There is a version of this post where I explain away what happened. I’m not going to write that version.
Three days into a 1,000km, 17-day expedition across France, pulling a 45kg trailer, I stopped. And I want to be honest about why — and what I’m taking from it.
The Medical Picture — And Why History Made Me Smarter, Not Weaker
By Day 3, I was experiencing groin and nerve symptoms on my left side — a dull radiating pain from the groin through to the inner thigh that had been building since Day 1. In isolation, that might have been manageable. But I have a history of a pelvic stress fracture from overuse, and that history changed the risk calculation entirely.
I want to address something directly, because I know what some people might think: should he have started at all?
The answer is yes — and here is why.
A month before the expedition start, I went through a full physiotherapy assessment. Full hip flexor mobility. Full range of motion in every direction tested. Every groin-specific power test came back pain-free. I was given a structured return-to-running protocol, which I followed to the letter. I was cleared, fit, and ready.
What the injury history actually gave me wasn’t fragility. It gave me knowledge. Because I had been through a pelvic stress fracture before, I knew exactly what early warning signals looked like. I had a monitoring system sensitive enough to detect the change. And I had the hard-won discipline to act on it on Day 3 rather than limp through to Day 10 and do serious, lasting damage.
Someone without that history might have pushed through. I didn’t. That’s the system working.
What the Road Gave Me
The expedition lasted three days. What happened on those three days will stay with me for a long time.
I met Ben on the road to the ferry in Ireland — a French sailor using his shore leave to train. Two strangers heading in the same direction, both chasing something. We crossed together without planning to.
In Brittany, through a heat dome that pushed Day 1 temperatures to extremes, truck drivers tooted their horns and threw thumbs up out of their windows as they passed. School kids I didn’t know lined the road and cheered. People leaned out of car windows to shout encouragement at a stranger with a trailer who they would never see again.
None of them had to do any of that. And I don’t quite have the words for what it meant yet. I need to let it sink in.
What Two Years of Work Actually Built
This project didn’t begin six months ago. It began two years ago — the vision, the route, the planning. The last six months built the physiological protocol: the lactate thresholds, the five training zones, the morning biometric monitoring system, the tier framework that translated daily data into daily decisions. Every morning on the expedition, that system was running. Every decision I made was grounded in it.
That work didn’t fail. It functioned exactly as designed — right up to the moment it told me to stop.
The fitness is intact. The protocol is intact. The two years of groundwork is intact. None of it disappears. It becomes the foundation for whatever comes next.
Thank You
To everyone who believed in this before it started — sponsors, supporters, everyone who sent a message or followed along — thank you. You made the starting line feel possible. The starting line matters.
My goal was to finish. I didn’t. I’m sitting with that honestly.
But the road showed me something I didn’t expect: that strangers root for you. That kindness shows up in a horn beep and a thumbs up and children cheering someone they don’t know. That the attempt itself means something to people.
Project TF is an unfinished sentence. I’m not done writing it.
Project Trans France '26 
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