My idea for The Race is On series came to me on a trip to Iceland back in 2004 – yes, this book has been gestating for a while!

The holiday was a birthday gift from my wife and during a whirlwind five days we visited all the recommended sites including The Blue Lagoon, the Geysir Geothermal Area, Gullfoss waterfall and Thingvellir National Park which includes Almannagjá, a five-mile gorge that marks the meeting point of the Eurasian and the North American tectonic plates.

Iceland is, in effect, slowly being torn apart along the spreading centre between the plates, with the North American plate moving westward away from the Eurasia plate – mind blowing, hey!

I still remember standing in the gorge. On one side of me was the Eurasian tectonic plate and to my left was the North American plate. The tour guide mentioned the two plates were pulling away from each other at the rate of 1 cm per year and some mental maths suggested that it would take five hundred thousand years to move just five thousand metres.

And that’s when it struck me.

This glacial parting was barely imperceptible but it was constant and inevitable and seemed in stark contrast to the increasing speed at which mankind seemed to be moving. The geological tortoise to our frenetic human hare.

There is nothing constant about human progress. It just gets faster and faster.

Even back then I was aware of how fast my life was moving (remember this was before the iPhone, iPads, or speedy Internet) and that it was going to get faster.

And driving that speed was technology.

Nothing earth shattering in that insight, I would agree, but the contrast of our increasing speed to that of the plates’ glacial pace got me thinking about where it would all end for us if we continued to move faster.

What piece of tech would catapult the human race forward at a warp speed that would make all other technological advancement seem prehistoric by comparison?

That’s when LEAP was born and you’ve just read the first instalment of my labours!