to kick my firewall into place, but uploading a zip of the images was taking forever (like, days!). Instead I managed to upload them to Flickr in an evening…

Secondly, I decided to spend a bit more time investigating how I’m going to self-host, I’ve previously used Menalto’s gallery to host my backups, but I’m not a massive fan, so am looking for an alternative in Zenphoto which looks like it should do everything I want it to do.

Thirdly, in order to get all my old photos off Flickr and into Zenphoto I had to get a pro-membership again, so might as well use it. While I do have all the photos scattered around various hard drives, I’d much rather just transfer them across as they are, in their sets and with titles, descriptions and tags, which I can do with a bit of hacking of this depreciated Zenphoto extension.

Why do I want to move away from Flickr? As much as I like the service and it’s simplicity, I want to retain control of as much of my content as possible and I don’t really need to be spending money having my photos elsewhere when I have great unlimited hosting thanks to Dreamhost (coupled with 50gb of space for personal file backups).

There are a few other areas where I’m planning to self-host services I currently use elsewhere. I’m keeping an eye on SparkleShare for their Windows client so I can move away from Dropbox (and I love Dropbox!) and similar services like CX.com which I’ve been giving a go too in the meantime.

I guess mainly I’m a bit stingy, and don’t want to be paying for services I can provide for myself… provided the experience is as good. Hopefully Zenphoto can add a decent uploader soon so I can fully move away from Flickr by the time my pro-membership runs out next year!

Recently I came across Thinglink via the ever interesting The Next Web, and it caught my eye with the easy way of embedding of rich content within an image, so I have been looking forward to having a play around with it.

Having taken a picture of the kit that I carried for the Scottish Coast to Coast, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to test out Thinglink.

Hover over the image below to find out about the kit I carried or wore (links take you to other websites for more info/purchase), with some  thoughts on the Coast to Coast kit, what was good, what wasn’t so good, and what I can learn from it further below:

Basically: I was carrying too much stuff, clothes & food.

Food & Drink:

The fact that I have tons of bars and sweets and such like leftover means I either carried too much or didn’t eat enough, probably a bit of both. Soreen is fantastic food for eating on the go, I throw a cut up couple of slices & cover in jam just for added gooey goodness.

I swear by Nuun for replacing salts & nutrients on the go, I find it particularly good in hot weather (not an issue last weekend) and I was pretty reliant on it (along with food & stretching) in dealing with the cramp I started getting early on. I also carried a couple of bottles of sports drink, and had water in a bottle on the bike and in the bladder for the run stages.

Other stuff is a mix of flapjacks, snickers, cereal bars, ShotBloks, a gel I didn’t use (not used to them, so this was to be a last resort) and the old favourite mini bags of Haribo. I think in longer races it is important to try and eat as much ‘proper’ food as possible, stuff that isn’t purely fuelling you on sugar, as much as for your teeth as for your body!

I made up some sweet (peanut butter & jam) and savoury (cheese & bacon) bagels which were cut in half and wrapped in foil for easy access & eating and the final food hit came from these Power Potatoes which went down a treat, providing a salty carb heavy boost.

Initially I planned to force myself to drink every 20 minutes and eat every 30 minutes, whether I needed it or not. I find drinking easier to do and look after while racing, eating is sometimes forgotten about. During the first cycle I stuck to this well, eating more at the start as I needed it after the run. During the second cycle eating wasn’t as frequent, as the offroad nature meant that it was sometimes forgotten about as cycling had to be concentrated on.

Kit:

Not going to go over everything, but here are the key things:

Gore Oxygen III SO Windstopper

I was very glad I wore my new Gore Windstopper on the cycle, as I hadn’t intended to!

I was a bit too warm on a couple of the climbs but it kept out the occasional shower and the wind on the descents really well (and spashing on the paddle). I could have probably got away with wearing my waterproof, or another layer under my light pertex windproofs, but given I didn’t have to carry it on the run, the comfort was worthwhile. This is going to get a lot of use this Winter.

Waterproof Socks

I love SealSkinz, they are fantastic to have, particularly with winter around the corner. I ended up wearing the thinner cycling targetted ones all day over a pair of Bridgedale ones (super comfy). This worked brilliantly, I had dry, comfortable feet after over 150km splashing through puddles on the bike and crossing streams and puddles on foot. The only problem came in the final 5km, when we had to cross a deeper river and lower legs were completely submerged. Not a lot waterproof socks can do about that, but it did mean I had two soaked pairs of socks on my feet which were sliding forward in my shoes making for a long painful descent and sore toes.

OMM Adventure Light rucsack

A really comfy (running or cycling) waterproof sack, with useful pockets at the waist for easy access to food, and a couple of bottle or jacket holding pockets on the side.

Norrøna Bitihorn Dri1 Jacket

I didn’t even use this, but it is worth mentioning as it is a nice bit of kit. Bought on a whim in a sale early in the summer (to replace my much used Haglofs goretex jacket which is starting to lose it’s waterproof/breathability benefits), it has decent reviews, is super light at 280g and packs down nicely, I’m sure I’ll get a proper chance to test it out soon!

Bike bits

Not a lot to say here, my trusty Kona Jake, complete with brand new wheel following my summer smash with a pedestrian. This was perfect for the race, a MTB was total overkill.

New tyres (Specialized Borough CX Armadillo Elite) which worked pretty well offroad, aside from a lack of purchase on muddy climbs which I was fully expecting.

Also threw a new chain & cassette onto the bike a few weeks before the race along with the new pedals, which are spd/flats – perfect for my daily use of the bike.

The shoes are Spiuk ones I bought on Stodge’s recommendation and were great on the bike, and not so bad off it, think my problems running in them down to the kayak in Fort Augustus was more down to my legs than the shoes! Lots of grip pushing up those muddy climbs!

You can read about my Scottish Coast to Coast fun here.