This post worked - I think :o)

Howdy faithful readers (have I got any of those???!). I admit I feel much better about my erratic bloging when I’ve looked at the other blogs you see to the right – turns out I’m not that bad! Maybe it’s something to do with the new year and people have new things on the go and aren’t bored yet and don’t need the blogs to keep them entertained. Or maybe not – whatever.

In addition to realizing I’m not the worlds best (nor worst) blogger I also realized I may have been getting away from my real reason for this blog. I wasn’t doing it to have a place to voice my political tyraids (or loose them, like the past post – what a pain in the ass). Rather I’m doing this blog thing to keep people up with what’s going on in my life, most specifically with my training and goals for riding.

So without further adieu, here’s an update:
- the training camp I did in Barcelona rocked (you already knew that if you read some of the previous posts) – I’m supposed to be getting pics on Sunday, but it’s been a month already so I don’t have my hopes too high (doesn’t it just drive you CRAZY when somebody says they’ll get the pics for you and then they keep delaying…… :o)
- riding in NL since I’ve been back has been pretty solid too – I had about 10 days where I didn’t do much riding, but since then I’ve been at it pretty hard. Last weekend I did a 5.5 hr solo ride on Saturday sans iPod (battery died) and it was SUPER awesome – just exploring and going further and further and feeling strong. Sunday I did 3 hr ride with some friends in Nijmegen and we got hammered by a hail/snow/rain storm at about the 2 hr mark, so we came back early (it was going to be another epic one – turned into a Dutch ride :o)

And the big ride was on Tuesday when I had a ‘riding interview’ with a club team from Meerkeerk (near Utrecht, about 75km from Nijmegen). The club looks to be one of the best organized around – here are some good points:
- huge membership, so they have groups of riders at every level
- they enter a TON of races and always have teams out
- in the past 5 years they’ve had about 20 riders make the jump to the Rabobank teams (junior development, continental, pro tour)
- their top team has 8 elites (3 of which are neo-pro’s) and 5 espoirs (under-23)
So on the ride it turns out it was only with 1 other guy (the coach bailed because of a bad back). So they send me out with the 21 year old and I’m thinking “Ok, that’s fine – but who is this guy?” We get to talking and it turns out he finished 13th in the Netherlands last year as an espoir – and he was only 20 at the time. I have to admit it was a bit intimidating, but I figured lets just ride and see how it goes – maybe he’s not in shape yet this year or something :o)

So we ride for about 4 hours mostly in the hills and rolling terrain (nothing major to speak of) and some on the dykes too. He tried to drop me on most of the hills and couldn’t, and there was even one section of a few km’s through rolling forests where no cars were allowed, so we hammered and tried to drop each other – I won the hill at the end no-problem!

Then we came to the last hill, and since he hadn’t been able to drop me he asked me to try to drop him. Well allllllllll-right then – lets crank this up! I popped into the big ring, dropped down a few and let’er rip. I felt pretty in control the whole climb, and my HR maxed out at 180bpm – but I felt done at the end and I was glad it wasn’t a longer climb (but I was consoled by the fact that last fall I was riding cross races for 45-55min at that HR!). So I didn’t manage to drop him, but it took him about 2 minutes to recover enough to be able to talk – and he complimented me on my climbing :o) (yeah!)

So he was going to talk to the coach and said my ‘report card’ looked pretty good (we also had good conversations the whole ride, which is important!). Now I’m still waiting to hear back from the coach about a training race on Sunday – the club has teams that go to several of them, so it’s just a matter of which one they want me to come out to. Fingers crossed it’s the Elite/Espoir team that I’ll ride with (that’s what I’m aiming for and I really think I can ride there).

I figure things are going pretty well too since I haven’t really done much tempo or interval work – it’s all been base base base with some form (spinning) and muscle tension. I’ll be getting into the tempo soon enough, and it’s a REALLY long season – but really, I’m just itching to go now!!!!

Well tomorrow is a training ride with a group from Eindhoven (about 60km south of Nijmegen) – we ride into Belgium and do 10km loops of a course that’s perused by Belgian pros on a regular basis, so I’ll keep my eyes open for Boonen…..oh wait, isn’t he in a race somewhere right now? :o)

Have a great weekend all!