Back in Luxland

After several months of traveling and racing, I finally made it back to Luxembourg. The week after my big win at the Ironman 70.3 Florida, I took it pretty easy and hardly trained. To be honest, I did 4 sessions total that week. I was actually hanging out in St. Augustine, FL and spent a lot of time with my in-laws.

The weather was terrible for 6 days straight, so we spent a lot of time at the in-laws house, which was actually pretty nice for a change. St. Augustine is an amazing place. Right now, I am sitting in the plane on my way back to Frankfurt and then back to Luxland (I don’t know how I came up with this name, but I really like it better that way).

On my very first day back in Luxland, I will have my annual sport test at the sport clinic and hope to obtain valuable data for me to use for the rest of the year. After that I will jump right back into training and will get ready for a block of six weeks, racing three Bundesliga races (Germany short distance and sprint series) and maybe the two road Cycling Championships in Luxembourg. Hopefully the necessary break in training last week didn’t mess up the great bike shape that I had before the race—I always wanted to do the TT in the past, but the Olympic qualification made it impossible.I have been training on the bike like crazy this year, but still it is no comparison to a pure cyclists who focuses 100% of their efforts on the bike when I just focus 30% of my efforts there. Despite this fact, I really want to do well there. First of all I have to find a team that suits me here in Lux so there is some planning happening here in the next few days.

I will have a training buddy from New Zealand coming out to join me for the next three weeks. Paul Westwood is a great guy and he is preparing for Challenge Roth (Ironman Distance)- so we will do lots of miles and spice it up with some nice intervals between. It will be lots of fun to have him around.

I am starting to get tired and should get some rest. The first day back in Europe is always a tough one since I get there in the morning with hardly any sleep on the plane… but good Euro coffee will keep me going. Good night from the exit row.