Last Saturday the weather in The Netherlands was finally good enough for me to get out again for a bike ride on a ‘real’ road. The Dutch winter has not been cold, but very, very wet. Which means that I stick to riding my bike on a trainer, outside in my backyard. Actually, my last real ride was somewhere in October 2007. But at the moment the skies are blue and the road is dry. So I went out with the Groningen tri-squad for our first group ride of 2008, after the usual Saturday morning swim. Some forty people attended. Of course I was using my PC’s as I always do. For three years now I have been the only PC-user in the neighborhood. In all I (we) did about 80 k’s. The training part consisted of 3 x 15 minutes. We had to split up in groups of three. The assignment was 5 minutes in the lead at 85% max, 5 minutes low gearing, 5 minutes high gearing. The last part was really hard, since I was doing 110 rpm. But things went well and I felt very strong. Of course I was the only PC rider and even after more than three years PC-use people still ridicule me for using them, especially when I do my one leg pedal drills riding in the peloton. After this it was time to go home. From last year and the year before that, I remembered from those first rides that my legs more or less gave up after about two hours. My garden rides usually last one hour max. I remember riding home after training last year, doing forty repeats, then resting my legs, doing another forty and so on. It was agony. Sure enough, after two hours fatigue kicked in, but I was able to hold it together this time and even went for a short run when I got home, to complete the day.

Yesterday (Sunday) I did a 90 minute run. I felt a bit tired at first, but really good at the end. After this it was watching the speed skating world championships on TV. In between I managed a one hour bike ride. Not bad for February.