This is my third day in Blauberg, Belgium and I’m pretty much settled in. Both bikes are built and appear to be in working order (Ignace is coming by this morning to check them out…). I’ve had a couple of good rides and rediscovered some of my favorite training routes.

Thursday’s ride was particularly painful but not all rides can be recovery rides! The workout consisted of three nine minute intervals. In this nine minutes I had to roll through a minute at tempo, a minute at threshold and a minute at VO2Max (repeat this three times). Innocent looking but definitely not once you’re knee deep in them. But I have to admit I love these kind of workouts – it is nice to see the power numbers that I can produce and to feel my body responding and working the way I want it to.

Today is Armistice Day (Remembrance Day) so it is a National holiday. Normally this means that I’d be racing today – but the race in Niel does not have a women’s race this year. I could have driven to Nommay, France for the C1 but I really couldn’t face the long drive yesterday after only arriving on Wednesday. I may regret not going to this race because there is a chance I could have picked up some UCI points that would be useful for qualifying for the World Championships…

Not much going on today. A recovery ride is on deck with Nikoline sometime this morning and then I’ll likely do some work and watch the men’s race at Niel on the television. There are also the bins of stuff that we left here last year that I need to go through and I’d like to walk the 200 meters or so to the town square to see what is happening today for Armistice Day.

Yes, so pretty much settled in. It is an interesting feeling to walk into stores and to be recognized and remembered – a very nice feeling and makes me wonder why we always leave in February!