I‘m back on the road. Somehow I still get very excited every time I am about to leave. Destination: Boulder, Colorado.  Purpose: Hawaii preparation.  With who: double world champion Craig Alexander.  Special info: 6 weeks altitude then straight to Kona, Hawaii for the big show down in 2010.

As of now the weather seems very warm and nice in Boulder, I am already adapted to altitude, which means I can pretty much jump right into the big work load. It will be quite a long and intensive camp, but I am already in good shape and able to deal with it very well.

I decided some weeks ago to dedicate Antwerp 70.3 to the fiancé of my friend and sponsor, Dustin Brady.  Dustin is a great guy.  He works for Shimano International and is a true professional–he has remained there for all of his athletes despite the huge blow that he has taken this year.  In early June, his fiancé Michelle lost a long battle with breast cancer. At age 42, she was taken from this world far too early.  You can read more about her here.  I promised to dedicate a race to her and give all I have on race day in her honor–so this one was for you Michelle.

Antwerp 70.3 was right off from altitude camp and everything worked out as planed. Of course I wasn’t fresh, but that was part of the plan.  The swim was nice and I took the lead after a few hundred yards , luckily the dude in the canoe realized where he needed to go and I just managed to get out before some of the other guys ended up on my feet again. That little sprint hurt me and I had to take it a bit easier during the first few steps of transition, where 2 guys passed me. Second on the bike, I was able to maintain exactly the speed that I had planned, but got passed from the bike killer Andersson from Sweden. He is a force but somehow I am sure he would race so much better if he would save some energy for the run…

So it was Marino, van Lierde and myself. Marino didn’t pull in the first 40k, so when one of the favorites, Bart Aernouts, finally caught us at km 70, the pace was gone and the games between the three Belgiums began. I decided to let them play and just stayed back, but looking back that was not really the smartest since we lost a lot of time–and what am I training on the bike for anyway? So it all came down to the run, we had 7 minutes to catch but that was possible. I lost some more time in T2 as I had some issues on the cobblestones (my tender feet couldn’t take it), and then issues opening my plastic bag, and then I finally put on socks so ended up 30 seconds down on Bart and Marino once I got out of T2. On the run the speed was high and I really felt awesome going into it. I thought I might be able to bridge the gap but they were running just as well. At the end I was 30 seconds down on Marino which was a very close gap, and I was happy to be able to run consistently throughout despite being “training camped”.

All in all, it was a good race, and the city of Antwerp is one of the nicest ones I have seen in a long time. Bars and restaurants at really at every corner, amazing Belgium beer and my favorite meal during the day was great too–I love having a good breakfast and a great race hotel.

Special thanks goes out to Marc Herremans (pictured with me above). He is such an amazing and inspiring guy, simply unbelievable. I love him and his attitude towards everything. His foundation “ To Walk Again” grew so much over the past years and has now two key institutions with a broad range of offered activities for paralyzed athletes and especially kids. Check it out.

The next big happening was just a few days after that: one of Luxembourg’s biggest sport events of the year: the post Tour de France criterium called Gala TdF. I got an invitation and was very keen on being part of the stunning pro tour rider field for that spectacle. After a normal training day, I was ready to hit the road with the big guys and had great fun. Have a look at some of the pictures on my flickr where you can see some of the pulls at the fron of the pack and some attacks during the race. Thanks to all of the 60,000 Luxembourg fans for coming out there and cheering for the Schleck brothers.

Training has been running based this past week, so my legs are tired and I am looking forward to getting a good long sleep once I am on board towards the US. There is only one thng in my mind and that is Kona, the Ironman World Championships on October 9^th…..

See you guys soon–when I am a mile high.

All the best to you

Thanks for stopping by,

Yours, Dirk

It is about time for the latest news from St Augustine, Florida…

After spending much time in Luxembourg and waiting for my visa papers to go through, I decided to leave and escape the cold and rainy weather back home. Two and a half weeks of 45 degrees was definitely enough, especially when preparing for some more early season races in the heat here in the south of the US.  Oh well, and I just found out that my visa didn’t go through either, which is a real bummer for my summer racing and training plans over here.

I have plenty of other options so no need to stress, and I have enough time to prepare for Hawaii and do a couple of other races over here during the summer.

So when I came back to the warm Florida weather I got right back into some heavy training and forgot about the stressful race in Abu Dhabi.  The new goal was defined as 70.3 New Orleans and four weeks later another 70.3 race in Florida at Disney.  So my eyes were set on that and I put in another big training load.

Tomorrow is my travel day and we are actually driving over to New Orleans since all the flight connections are really terrible.  I am really excited to race and see how far I can push myself again.  The season started very promising and my running seems to get better each day.  My buddy Todd Neville is pushing me every other day in training and it really seems to pay off now.  Maybe it is because of the big load of new K- Swiss shoes and gear I got in the mail recently? Very likely actually.

The competition is tough at every race, but I am sure I can compete with the best and aiming for another 70.3 win at both races.

I haven’t had a road trip like this in a while, so it’s also exciting for me to see what the weekend will bring.  The car is pretty much packed and we will hit the road early tomorrow.

Cajun flare and racing–seems like a good combo for me.

See you guys soon–more to come on Sunday.

Make sure you follow me on twitter for the latest news on this trip.

PS: Thanks to Herbert Krabel over at Slowtwitch for the picture above.

Where to start? As you might know, we sold our house in December 2008 and started spending more time on the road.  As a quick overview of where we have been in 2009–here is the big travel blog post!

From my parents place in Stuttgart we drove to Frankfurt and flew from there to Bangkok to enjoy a Thai massage and some amazing Thai food before we hopped back on the plane<!–more–> to Auckland, New Zealand. We stayed there for three days and celebrated New Years with some friends before we headed down to Taupo where we based ourselves before my first Ironman race in March.  Just 3 days after the race we left lovely New Zealand to travel to San Francisco to stay with my buddy Paul from Webcor cycling team. I enjoyed a week off from training and we explored the city and the surroundings of the bay area–it is a really lovely and very beautiful place where I will definitely come back to visit.

We continued to travel east and I restarted training in Austin, Texas with my old UT buddy Brant, a former runner and now a cyclist.  I used that time to slowly get back into training and at the same time checked out the SXSW music festival- really crazy how packed the city gets with all kinds of future stars!

Two weeks later we were back in sunny Florida where I got my butt back in race shape for the next destination: St Croix, US Virgin Islands. Wow, that’s a nice tropical place with a beautiful downtown area and actually a great very challenging Ironman 70.3 race. Our home-stay with Pat &amp; Pat was just amazing–they are the parents of one of my UT swimming buddies, Scott. After the race, we went snorkeling and enjoyed “normal” life for a few days.

After that we were back to Florida for more training before the next race in Disney World- here I gotta mention my first 70.3 win, crossing the line wearing Mickey Mouse ears!

After completing those 3 races, I thought I deserved a break and we drove up to my In-laws in St. Augustine–the oldest town in America with nice Spanish influence. By that time it was end of May and I hopped back on the plane to come back to Luxembourg, the place I call home.

Soon enough we back on the road down to Le Barcares, in the South of France, right next to the Spanish boarder. A three week training camp got me in shape for the next camp Font Romeu in the French Pyrenees.  Another three weeks of hard training with a great group in altitude brought me into good race shape and we were off to Prague in Czech Republic to race the European Long Distance Champs.  Just a few days later we had a reason to celebrate my Vice European title with a week holidays in Barcelona.  It was very busy and very Spanish (I guess that means good red wine paired with great tapas and mucho fun).  A week of busy shopping and sightseeing might not have been the best off-time for me but it was absolutely worth it and then I was ready for the next big training block in Loulay, France. I spent just two weeks there with my buddies Paul &amp; Jimmy in order to work on my base training before driving back to Stuttgart, Germany for a repacking session and an early flight to Fuerteventura, Canary Islands in Spain.  This was my last and most important build up before the famous Hawaii Ironman.

After three weeks of endless training hours in sweltering heat we boarded several planes till we touched down in Las Vegas, Nevada in the USA to network at the Interbike. Man, looking back that was very useful but so freaking exhausting and stressful because the jet lag combined with all of the flying around didn’t make it easy.

Right after the race, we felt the need to be present in Luxembourg so after a 3 day spa trip to Phoenix we changed out flights and flew back home to Luxembourg for another two and a half weeks–it was really cold and we certainly were not used to that anymore!

On our way back to the US from Luxembourg we stopped in Clearwater to watch the 70.3 World Champs before we finally took off for our real holidays up in Telluride, Colorado to visit my sister.  A short trip from Telluride to Moab in Utah needs to be mentioned as well–there I discovered the most impressive landscape I have ever seen (which I guess says a lot–as I have seen a lot of landscape)!

Once our time was up there, we left the lovely and snowy mountains of Colorado to go back to St. Augustine for a couple of weeks with Alicia’s family before heading back to Frankfurt and then finally Luxembourg again….uff! What a trip!

So in short….

Luxembourg – Stuttgart – Frankfurt – Bangkok – Auckland – Taupo – Auckland – San Francisco – Austin – Tampa – St. Augustine- Orlando- Tampa – St Croix- Tampa – Frankfurt – Luxembourg – Le Barcares – Font Romeu – Prague – Barcelona – Loulay – Stuttgart – Frankfurt -Fuerteventura – Las Vegas – Kona – Phoenix – Frankfurt – Luxembourg – Pheonix – Clearwater – St Augustine – Jacksonville – Grand Junction – Ophir – Telluride – Moab -  Grand Junction – Jacksonville – St Augustine – Frankfurt – Luxembourg.

Thanks to everyone who made this year of traveling possible (and to all of the people who offered us a place to stay along the way)!  We are looking forward to 2010–bring it on!

After spending three long weeks on Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, I got my stuff packed up and flew all the way across to Vegas to enjoy some interesting meetings with new potential sponsors. My travel was more than crazy—to give you some inside view on the trip of torture: we flew from Fuerteventura, Spain to Stuttgart, Germany where we repacked and got some rest at my Dad’s place before getting ready for the long US trip. After a very short 4hr sleep we drove 2h to Frankfurt and from there the party kind of started: FRA-PHI-LAS (2 days packed of meetings, a slight bit of training, accompanied by the worst jetlag possible). Starting at 4am again we headed from LAS via PHX to Kona. Excitement was on the rise when I saw the nice little islands below through my tiny window from the plane, but the past days already took their toll….

Jetlag:
Man, this is the worst I have experienced in a while, but I still tried to use all of my remedies to deal with it in the best way possible. The unavoidable ingredients were a 9hr time difference combined with departing the last hard training day after working so hard for the past 3 weeks. I am doing my best to talk to sandman as much as possible… (If you will see me in a few days and I am still pounding the coffees down at Lava Java- then there might be something wrong….

Aloha race prep:
I had great training block the past few weeks—starting with a 7-week block before Euro Champs in Prague- then a week off in Barcelona. From there I jumped right into another 2 week block in the south of France, and the final crucial 3 weeks with Coach and the Danish crew in Playitas in Fuerte. So to make it short, everything went according to plan, no missed sessions, several PR’s during the camp and a nice pre tan before hitting the legendary Kona island for the second time. I guess now it’s time to forget about the little Interbike session and get right back to work once I settle down in Kona. Three weeks out of the race I am really looking forward to October 10th!

What a great time! After Prague, I took some fun time off to explore Barcelona-which was awesome, impressive but also a bit stressful like most big cities.

After 6 easy days, I went back to another training camp to do some more necessary work. Location: the hot and dry south of France. The purpose of the camp was to get used to the heat and the sweltering hot conditions.

Westy had a great place to offer near St Jean de Angély, and also JimmyJo the Johnson was part of the crew. Alicia, as always, has been a great help and support during the two weeks. The temperature went up to 39 degrees and we were really suffering on some long rides, which were mainly followed with a intensive brick. But the God of Coca Cola brought us back to life on most of the days. All in all it was a good time and a solid training block before the main camp before Hawaii.

One the way back, I stayed a day in Luxembourg and also did a bike biomechanic analysis near Frankfurt. Thanks to Marcus Blenke for his great support and sharing his knowledge with me.

To sum that up: With just a few minor changes on the bike I might get some additional advantages out of it, but I am more or less at the limit in the aero position (meaning that if I get any more aero my body functions could suffer).

Now, I am in Fuerteventura and the final camp before Hawaii just started. To give you an example of how serious it is: the first day started with a 2h run and an intensive 5k swim…

I am very excited and will focus as much as possible to get in the shape of my life before Hawaii. I will try to find enough time to update you guys. It interesting here since it is my first time on the island and there are some changes compared to Club La Santa.

Gotta go for now, another swim training starts soon- and then I will enjoy my rest day at the pool and soak in the sun. Wanna come and join me at the pool for a coffee after the swim?

Laters

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.