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Ironman Coeur D'Alene: Change |
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Monday, 12 July 2010 20:40 |
Groningen - Of course, as always, I have not written anything yet about the race, but I cannot postpone it any longer. I have set myself behind my computer and I want to get this story on ‘paper’ in one pull. No more delays, no more hesitations, no writing pieces over and over, just an article written without leaving the keyboard by itself for a second. This also means that I cannot rewrite large chunks of the text and I therefore hope that it is all going to be clear and readable to you all.
It has been about a week since I got back from Seattle and I feel a bit awkward. Before the race I had the feeling that all was going to be okay! Perfect you might say, but the thing is that it is going to be okay, the only question that remains at that point is: in what way? This time I flew earlier, did not forget anything at the airport, had no cramps before the race and last but not least I was looking forward to race day! The only thing left was the race itself...
 The days in Seattle and Coeur D’Alene had been good to me. Ben and Cindy Bigglestone gave me their spare bedroom for the first week and hooked me up with a lot of their friend for training. Even though the weather was not as nice as hoped for, things went really well. Training was good in the beautiful surroundings of Seattle, the food was excellent and Ben learned me a lot. After a week in Seattle we moved to CDA by car. Just a five hour ride over Interstate 91, up the mountains, down the mountains, through the planes and into the woods around CDA, that ride was so nice! And so was CDA, a beautiful lake, wonderful people and of course I was about to do what I like most: an Ironman! My home stay at Vicki’s was perfect! The bed was good and she hooked me up with Walter, or was his name Harry, or Mark… It doesn’t matter! He showed me around the days before the race and told me all there was to know about the course, the lake, transit and everything else I wanted to know to be prepared for race day! Which was coming closer and closer, as the briefing was held, the bike was in transit and I went to bed at 9:30…
Getting up was not as difficult normal. I had stuck with the European timezones for a bit, which meant I got up at about 5AM each morning. So when the alarm clock sounded at 3:30 I almost jumped out of the bed. From their my usual routine kicks in till about 3 minutes before the race! I will spare you this routine, because I belief I mentioned it before in some previous post?! And I guess that everybody has their own way of getting ready for the big day?
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Saturday, 19 June 2010 15:44 |
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 Newcastle (WA-United States) - Time flies when you are having fun! And guess what? I am having fun and time flies just too fast at the moment. Training and racing have been good to me. In Groningen I had my first win of the season at the ’70.3’ race I did. Training wise everything is nicely on track and things are feeling great! Once again my home has moved, not to Lanzarote this time, but to Ben & Cindy’s. Last Monday I flew to Seattle to do my race in Coeur D’Alene next Sunday. Up till now I have been trying to get rid of my jetlag and trying to get the 22hour trip out of my system. And things are looking great. Yesterday I had my first great day at the office in Seattle!
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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…
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Ironman South Africa: cramps all over |
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Monday, 03 May 2010 07:36 |
 Looking for excuses is something I do not like to do and will not do, or at least try not to. Everything is just part of the deal, whether you like it or not! It might be an erupting volcano, a missing laptop or cramps from fingers till toes, but is this not just part of the deal? Of course this can make racing harder, but did anybody ever said it was going to easy? There is nothing you can do about it, except from giving a 100% (more is impossible, less is easy)and racing the best you can. And giving a 100% is what I gave last weekend in Ironman South Africa!
Last week was crazy! Flying to Port Elizabeth on Wednesday, race on Sunday, leave on Tuesday and be back home on Wednesday! Although it was one hack of an adventure, I will not try to attempt this again. If you like adventures, you to go to South Africa, if you want to do something different than something like a city trip and you are willing to spent some more money on it. But for racing… I thought about writing solely about my race, but since has not been any change to write something on this laptop in South Africa for some dumb reason (I take full responsibility for this), I have put in my whole trip.
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Tuesday, 20 April 2010 12:31 |
Groningen - It is Tuesday morning and again I am trying to get a hold of KLM. Yesterday I have been phoning for ever to do so, but I did not succeed… I gave it up after three hours on the phone and listening to some song and not getting a hold of anybody. Instead of retrying it this morning I set my alarm at 3AM and gave it a try. After only 40 minutes I got someone on the phone, so patient pays off after all! After just 3 minutes my flight was rebooked to Wednesday and my connection was even better than it would have been this Monday. So no more worries I thought… Well, I still had to phone again to see if it was okay to bring my bike…
And here I am, again trying to get a hold of someone at KLM. This time there is no music playing and I constantly get this voice saying: ‘All lines are occupied, thank you for waiting.’ So again I am patient and might have to wait for another hour… But I am getting there… So close and hopefully off to South Africa tomorrow.
The last couple of days have been hectic. Perhaps a flight, perhaps not, perhaps a flight, perhaps not, it just made me a bit stressful. I know that I wrote something about not complaining about things on which you have no influence… And actually I am not complaining, but it is just annoying not to know where you stand. There is really nothing you can do about this volcano, which shows once again that we are not above nature, but just a part of it. You just have to be patient what nature hold for you.
Finally someone on the phone after forty minutes! Everything is set! Tomorrow no more delays if nature keeps quite for a bit! Off to South Africa to race myself and thank you to KLM for the help for all those who were stranded and who needed to be rebooked! Although it took a bit longer than normal, they just managed things really nice! |
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Friday, 09 April 2010 21:33 |
 Tinajo (Lanzarote, Spain) - Lanzarote might be one of the greatest places in the world to train. There is a great 50 meter outdoor pool at Club La Santa, where you can get nice Speedo lines as I did on my unbelievable white butt. You can ride fairly flat, hilly and mountains between one of the 140 volcanoes on the island. And running is perfect on the blue track, on the road or one of the many dirt tracks through the country side. All together enough places and different ways to train and to spend 30 hours of training without noticing it!
Before this trip I camped here at Lanzarote for about a week each time. Every trip was an incredible overload of training, which helped me big time to get where I wanted to be. This fourth time however is just a bit different, not just a week at the island, but two instead. Less hours, less training, less overload, less stress, less people, less more, but still enough was and is done! I got a new change to define my (personal) boundaries. Both mentally and physically I got stretched to and over my boundaries, which made me redefine these boundaries for the future.
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A different view at things |
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Thursday, 25 March 2010 10:37 |
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I wanted to write this article about all the complaining I did over the years. It took me a while and I still find it hard to start somewhere. Although my English is probably better than most of the foreigners’ Dutch, it is still hard to describe everything perfectly. I might pick words wrong, or put them in an order which is not correct and offend, hurt or upset someone by it and that is the last thing I would want to happen. I do not want to harm, hurt or offend anybody! I do not want to make myself look better than anybody else, I just want to point something out and I really hope that you will benefit from this article! This piece really feels as a sort of disclaimer, but I just wanted to say this before I post the article which I wrote before this little piece of text. But here we go!
 It must have been December when the first snow came from the sky. Beautiful, that is going to be a white Christmas as everybody hoped. And indeed it turned out to be a white one for the first time since ages!! BUT, after Christmas the snow did not melt…. Not the next week, not the week after that and then I became more and more frustrated each day! Training plans changed daily to avoid the snow and the indoor turbo became my friend for cycling! But I wanted to be able to train outside without having to plan each step careful, turn on the bike and not slip! The weather did not improve and it even became frustrating! It became even worse, it was no longer just the weather that made me complain, there were other things that started to be annoying... It really got to me and started to wear me down physically and mentally! And then lightning struck me: THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANT!
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Meanwhile it is 4:39AM and I just got out of bed. Perhaps you could call this dedication to writing blogs, but I prefer to call this insomnia. Waking up and getting out of bed this early does not happen that often to me, actually it is one of the things I prefer to skip on race day… But I guess that getting up early is just part of the deal… This time however is just one of these nights or mornings on which I could not get back to sleep. Perhaps it is the thought of me postponing this blog all the time that got me out of bed… So I will give it a go and see what the early morning brings writing this blog.