Good weather

Yesterday was a four-hour ride. But first the whole team rode out to a small village for ice cream Sundays. It was pretty cool seeing how big the team really is—with everyone in their kits and riding together. There are 27 of us. Here are some pictures, although I would like to post a video of us, and some other video too, WordPress requires that I spend money on upgrading my blog first. Maybe later.

As far as this week’s training has gone, it has been pretty easy. I expected it to be more intense, but the coaches here believe in lots of rest and recovery, with only a few hard efforts a week. Of course this completely goes against everything I stand for. Rest??? Recover??? Only 2 hard rides a week?? Gilad, I want you to make a workout for me next week. 25 hours. One 5-hour HARD ride on Monday after Sunday’s race. Rest day on Tuesday with two, one-hour easy spins. Wednesday: steep hill intervals in the morning and a recovery ride at night. Thursday is a sprinting/flat interval day with recovery in the evening. Friday, pre-race ride. And I think there are two races on Saturday and Sunday. Tell me what you think.

The weather has turned around at last. It is humid and sunny here, and this giant brick mansion we’re staying in is hot and full of flies, buzzing around the kitchen and bumping into our sweaty faces as we attempt to sleep at night. Finally some summer weather! Which means some good tan lines.

The guys here have switched to a different car racing game—“Need for Speed.” This one is worse than the last, because it only involves one player at a time. So the arguing is worse than before. The game is on all day. Nonstop. I’m planning on stealing the CD and hiding it somewhere. Or accidentally scratching the back of it.

Tony and I have been playing a lot of ping-pong lately, and have both made huge improvements on our games. We are now at the point where we can challenge some of the better players. What else is going on here? Oh, the Tour of Liege passed by a few days ago, right by our house. We were supposed to do it, and it would have been our biggest race of the year, but Poland took our spot. It was pretty cool to see it and the huge peloton of cars, motorcycles, journalists, and support vehicles that drove in front and back of the racers. There must have been two vehicles for every rider.

Never mind.  No pictures for today.  We’ve been to all four of out internet Wifi areas and they are all running extremely slow.  And we got kicked out of one of them by some old guy with a cane.  And a dog barked at Tony earlier and he got scared.  The pavement we’re sitting on in quite warm from the sun earlier in the day.  And it’s still warm and light out, even now at 10:00PM.