Hi there Bros. First of all big Congrats to all the Ramblers and CHB riders who competed at the TE A and Rotorua tours over the weekends, we look up all the results. Very proud! Go Team Coach!
Here we are, watching Amstel Gold race, not. One TV is conveniently black and green and the other is a pretty blue. Rats! Where are those techno savvy males when you need them?
We have had an enjoyable week, although not as eventful as those past. Tuesday saw us training with the boys once again, although this time Daryl was absent. We missed him cough not cough. The pace was down considerably which was nice given the effort of the race the day before. Hannah and I were on the front, and planning to peel off in about 200m (it works much the same as Sunday Bunch and everyone takes a couple of Ks on the front).. WHEN! Someone decided to wind the sprint up 2ks out.. BOOM. TT effort time. So not cool! Bullies. We made it back to them eventually though and snuck in the back of the bunch to pretend we were never missing.
We braved the one-two-three.one-two-three.one-two-tree rapid speed of the windmills to do some interval training on Wednesay. We strategically went via the town and did our supermarket shop at the same time so that we would only have to face outside once all day. haha. The exception being our continued attempts in the garden to save Mr Mole. That evening we found ourselves at a group Core training session. Watch out all those doing core on a Monday, we know some killer exercises now! We are still undecided whether we should share them or keep them for ourselves and smash you all when we get back.
Thursday was our chance to get back at the kiddies for their early sprint wind up on Tuesday. We had some Team Time Trial training with the club. It certainly was spew bucket worthy. In the morning we had been to the market and discovered (thanks to the talkative personality of the local street magician) that there are fines here for all sorts of things, like 350euros for unnecessarily tooting your horn or you just 100 euro for shoplifting. Hmmmm. So this knowledge gave us something to make plans with and joke about; at least distracting us from a little bit of the pain... Because Daryl was back. We discovered that perhaps the reason for his absence was a new mud guard on his bike. We believe he was unable to attend training because this was being installed.
We should have had a nap Friday afternoon because we went to a film with some generous Dutch boys (still playing the being from NZ novelty card). When they invited us out, little did we know that the screening wasn’t until 9.45. Luckily there was an intermission during which we had 15mins to leave our thrones and consume alcohol, coffee or cola, which ever tickled your fancy. Note to all: never never let Ashleigh have coke at that time of night, it was neit goed. Nee.
Needless to say we slept in on Saturday. Woke up. Ate. Took several hours to take apart chains, brakes, wheels etc, clean them meticulously. Put it all back together again. (Proud of us Andy and Dan?) We then went to the race, with enough time to pin up numbers on the neutral lap.. cutting it fine much! It was a local crit where the Dames are run with the men, so it is very fast and they are relentless. The race was really good. We finally both positioned in the bunch well and finished as happy campers. We also gave our details to a manager of a Women’s Team at his request. We will update you if and when this story develops. Check out the photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/wielerploegolbersenijlstra/sets/72157629816267143/show/
Today we have been for a Sunday Bunch ride, except an hour later and with just 4 of us. The windmills are back at one-two-three. one-two-three. one-two-three again so it was 2 hours out with “wind in the face” and 1 hour home with “wind in the back”. We managed to catch the end of the Amstel Gold Race after staring and a Black and Blue screen for an hour and a half after pushing many many buttons and managing to get both TVs doing strange things. Then the boys came home. Yay! Poeple who know technology! They were not impressed with what we had done. Hehe. We tried to tell them we hadn’t touched it, I don’t think they were buying it though.
We have a National Time Trial next week! Looking forward to that..
That’s us
