My training has gone very well over the past few weeks. First of all, it's a lot of training. And the daily routine of sleeping, eating, and exercising becomes quite monotonous after a few weeks. Especially since I'm too tired and empty after the last unit to do anything or, for example, to improve my Spanish, which is urgently needed.
A welcome change is the visit of Mischa, a 15-year-old junior cyclist whom Jo trains. Together with his sister and his parents he visits us for a week-long training camp.
The trips together are going well. Only various ditches exert a wondrous attraction on Mischa. You can tell that Mischa spent three months training practically exclusively on the role in the basement at home. Thanks to his bike control, he always gets back on the road safely.
With a pure cyclist in the house, I realize again how time consuming our triathlon training is. It starts at eight in the morning with a swimming session. When I get home around ten o'clock, Mischa has just made it out of bed. He's sleepily sitting at the breakfast table and can't quite open his eyes yet - while mine are already closing again after a 6km swim. After a big breakfast together, we get on the racing bikes together and after three to five hours we are back home. Mischa jumps into the shower and I, as a triathlete, do a coupled run of 15 kilometers.
So I'm looking forward to going to Sa Calobra! A short swim and then "only" 6,5 hours of cycling, no running. Mischa was with us in 2014. We drove to Sa Calobra back then too. And now, of course, Mischa's big goal is to improve on his time from back then. We were all sure that he would be better this year. But nobody would have expected that he would be 14 (!) minutes faster! In general, the boy has enormous stamina: While everyone in a camp is breaking down and getting tired and slower, Mischa gets better and better the longer the camp lasts. And the more he drives. And where the adult athletes have to stop at gas stations and cafes to fill up their carbohydrate stores, he doesn't need anything, but drives around for six hours with two bike bottles. I'm probably the only one who's a bit more extreme: 6,5 hours with 0,7l of water - that's all I have to eat. If I don't need more with such units, then I know that my fat metabolism is really good!
Back home, the head is empty as always. But somehow you have to get your gray matter going a little bit and I look over Mischa's shoulder at Sudoku. Somehow it has a fascinating attraction for everyone at the table: six people add their two cents and in the end every box really has the right number!
