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Annual Reflections
And just like that, it’s 2025. I like to take some time to have a think about my year, and maybe a few things I’d like to work on. It’s easy to get caught up in the next plan without really taking stock of where I’m at, and theres no better time for reflection than
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Another Round Of Golf – The Gift That Keeps On Giving
I don’t often mention ‘enduro style’ mountainbiking in this blog. Mostly because I am too busy doing it to take pictures, but every two or three weeks I’l spend a day in the Welsh Valleys or the Forest Of Dean seeking out steep, technical tracks to chase my mates down. It’s easily the most fun
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Thoughts From The Hills – A Brecon Beacons Wild Camp
I’m often trying to ram as much as possible into my weekends, usually involving making plans with others. Last weekend I was craving a bit of introspective me time, to take some time away from the internet and spend time in my own thoughts, something that I’d enjoyed a lot of last year but had
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Setting Goals
I’m writing this at 8pm on a Sunday evening, whilst sitting eating a small bowl of oven chips. My original dinner plans were scuppered when I fell asleep with the oven on and reduced some fish to charcoal. On the bright side, at least the oven was warm and ready for the chips. Why did
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Driving Your Own Rollercoaster
What follows is a disjointed account of how I’ve found my 29th lap of the sun. If you want a TL:DR… Make sure you are driving your own rollercoaster. Autumn is always a reflective time of year for me, the shortening of days, losing of light, and cooler weather all bring a sense of the
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Shifting The Baseline
Sometimes pushing your boundaries can take the form of huge significant events. Often though, it’s a shifting of comfort zones that happens so gradually and incrementally that we don’t really notice it, and can easily take it for granted. This sounds like I’m about to start talking about something really profound, but actually, I’m thinking
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On the return to ‘Normal’ and making a plan
It’s been a stressful and nerve wracking couple of weeks since my last post. I’ve always aimed for this blog to be an authentic account of what I’m up to and how I’m feeling, and I think I owe it to myself and to those who read it to write about the more difficult bits
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Final thoughts pre Cape Wrath Trail
I’m currently sitting with my kit sprawled out across the floor, checking, double checking, and triple checking my pack list, portioning my food into little bags, and generally feeling apprehensive. I get this feeling before every single challenging thing that I ever do, regardless of my level of skill, competency, and preparation, I still get
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Scotland photo dump #2
I wasn’t sure how to write about my summer holidays, or if to write at all. Currently, I’m writing my daily journal in an actual physical notebook, which is an experience in itself and an exercise in attempting to turn my handwriting into something beautiful rather than something a child has scribbled. For now, I
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Scotland photo dump #1
A few snaps from the first few days of my first Scottish holiday of the summer. We’ve had beautiful weather for a camp beside Loch Lomond, a long walk up Ben Nevis via Carn Mor Dearg, and a chill day with a boat trip around Loch Linnhe and visit to Glenfinnan. It’s still not quite
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Is sharing really caring?
I’m often the first person to bemoan the negative effects of social media, whilst being a total hypocrite in being just another one of the suckers sharing what I’m up to on the ‘gram slightly too often. I’ve spoken with a few friends about this who are happy and confident that their social media use
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Spoons and Spontaneity
Those reading this from the beginning will know that in the run-up to Christmas 2021 there was a chance I may have gotten covid and had to isolate over that period, cue buying some carving knives for something to take the edge off of spending all of Christmas isolating. Anyway, I enjoyed carving a few
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Third Of Life Crisis Time
Don’t worry mum, I havn’t bought a fast car. A summarised timeline of Rob goes something like this: ‘be born, enjoy steam engines, go to school, do a load of skating, do a ton of bike racing, have a long term relationship, and get settled into the same job for 5 years’. This timeline took
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Wellingtons, Running, and Track Bikes
Last weekend I took a hike out into the western side of the Brecon Beacons and stumbled upon the wreckage of a 1944 Vickers Wellington bomber which crashed there due to an engine freezing up on a training exercise, killing all six of the crew. This was a pretty chilling place to be, and I
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Thoughts on Running
Despite spending quite a few years doing what I suppose you could call quite athletic cycling and reaching a fairly respectable level of strength and fitness (If I say so myself!) I’ve never really considered myself a sporty person. I wasn’t great at sports at school, and always viewed most sport outside of cycling as
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Annual Reflections And Thoughts On 2023
On a long drive with a friend a couple of weeks ago conversation turned to being ‘thoughtful people’ and whether or not that was always necessarily a good thing. I’m a big thinker (although not necessarily always a smart one) and can spend tons of time turning things over and over in my head for
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Thoughts On taking the ‘side hustle’ up a gear.
I’ve been building wheels for a really long time. From lacing up my first attempts following a ‘bike mechanics for beginners’ book in my bedroom aged 15 to building track wheelsets in the shop back in the fixed gear glory days, and then spending many years managing wheel service, repair, and warranty for some of
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Thoughts On Making Changes
Initially I wasn’t sure about getting into even vague details of my personal life here, but I feel like its important to write these thoughts down so that I can reflect on them in the future. Ultimately this blog is for me to record what i’ve been up to, and there is (beleive it or
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Thoughts On Not Riding Bikes.
For the last 10 years or so I have spent the vast majority of my time riding bikes, fixing bikes, or thinking about when im next going to ride bikes. Bikes have been my job, my therapist, my social life, how I met my partner, and how I spend most of my time. Ive had
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Thoughts on 2022
I’m not really the type for specific new years resolutions. They never seem to last very long, and I much prefer to give myself a vague collection of ideas and goals to focus on, that way there’s no sense of ‘failing’ to achieve anything, just a goal to pass on to another time. A few
Rob Borek
borekthepencil.com 