Just a short blog update, there’s been plenty of miles of swimming, cycling and running, but most of those miles have been quite boring… Well, from a blogging-point-of-view anyway, the actual miles weren’t boring at all, I really enjoyed most of those, but no-one would be interested in every inch of road that my bike rides… With race-season well under way, I hope all of you are doing well, in training and racing!

training, training, training and more training…

There comes a point during a hard interval that you just háve to check the watch, and see if you’re almost done. I’m on my bike, and I feel as if I’m about to pass out. Surely, I must be 90% done with this set? I check the watch, only 30 seconds remain. I feel lightheaded, but I make it through…

This scenario plays out on most of my longer speed-sessions. Unfortunatelly, the ‘only-30-seconds-to-go-untill-I-never-ever-ever-will-be-able-to-pedal-again’ moment (or as I also call it: The ‘Ow crap this sh*t really hurts!’ moment) on this session was during a short one-minute interval…

To defend my physical and mental state; it’s been a lot of one minute blocks during this session, and they did seriously hurt…

This month there were no more ultra-run training sessions, but the intensity, on both the bike and the run, went up. Quality over quantity, and, as a diesel-engine, those are not my favourite training-days. I rather go for a 6 hour run and enjoy the course, than push hard on a one hour run, and come home completely shattered. But it’s all part of the ‘bigger plan’, and every time I push myself through a hard training, my confidence gets a little boost… And while the long runs are over (for now, at least), there’s still plenty of training hours during a busy week!

Raceday in Belgium…

It’s been 11 months since my last triathlon (the full-distance ‘Challenge Denmark’); last year the main focus was marathon running, so I’m excited to to do a swim-bike-run race again! In Belgium I race a ‘111’ race, over an unusual distance: a 1km swim, 100km bike and a 10km run. Unsure about my body (I’ve had some kind of stomach-virus the week before, so I’m now at my perfect marathon-race weight, but without the energy that usually goes with that…).

I get into the water, where I experience the thoughetst fight ever… For some reason it wasn’t just an accidental hit in the water, but it was a 1 kilomter boxing match… Happy to get out of the water I get onto the bike, where I just decided to push hard. It was ‘just’ 100km, and more important, the run after this would only be 10km, how hard could it be?

Got through the bike-part pretty fast, and began my run. The legs just didn’t do anything I told them to, and it felt as if stopping, and sitting on the side of the road, would be be faster that running… Untill I saw my first kilometer split; that was pretty fast! So decided to go for it, push as hard as I can, and make it to the finish line.. Happy, and slightly exhausted, finished a nice 4 hour training day…

Another raceday…

Two weeks later I’m racing a 70.3-distance race. No exciting stories there; the swim was totally relaxed (seeing my swim-time I was surprised, it was pretty good, but it felt as if I was just relaxing in the water…). The bike was hard, over a completely flat Dutch course, where the wind was blowing from all directions (except it never felt as if it was in my favour…), and I suffered through the run, just made my standard mistake to push slightly too fast on the bike… 

So I’m feeling like a triathlete again! Too bad there’s only one more tri-race on my schedule before The Brutal, the next months I’m mostly focussing on longer, single-sport events…

Other than racing, it’s been a month of consistent training, pushing hard on the bike, building the distance on the swim, and doing a lot of (very painfull) hill-repeats on the run. As I’m writing this blog it’s only 100 days until The Double Brutal. I’m starting to feel more and more ready for it… (well, feeling ready now, but might have a panic-attack tomorrow… But that’s all part of the adventure!)