t shirt time

There comes a time in every man's life when he gets fired for wearing a t-shirt (frankly anyone who has seen me sans t shirt knows that that is far more offensive). What distinguishes the good men from the great men is a) whether the t shirt in question was pink and b) what he does with said t shirt.

After a lot of negotiating with various companies I've come up with a few t shirt designs of my own, the idea being to boomerang all that negativity in a positive direction; namely diabetes research and giving to an organisation that ACTUALLY benefits diabetic people. so you can improve your fashion credibility, decrease your laundry frequency and maybe your donation will be the one which helps find the cure.

thanks to my people at diabe-tees.com I've come up with a few designs. I'd like to get your feed back in the form of email (james@insulinandembrocation.com) on the design and we'll begin taking orders very soon. all the profit generated will go to the JDRF, there will be no BMW driving business class flying CEOs here. the same is true for all the products from diabetees and they can print their (awesome) designs on any apparel. I'll be getting a few, I'm all about owning the 'betes and what better way to say that your pancreas isn't getting you down then plastering the message across your chest? And what's more, the shirts come in a “ very slim and narrow cut” so maybe they might actually fit my t-rex upper body?

anyway here are the t shirt mocks - feedback, via email or comments appreciated

learning to love riding

it's my first week back at school. i'm not sure if it's the new shoes, the shiny lunchbox or the bigger kids stealing my multicoloured biro or the getting up early but something seems awfully familiar. It's been a year since i had to do anything other than ride a bike for a living and, oddly i'm enjoying riding my bike now more than ever.

i've been commuting to Uni, right now i'm using my colnago but i'm working on a commuter bike from the junk boxes of various buddies, it's truly a monstrosity, i don't think any two parts are technically compatible. i'm getting up early to ride to uni and riding home by longer routes at night as well as hitting the gym in the day as time allows. on the weekends i'm trying to knock out 8-10 hours and to investigate the tail end of the winter seasonal stouts

there's something really refreshing about riding from A to B as opposed to riding for 300k or for 6 hours. it's nice not to look at your watts and its always rewarding to ride a beater bike past a guy on deep dish carbon wheels. it's about finding out what cycling is about which is being outside, pedalling and enjoying the view.

on the negative side my office is not going to be the nicest place to be a the end of the week as the laundry piles up, and the porridge oats, nuts and raisins in my cupboard probably don't make the basis of a varied diet.

big things are coming for team traveller, stay tuned and expect some announcements in the next week or so and please, please get over to pleasefund.us and contribute to the project. we've had hugely generous donations so far and we're working on incorporating our team stakeholders into the process of deciding our calendar and race schedule but no donation is too small, it's about having a stake in the sport and investing in the riders as people and the future of the sport, not the riders as products and clinging onto the past (treating people badly is the same, no matter whether you wrap it in funky golf socks or not).

so stay tuned and stay smiling 2012 is going to be great

Hungover and happy

Well it’s international hangover appreciation day here in San Diego (in that the number of hangovers is appreciating, not that anyone is enjoying them). This means a few things, one that there will most likely be a run on bacon for that all important breakfast. Two that the grid will see excess electricity demand as EVERYONE hoovers up after the night before and three that I have a US visa again. As of 12.01 am on the 1st of January. I’ve got no problems being in the US and team type one’s p1 visa has no prejudice on my right to remain, exciting hey? If it means I can do 100 miles in shorts on New Year ’s Day, and get a Taco Gobernador afterwards, I’m happy.

Appropriately I began 2012 upside down in a pile of my friends, and strangers on a sofa. I think I’ve spent most of 2011 in the same way, it’s been disorientating and at times confusing but being surrounded by great people, having fun, trying to make a difference and make new friends has made it all a great experience. My world might have turned upside down but it was the people I met who put it the right way up again, and now it’s more stable than it ever was before.

2011 has been a topsy turvy year to say the least. I am not a big one for looking back as there is so much future to look forward to, and we can actually influence that. But I do want to take this chance to say that I have had the most amazing year of my life. With all its ups and downs aside this has been a wonderful experience. For every one person who has hurt me (and especially one particular person) there have been a dozen who have helped me. I’ve learned so much about the fundamental kindness and humanity of people this year and I want to thank each and every person who has helped me. I lost a job, a house, an awful lot of money and lots of things I owned and I gained a vocation, a home, very little money and a lot of things I needed.

So if you’ll allow me; if you’ve sent me an encouraging message, fed me, let me sleep on your floor/sofa/bed/in your barn, passed me a bottle, bought me coffee, fixed my bike, given me insulin, given me sugar, dragged me across a bullring, published my story when someone threatened you, driven me somewhere, sent me peanut butter, taught me about wine or beer or bank accounts or visas or passports or marriage or fishing or growing up, baked me a cake, and indeed if you’ve just sent me your best wishes prayers and greetings or just smiled at me as I went by. Thank you. Oh and if you fired me from your cycling team; Thank you. I’ve really have learned a lot and it’s down to every interaction I’ve had. It would have been easy to give up, to stop riding bikes, to stop trying to help other people with my condition and to lose faith in people. But it’s thanks to the support of everyone else that I haven’t.

2012 is shaping up to be a great year. I’m hugely excited about my new team, I hope I can take just a small fraction of the positivity I’ve received and pass it on. If I can, the world will be a better place. Whenever things get difficult, and they will. I feel that I’ve a great reserve of fortitude to fall back on. All my friends all over the world have done so much for me and I owe it to them to succeed. I hope I can catch up with more of you in 2012, I hope we can share a meal and conversation as well as morals and compassion.

Stay tuned for more updates on the team, on how you can get involved, on the schedule and on the adventures we’re planning. As always, get in touch if you’ve any ideas/questions/burning issues to raise. For now, bon any nou, feliz año Nuevo, bonne année and happy New Year. I hope it brings all of you health and happiness.






-yep typed it with my thumbs: they're what makes us better than apes

Location:On a train to la

Catalan kindness

A study in Catalan kindness




Mechanicals always suck...

Imagine you’re coming back from a five hour ride, it’s gone well with no back pain and you know there’s an olive oil fair in town that you want to go to to sort out Christmas presents for every female over fourty that you know (first press oil, soap, candles, glass jugs – these are a few of my (grandmothers’) favourite things). There’s an exceptional beer in the fridge (brewdog Tokyo since you’re asking) and the wind is behind you. The ride was fun, you met great new people and rode with equally great people you already knew. Sweet eh? You’re booking it a bit because, well Salou is a crapshoot at the weekends. You ride over a speed bump, out of the saddle and the bike makes a rather alarming CRACK. You think to yourself that you really ought to strip it down soon as something seems loose. Then you hear a tinkle, and you look back as you sit down. Noticing your SLR lying in the road you abort the sit down movement just before receiving 3 inches of carbon where you really don’t want them and pull a U turn. Things have gone from sweet to sour.

An hour later I’ve ridden fifteen k standing up, I’m in decathlon where we’ve drilled out the bolt which had snapped in the middle of the seatpost, taking the thread with it. The seatpost has straight up fused in the frame so you can’t get it out. I use carbon assembly paste but apparently you only need to put clear coat on a post up to halfway, the loer part had swollen inside the frame. And we can’t find a bolt to replace the broken one because Italians like to use really obscure thread diameters (7mm anyone?). Half of the staff in Decathlon is stripping bikes looking for said bolt. But it’s not there. Not in the fishing reels we looked over either. After 90 minutes we’ve hacksawed out the old bolt, drilled out the other end (in the seatpost and forced it down into the frame) and I still can’t find a 7. So I set off home, with my necklace holding my saddle to the toptube! Despite 3 members of staff wasting over an hour, 2 hacksaw blades, numerous bolts and a lot of sweat, I’ve not been able to pay them a thing. It seemed like there was nothing to be done, my luck was out and with tomorrow being Sunday and two more holidays this week, I was unlikely to get this fixed for a long time.

Whilst riding home, bmx style, I stop at a second bike shop, wala Tarragona. The mechanic is an ex pro track rider, we chat as he looks everywhere for the 7mm bolt he remembers seeing the other day. We find it and celebrate with high 5s – until it turns out to be a 7.5mm bolt. Fortunately, one thing pro track riders have over me (well one thing most adult males have over me) is upper body strength. Anti seize and biceps are applied to the post and it came out, success. The till gets shut down while we reboot the pc to find my cyclefit documents – a lifesaver. As I was doing this the mechanic set about stripping my mechs, cleaning my chain and sorting out the shifting on the new cassette I’d put on that day. The bike was remade and I was about to be on my way, when I realized that, typically today was the day I’d forgotten my card (in my defence I had to get up really early to meet a group ride). No worries they said and sent me off home, I left my sunglasses as a deposit. I returned and paid a grand total of twenty Euros. Less than the cost of the post.

I made new friends who I’m going to ride with soon and shared stories of life on the road. We discussed the wind, the local climbs and the reasons why anyone would put a triple on a road bike. We talked about teams, my track riding friend had hurt his knee and his team decided that was a great reason to hurt his bank balance as well, I can commiserate. We wondered what would happen to our friends on Geox and what would happen to our country in the economic crisis. Ultimately I wasn’t the highest value customer, I got about 24 man hours of attention for my twenty Euros but that’s exactly what made Saturday such a high value experience. We’re all the same as cyclists, we all love riding our bikes, even if some us have wider tyres or even silly straws on our handlebars. It’s what we share that makes the sport great, and it made me really happy to see this embraced. These guys could have turned me away, charged like a rhino or laughed at my plight but they didn’t. They saw a fellow rider in a fix and sorted me out, they went above and beyond their commercial relationship with me and became friends. Don’t get me wrong there are places in the US that would and have done this for me but there are also places that wouldn’t. This is the bank of Karma paying out, and I’m going to make sure I put in some more deposits next time I see another rider punctured by the roadside or struggling in the wind. You should do the same, we might be in crisis here but our karma account is definitely in the black.






-yep typed it with my thumbs: they're what makes us better than apes

Location:Calle de Ramón y Cajal,Tarragona,Spain

Beating 'betes with bikes

I promised you more but you didn't expect it this quickly did you? Well it's a double blog day today (let's face it you weren't paying attention at work anyway). This is less of an update from me to you and more of me asking you to update me on your great achievements and adventures.

With the help of my good friends at Extreme endurance I'm starting a bit f a competition. We want to hear from you; if you're a diabetic and you've used endurance sports ( even the sleeveless ones) to turn around your control, the send in your story.

Not only are you in with a chance of wining some cool schwag from xe and team traveller, you'll also get to serve as an inspiration to others. I know what it's like to not have control and how it feels to take that power over your life back. It's bigger than any race you'll ever win. sometimes it's hard for other people to realise just how big of a victory it is. So now is your chance to claim your moment on the podium. This is going to be an ongoing contest with different prizes and featured athletes every month. That gives you the chance to be inspired and to inspire others.


Send your stories, and pictures to James@insulinandembrocation.com and get ready to claim your fifteen minutes of fame (or at least exposure to the very small fraction of the globe who read my blog!)

Can't wait to hear from you


-yep typed it with my thumbs: they're what makes us better than apes

Planning for positivity in 2012

Last Sunday i found myself sat outside a cafe in Miami Platja (not that Miama beach) with one of the guys from Geox (know how he feels) and a couple of local racers. Sipping our coffees, and laughing as the older guy's kids ran around trying to chew on a putty textured energy bar it felt good to be alive, to be in Catalonia and to be with such welcoming people.

The conversation quickly turned to next year, the Christmas lights are up now, the caganers are out and that means it's nearly time to buy a new calendar and start riding a different bike. We all quizzed each other about whether we'd tried various brands of pedals, what we thought of the wheels we'd be riding next year. The local guys laughed at us with our worrying aboutbeing given free bikes and gear. As they pointed out their sponsorship obligations extended to drinking the coffee that the cafe owner wouldn't charge us for.

For me next year is a bit different. i'll be riding with team traveller and bringing together a lot of my own sponsors and supporters. This is a bit different to team situations i've been in before. for one things i've spent months sending emails and there is more work to come. Cash sponsorship has been impossible to come by in this economy and that's going to make travelling and racing tough. I only want to work with companies i respect and who are aligned the same way I am. What's important to me is to keep spreading the message that diabetes doesn't have to be a limiter on your ambitions and that nobody, anywhere needs to loose limbs, eyes or loved ones for the want of test strips. I want to get out there and spread that message and i'm not going to partner with people who don't share that vision. By staying true to my ideals, I might not be banking the dollars but I firmly believe that putting Karma in the kitty pays back much better in the long run.

In 2012 i'm going to step up my diabetes advocacy, i' currently talking to a few people about the possibility of a not for profit foundation. I've seen too many diabetics suffering needlessly in the US and abroad and too any "charities" helping themselves to your donations. I want to use my racing and the friends and contacts i have both online and all over the world to make a real difference. As this project takes shape and grows, i'll keep you updated but if you want to help. get in touch, and expect donation links and news to be on here very soon.

I want to take this opportunity to speak about one of the sponsors i'm most excited about working with next year. You'll have noticed that when i post about nutrition, i'm not posting about my nutrition sponsor, or i wasn't last year. that was because i'm not really prepared to tell lies, especially in this area as it could impact someone's dietary decisions and bloodsugar control.

Well this year, given my own nutrition choices i'm going to be working with extreme endurance they make a range of really solid nutritional supplements, things I'd be using anyway, things I'm happy to put in my body. They didn't approach me for sponsorship i approached them. the chief reason why I approached them is their eponymous lactate buffer. Lactate is a big issue for me and indeed for everyone and I am really excited about this. if you're one of those pancreas functioning "normal" individuals you go above LT when you lack oxygen to burn the glucose in your blood. but the only variable here is oxygen. for me the glucose moves as well, so if glucose goes up, the level at which i lactate goes down. and i am bathed in the burn at 200w. we all make lactate and it's one of the determingin factors in recovery, the quicker you can get it out, the quicker you can get back to training, and get stronger. endurance sport is about recovering faster. be that about recovering from a Saturday ride to play with your kids on a Sunday or recovering from a 200k stage for a time trial the next day.

This means that clearing lactate is huge for me. You can look on the link above to see how extreme endurance works. What i can tell you is that it does. What i can also tell you is that they are 100% my goals. to this end they've agreed to hook up my readers with a discount and make a donation to helping diabetics around the world. I think that's pretty cool. you have two chances to get faster; one you'll be buffering more lactate and two you'll be floating on a cushion of good vibes knowing that every time you make a purchase, someone, somewhere gets to test once more that day. i've got some more products and sponsors who are also part of the scheme to share with you in the coming weeks, so hold off that Christmas shopping!
-yep typed it with my thumbs: they're what makes us better than apes

Location:Carrer Sant Roc,Vilabella,Spain

food glorious food

It probably has not escaped your attention that Allen Lim has published a new cook book, with about as much launch hype as a Lady Gaga album, and suspiciously apt timing given that we're approaching the "gifting season" (also known as credit card debt month and coinciding with children pressuring parents into buying crap they dont need and will never use in December) you'd be hard pressed to miss it.

Anyway i've decided to launch my own antidote to such blatant commerical high jinks; the Catalan cooking corner here on insulinandembrocation.com - i'm pretty sure i've got lim licked. I have taken the offseason as a time to sample new foods and not worry too much about macronutrients etc. just keeping my weight under control and my blood glucose nicely in the zone. One of the cool things about racing is all the travel and the great local foods you get to try.

My friend Emily came to stay recently and was impressed with my predilection for Octopus, squid and other cephladops. there's somethign about the little legs that i really like!

Anyway in an attempt to share with you some of my adventures in real food cooking and my longstanding aversion to any food which comes in a rectangular package it hought i would give you a little run through of last night's dinner:

Pies de porc amb mongetes
righto; i'll try to avoid sounding like jamie oliver as much as i can here. First thing you do is soak your beans (sounds euphemistic eh?) for 10 hours or so. I used the big white ones, but you can pretty much freestyle your legume selection.

10 hours later, you've ridden, stretched and had a thouroughly fulfilling day now you're ready for a thouroughly filling meal. So you take your big pot and put in a few glugs of olive oil. 2 choppe dup carrots, an onion and a red pepper. and a lot of garlic. and you cook that on a low flame until it looks suitably brown. then, you break out the big guns; 2 pork feet. in perhaps the oddest cooking experience of my life i made sure to give these little fellas a good shaving before they went in the pot (and yes, that was the last time I used said razor blade). once youve cooked those a little bit add your beans back in (drained obviously) 1 litre of stock, 3 bay leaves and a big branch of rosemary and let it cook for 2ish hours.


once you're done you have a surprisingly yummy concoction. I really like long cooked onions and carrots for some reason (i think its a childhood thing, all those warm stews on cold days). the pigs feet give everything a really nice gelatinous quality and are quite tasty if you like the texture they have. Theyre also damn cheap! you might want to skim off the fat before chowing down as well. Then crack open a good beer and youre away!


seriously though, if we have the temerity to kill another sentient being for food, the very least we can do is appreciate, sit down and enjoy it and make damn sure to use all of it. It's neither good karma nor good recession bustin' frugal practice to let this stuff go to waste. so go out there and make yourself some hearty peasant food (tis the season after all) - i bet if you ate liek this for a month you'd save up enough to buy a Hardback feedzone cookbook