Journal

A gift for someone's first marathon

The second one is a time. The first one is a fact, and it never happens again. What to give, and the timing that...

Gifts for a cyclist who owns everything

They have the bottles, the socks and three sets of tyre levers. What is left is the one category that cannot be bought in...

What to give after the race, not before

The week after a big event is when the gift lands hardest and when almost nobody sends one. What works, and why the timing...

Framing a route print without ruining it

A mount, a frame colour and a glass choice. Three decisions, and only one of them is close.

Everesting, drawn honestly

8 848 metres of climbing on one hill, which produces the strangest-looking route file in cycling: a single line, ridden dozens of times.

What elevation gain actually counts

A single hidden number decides whether your ride climbed 462 metres or 1 505. Here is what a threshold is and why every service...

Why your marathon reads 42.6 km

The course was measured to 42.195. Your watch says more. Both are right, and the reason is worth knowing before you print either number.

Copenhagen Marathon on paper

A flat course through a compact city, which makes for a dense drawing and one of the better arguments for putting a map underneath.

Every way you have gone to work

Two fixed points and several hundred different routes between them. Layered, that is a map of a decision rather than of a journey.

A print that takes 90 seconds and lands

The endurance athlete on your list is the hardest one, because they buy their own equipment better than you can. The route is the...