Patagoniacs

How to train for the UTMB when you are living in a city ?

Well, good news : I think it's almost impossible. If in addition to the handicap of living in a city, you have a lot of work, then forget about it.
I try to follow the nice plans mentioned in trail magazines, but to be honest, try to find a place to run 4 hours in Moscow ! And moreover, how to face the training for the + 8,900 m ? Try to find a good hill in a city, and give me a call (hey, I do not speak with you, lucky guys, living in cities in the mountains :-)).

Last week-end I went running, totally random, from one metro station, trying to join a place with woods. I found something, but it took me 2 hours to make the loop not 3 or 4. It's a beginning, but, not enough.
So, to be honest, the UTMB 2007 will be hard hard hard ...
Nevermind, I'll stop in some nice village, and I'll have a big tartiflette  with my run mate !! the aim is to enjoy :-))

Wax on a black carbon board ? Will it hold ?

David wrote a very good comment about the Aviso boards : "Black? How's that gonna hold wax?"
Well, very good remark, and we may have some elements about it, if some of you are going to the tests organized by Aviso. But for sure, when I remember how warm is the water and how hard is the sun in Tahiti for example, I have some doubts about the efficiency of black boards like this under the sun, with hot water wax on it.

UPDATE (22/07) : After a check on Aviso website, I saw they are doing some other color finishes. So, black is not the only option, you also have white, silver, blue, etc etc.(you can get the silver surfer board :-))

Anyway, here is a video for those who are interested in these boards :

Patagonia Summer Content

Exactly the place to be right now (photo David Pu'u).
Nice summer content to be readen on Patagonia.com
Good videos.

Enjoy !

Shaper Room : do it yourself !

Looking for a new board, and you've got time and you are ready to spoil your mom's garage ? Then you'll find everything about shapes, tools etc on Shaperoom.net. One can find here tutorials, and interesting links. AMong them a link to "surf designer"
Manu mentioned this site on his blog and comments here. And we can find there the Surf Designer, a free soft to draw your boards.
Actuacores is a member of the 1% for the planet alliance.

So now, you can take your favorite board, measure it, and enter the inches measured in the soft. And you will save your shape. But, of course, shaping is not only about tools, softwares, products, it's about feeling ! Feeling the board in the wave, under your feet, feeling the strength of the wave breaking on it, feeling the glide, feelings ...

What is the model of Silver Surfer's board ?

In the last Fantastic 4 movie, we see the Rise of the Silver Surfer.
While looking at the movie, as a fan of the Silver Surfer, I was wondering what is the shape of the board. The global shape may look like the 9.2 Takayama Diamond Tail. But of course, the board looks far too flat to be really efficient on a wave.
If someone has a clue about the shape of his surf it would be interesting.
Also, I think that the shape of the Silver Surfer evolved in the time (look at the shape on the picture here). But finally, the Silver Surfer is still on a longboard, and he is rather radical in his maneuvers :-)

Support your local shaper ! Buy a lot of surfs !

Summer time and a lot of special issues about the best quiver to own to face all the conditions : small summer glassy waves, to big heavy winter swell !
The main discussions in these issues are about the "industrial option" and the "handmade" option, in other words, what is the best solution among Score, Bic, Surftech, and your local shaper ?
There are all the "old school" guys saying "no way" to these new tecnology, and they prefer coming back the good balsa boards of Wegener. New school surfers and new comers will fall in love with these nice solid strong boards, with famous shapers names on it, and nice colors. But is there only one option.
Looking at most of the quiver of the surfers, there is most of the time a mix of several kind of boards.
The pipeline or the Guetary gun, of course, hand made by a good local shaper, to face your exact needs in such critical surf conditions. But, for the stand up paddle board to have fun some days, you are not ready to spend thousands of dollars with your local shaper who never did a SUP board, so to try it, you buy an industrial version.
Of course, with the rise of all these brands (surftech ,...), there is always the question of the survival of our local shapers, who are only humans, and not able to produce thousands boards per day. But I think that the evolution of surfing industry as it is now may have some good impacts :
- The shapers will always exists : They will concentrate more on the search of the right shapes, and not on the production.
- The industrialization of the production, if done correctly, may solve some environmental issues, if all the companies are looking to produce more, with less chemical (like Patagonia's surfboards)
- Producing cheaper boards may increase the size of the quiver of surfers, in which there will be a mix of handmade and industrial surfboards.

Well, of course, these elements are optimistic, and we will see a lot of troubles for sure, like Shapers going bankrupt, or industrial companies producing surfboards without any environment concerns. But I think that instead of going against what is happening anyway, we should control it and drive it to where we all want : beautiful and efficent boards whic preserver our local shapers and our oceans.

The strange beahvior of Feedburner

I am using feedburner to manage the publication and subscription to the RSS feed of this blog (and others). I can say that this tool is easy and good to see the number of subscribers, optimize the publications, etc.
But, I have noticed that I have some strange drop down. I reached 110 subscribers in average in the last 30 days, with some peaks at 139, and some drops to 30 users only (right now when I am writing this post, I have 30 readers of my feed).
May be it's true, and 100 people unsubscribed, but I find this strange, because I had another drop down on the 4th of July and on the 1st, and the day after it came back to 130 ...
If someone has an explanation, I would be really interested in reading it.

The EUR 2,499 surfboard

When I bought my first surfboard, almost 20 years ago, I bought a second hand surfboard, and paid less than EUR 300-
Now, when I go in a surfshop, it's hard to find a brand new short board for less than EUR 500-, and a longboard, especially if it's a branded one (Bear, Stewart, ...), will cost around EUR 1000- .
But today, I found the TOP of the TOP : EUR 2,499- for a longboard (and shortboards for EUR 1,499).
Look in this catalog. You'll see the Aviso boards. Carbon boards, black, and nice shapes. But, very expensive. The list of technical advantages is available here