Guten Tag from Sigmaringen.
Life here in Germany has been tootling over, we having been
schwimmen, rad fahren, laufren, going to our new favourite Supermarket Edeka,
eating, sleeping and watching ITU races in Kitzbuhel.
The weather here has been pretty fab, reasonably hot but
with a few gnarly thunderstorms at night.
I have been working on my speedo tan in the outdoor pool and it seems to
be working.
This week I swam Monday – Friday for about 14km in
total. The outdoor pool is nice on a
sunny day but I still find it a bit chilly at times after about 3km. There are only 2 lanes for swimming and it’s
a matter of weeding out the floaters when we first arrive. I have also found that I can get a lane to
myself if I start swimming “Southern hemisphere style” (clockwise) because it
makes the Europeans uncomfortable and no-one wants to share with the crazy
person swimming the wrong way. A couple
of times in the squad I have inadvertently switched to Southern hemisphere
style without realizing it which always causes confusion for the other people I
am swimming with.
The weather was very good for rad fahren (bike riding) last
week so I got out everyday bar Sunday when we were in Austria. There is a valley which goes for about 25km
where we do a lot of our riding, either straight out and back or else branching
off to do a loop. There are also a lot
of motorcyclists who like to ride on the valley but don’t like to share the
road with cyclists. The cars are mostly
pretty good though and very tolerant towards cyclists. There are lots of good climbs around, nothing
too crazy but decent 10-15 minute climbs and if you know where you are going you
can string a few together to make for a very hilly ride. There is plenty of wildlife around, mostly giant
slugs and snails but I have also seen plenty of crows, 2 foxes, a few mice and
a dead frog.
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| Rad fahren to the top of the hill |
Running has been going well, I have mostly been running in
the forest. The forest is good because
it is softer underfoot than the road and is fairly easy to find your way out if
you get lost. We did a long run in
Kitzbuhel in the weekend which was quite a mission up and over a mountain
trying to find our way to the race venue from our hotel in town. It should have only been about 3km but we
followed some signs which took us the mountainous way and ended up taking about
half an hour. The return trip took about
10mins once we were on the right track… Running down the mountain was quite
hard on the old quaddies and I now have a serious case of case of DOMS.
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| I like to check out peoples gardens and they are all so beautiful |
The triathlon in Kitzbuhel was fantastic to watch and on an
amazing course. We went up the hill for
the bike leg and the men ride up there so fast it is unbelievable. The women’s race wasn’t as exciting but the
men’s had a lot of the big names so it was awesome for us to see them up close
and also to watch a race live that we would usually watch on tv at home.
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| Men starting the rad fahren |
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| Kiwis leading the charge |
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| Female kiwis leading the charge |
We went up a cable car to the summit of Hahnenkamm which is
about 1600m up and had great views over Kitzbuhel and the other mountains. There was a café at the top so we had some
apple strudel - as you do while you are in Austria.
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| Nice view to wake up to |
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| Our alpine accommodation |
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| Military style poses up the mountain |
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| The streets of Kitzbuhel |
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| Going up |
This weekend is the next LBS-Liga race and it sounds like I
will be starting, there has been some recruiting issues on the men’s side due
to injuries and other race commitments and they are talking about using me in
the 2nd team so that they can start because they only have 3 and you
need 4 to start in the race – eek! I think we are also waiting to hear on others
for the women’s team because there are some problems there as well so hopefully
I get to race for them instead of with a whole heap of fast men…
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| So long Kitzbuhel |
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