5000 calories

Porcupine Rim in Moab, Utah is a fairly technical, strenuous mountain bike ride - 61 km with a 900 m climb to start and lots of ups and downs. Oh, and did I mention the 37 degree heat?

It took 9 hours to ride the whole trail, including pictures stops at "oh wow" viewpoints, and snack stops in rare bits of shade.

Even with 4 litres each, we ran out of water with 10 miles still to go.

The trail was demanding, remote, hot, dusty, a little dangerous, exquisitely beautiful, and enormously fun.

Burning 5000 calories was an unexpected bonus.

It has to be some sort of record. It's been over a week but I've left it on my heart-rate monitor just so I can go back and look at it from time to time.

The reward for this great effort?

Dinner at Pasta Jay's - the best patio restaurant in Moab. A big garden salad with olives and blue cheese dressing; and enormous plate of ricotta and spinach-stuffed cannelloni, in rich tomato sauce, baked with mozzarella cheese; crusty garlic bread; and to top it off - a huge double-scoop American ice cream cone - coffee on the bottom, cookies'n'cream on top.

And not one ounce of guilt.