Coorperation
| Insomnia |
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| Wednesday, 19 May 2010 20:07 |
 Sometimes I have these nights where I just cannot get to sleep… And guess what? I have had one, again! I do not have them often, but if I have them it just takes forever to get to sleep. Normally I do not have any troubles getting to sleep. Falling asleep right away is what I do best in most cases. It is like switching of the light, once I hit my pillow I am off! I once did this sleeping contest with my girlfriend, who could fall asleep the fastest. Yes, yes, I won! But I was sure I said two at the start of the contest… And the next morning I was convinced I managed to say two, but that turned out to be false! I was sleeping before I could even say two… But sometimes it all goes a bit different!So what happened? Well… I just did my training as planned, nothing more or special. I was asked to come and join a group of cyclist from a bike store near Groningen and show them around in the flat and windy land of the province. And so I did. The planning was two hours of easy riding and an early return home to have some dinner…  When I got to the meeting point after two hours of secret extra training, I had to come in. There were some freshly made sandwiches and soup! Because the cyclist were not there yet it took advantage of this opportunity to get some more energy into the system. I was still hoping for the easy ride, but you never know what everybody has up their sleeves. Finally the youngsters arrived and after two sandwiches, two cups of soup and two coffee I was ready for ‘battle’. Henk Eggens had made the course and I memorized it to stick a bit to the planned course to prevent us from riding too long. The idea was to show the guys from out of town the beautiful landscape that lies north of Groningen. We wanted to show them that there is more than nothing out there… That there is more than the constant storm whistling through your frame… That there is more than the endless straight roads through the flat-as-a-pool-table landscape, where a dike is probably the highest point… We wanted to show them the little villages, ride a ‘rondje kerk’ (a lap around the church), show them some of the really great little villages north of town and what not more!  And that is what we did! Okay, I will admit straight away that there was wind, but the wind also formed the skies above the landscape and it was magnificent!! I could and try to describe what it looked like, but I would not even come close to what it really was. Normally I would avoid the small roads just to keep the pace, but this time we tried to stick to them. We managed to ride all kind of small and twisty roads in Garnwerd and from village to village and hit a dead end in Saaksum when trying to get the ‘rondje kerk’ into the ride. We rode as many climbs (just a dike or some other elevation in the road) and sprinted for the mountain jersey of the day… In Eenrum we finally managed to get a ‘rondje kerk’ done, but lost the course and ended up at some road which I normally cannot find…. But all the roads lead home and we just took another little twisty road towards the next village sign or sprint as you may call it… But then we already had to head towards Groningen again… Time flies when you are having fun and we were having fun! Of course there was enough time left to hit the road and ride the wind while pushing it! After just under two hours we got back in Groningen around 21:00! Not really early, but still there was time left for some dinner and some relaxing before heading to bed for another fine day of training the next day. Or at least that was what I had planned. I had a great ride and enjoyed the company, the sprints, the laughs, the soup, the sandwiches, just everything! Perfect to dream about, BUT… After having a nice hot shower and some dinner I sat down in the sofa and was feeling awake! Awake from the adrenaline pumping through my body. Meanwhile it was 23:00 and my eyes were still wide open, but I really wanted to get to bed and sleep! At 23:15 I gave it a try, but after an hour of staring at the ceiling, counting sheep, figuring out how much 119*1293 was, I was still not sleeping… After watching some more TV till 2:30AM I felt ready to give it another try and it must have been around 3:00AM when I finally managed to fall asleep! |