Recharged

The past few weeks were blog silent, again. I was busy working and training and mainly finding some sort of balance or rhythm between the two of those. And apparently, that still takes more energy than I thought. On the up side: working those crazy hours means building op loads of over-hours and vacation days. Which gave me the luxury of 10 whole, consecutive days of work this month. So naturally I did what most cyclists do in February: I arranged myself a training camp in Spain. With my dad. On a bike that’s not mine.

Ok, maybe not exactly how most cyclists do their training camps. But then again, I almost always give my own twist to training, so why not? So I spent a whole week in sunny Calpe, focussing on long and easy rides. Making up for all the endurance rides I couldn’t do because of work.

With my dad as a roomie I found a new level of father-daughter bonding, and a perfect pacer on the road. Not having teammates or friends to race against up hills might have taken some excitement away from training rides. But then again: I was there for long and easy, since those trainings are really hard to fit in between workdays. And with my dad being the on-the-road-coach, I was able to follow my pre-determined plan to the letter. Which is an achievement on it’s own.

A week of solid base training, and solid resting in between (no running around after patients, no crazy peaks in stress levels and proper food at the right times) made me feel like I was on a proper holiday. Where I usually come home from training camp pretty exhausted I now felt totally recharged. Just riding around, training in an optimal situation and seeing all the other cyclists there, made all my doubts about weather this whole combination thing is going to work disappear.

To top it off, the day after I returned we had our team presentation. New clothes, new team, fresh tanlines and a proper Flemish dialect all around. It all made me feel excited and confident again: why wouldn’t this work? If there is a will, there is also a way, somewhere.

So let’s start my last block of training before the racing starts. Sure this will work out.

Somehow.

I guess.