We made it to the southern part of Germany near Bodensee. Not the most traditional place for going training this time of year, since you can easily find places with better weather and warmer temperatures. Our mission next to new training environment (and hopefully a couple of days skiing) is to search for a more permanent residence abroad upon my return to Europe after the Cape Epic in March (Btw. Race calendar is up to date, find it above).
The weather here has chosen to test us a bit. Rain, rain, rain and more rain! At the moment I’m only just recovered from a cold, that I caught two weeks ago, so riding outside was not really the best idea today. Two weeks ago, I had a 4h ride in constant wet and very windy conditions and already the following night I could feel my throat getting sore. The next day it invaded my nose and made my ear channels itchy. But it never turned into something that would affect the entire body, where it’s obvious, that you need to stay in bed. I was still able to train quite well, but it was very clear, that recovery was seriously impaired due to the cold. Even on the day of New Year’s evening I managed another long ride, and the combination of that training and a great celebration of the New Year took away my voice. I’ve never lost my voice before. I actually didn’t think you could. But you can! I felt soo handicapped. I almost had a panic attach at the drugstore, when it was my turn to order and only then I realised, that all I could do was gesticulate and whisper. Retrospectively, I should have gone straight to bed after that ride on the day of New Years evening and stayed there till the following year. Well, well, it’s always easy to be clever later on, right?
Never the less, I’m feeling back to normal and my voice has returned. To be honest, it’s been very frustrating not to be able to train properly for a couple of weeks. On the first day of 2016 Thomas ordered me to take some time off to get well once and for all. I struggled a lot not too loose my motivation. I really, really want to work hard to be fast on a bike this year and starting off the year by taking time off made me walk around in circles and not very nice to be around. Up until this point training had been going well and I really felt my endurance slowly improving. The involuntary and sudden transition from those consistent and hard training days to being completely inactive (or only doing very little) took away my motivation more than it reloaded me (this also could be a very likely consequence of the lack of the daily shot of endorphins. Quite scary what it does to you not getting that daily dose, once you’re used to it).
On the picture above, you’ll see my training view of the day. Not very inspiring, but the feeling and music was good and two hours flew by like nothing. Tip of the day: The ultimate home trainer song:
