Monday, January 12, 2009

Inebriated by caffeine?

Yesterday Jonas and I rode our cross bikes over to the Tervuren course. What a difference from last week! The whole course was covered with ice topped by a thick layer of snow. We played around, sliding on the turns and skiing on two wheels down the mini hills. We even took a detour to join the kiddies on the snow-covered frozen pond. A few times i felt both wheels skidding around which only made my screams of excitement even more enthusiastic. I hadnt laughed that hard in a while.

Before we left the course, we attempted a couple of hot laps. It was the perfect day to challenge Jonas to a race since he was getting over a cold, out of shape, and short on sleep. Up the first gradual uphill straightaway, Jonas took the lead. But on the first turn, he overshot it and I jumped ahead. I held the lead for a couple of minutes until it was my turn to overshoot the course. But within two icy turns, we were back together coming down the finishing straight. I took the win since he was afraid to take the last turn onto the multi-use road at high speed since his brake pads were almost gone. But a win is still a win and i raised my hands high.

On our second lap race, Jonas again took the lead but within ten seconds his lack of top fitness and recovering cold caught up to him and i easily passed him. So instead we decided to just take the technical sections like turns and icy ruts at speed since I need to work on racing more courageously. Well i not only got practice at riding on my technical limit but i worked on not tipping over on the bike when laughing. We must have been so entertaining to passerbys as we skidded almost completely off the path on every turn as we took them at high speed side by side.

Today was a "recovery" ride. Ronny and Dries picked us up at 10 this morning and we meandered over to Leuven for a coffee...or three. We went to our favorite place called Cafe Onan on Parijsstraat. They serve the best international coffees that come with high quality dark belgian chocolate squares. After three rounds of coffee bombs with sugar balls on the side, we were visibly buzzing down to our toes! The ride home took about half the time even though we took a longer way home through the tiny towns connected by snowy, icy footpaths.

It has been four hours since we returned home and i am still flying high! Why did WADA remove caffeine from the anti-doping list?

3 comments:

Rickie Rainwater said...

You two are so much fun. Nemo perked up when you said chocolate squares. She loves chocolate, and of course, so does her owner.

http://rickierainwater.blogspot.com/

Nathan said...

Hello Christine,

Has the snow started to melt yet? I am going to the Motherland to race at Masters Worlds and ride some classic Belgian road courses (Tour of Flanders, GP Wallonia, and one other that I can never remember) and cheer on you and the rest of the US team at Elite Worlds. Hoping to avoid a broken toosh due to icy roads as it looks like y'all have had interesting weather the last month or so.

Nathan

PEANUT said...

hey rickie - thanks for the fun comment! And nathan, as of today the snow and ice is completely gone; it is back up to just above freezing weather and rain. Best of luck at Worlds!