My first
part of the season is over and my preparation for the next part consisted the
last week mainly of resting and easy training. I was meant to fly to Girona the
day after the Amstel Gold Race but unfortunately I, like so many people, got ‘stuck’
and couldn’t fly out until a week later. Instead of having a relaxing time in
the sun in Catalonia, I had a relaxing time in the sun in The Netherlands. The
weather was absolutely amazing and I decided to do some touristy stuff with my Australian
partner Kaitlin in The Netherlands. We went to the Efteling, a beautiful
amusement park based mainly on fairytales. When
The Netherlands played Lithuania in the World Championships ice hockey we
managed to get tickets and saw a great game, won by 'Oranje' of course... Finaly, we went to the former
concentration camp in Vught, I had actually never visited it myself but rode
past it in training many times. It’s not fun going there but it really shows
how inhumane and horrible WW2 has been. It’s scary to see the ovens and
emotional to see the names of all the people that have died there. Absolutely a
moment to put your own life in perspective and to realize how lucky we are.
Of course I
trained a little bit in the Netherlands as well but I’ve really picked it up
again since arriving in Spain. After not doing too much on the bike for a week
I did some long and easy rides the last 6 days, just to make sure I’m well
rested and won’t have my form too early. I have also done a few harder rides
with long efforts but I made sure I got nowhere near my maximum heartrate. It’s
important to have a good base level again, but doing too many hard efforts will
bring the form back too quickly. My next race period will stretch from the Tour
de Picardie, from the 15
th of May, until the Dutch national
championships, the 27
th of June. I definitely don’t want to have my
peak form before the start of Picardie or there will be no way for me to keep
it until the end of June. It’s very important to time the hard training at the
right moments.
I won’t be
in Girona until Tour de Picardie though because next week the Skil-Shimano Team
will have a 4-day training camp in Heerlen, The Netherlands. We will train
there together, supervised by team-trainer Merijn Zeeman, and work on team-building
at the same time. The team organizes a few of these mini-training camps during
the season and I think it’s a great way to train hard and spend some time with
teammates without having the stress of racing.
I’ll
definitely write another update what exactly we do at the training camp. In the
meantime, keep an eye on the website of my friend Wade for a guest post by me
with tips about riding on the cobbles:
http://www.cyclingtipsblog.com