This week's post was a hard one to write, almost as hard as our riding experience.
On a lovely Sunday morning we arrived at Emmarentia Botanical Gardens to take the gardens under our bikes.
The route we chose was rather technical, with a lot of narrow paths, a couple of grueling climbs and a patch between a cliff and a wall, literally. Our young team did remarkably well dealing with the route. We could assess our real fitness status and corroborated that young age is the best thing you can have if you want to do sports.
In the adult section of our team, however, we had a bit of an encounter with the ground resulting in hurt muscles, torn skin, a couple of bruises and a lot more pain than what we would have liked our precious team members to endure.
Yet, this is all about endurance, so a few scratches will not put our energy down, we are earning our stripes, with hard work, sweat and blood. We are learning, we are getting stronger, fitter and ready for the race.
Our team did really well in this one ride as we harvested many lessons from this tough and demanding route:
1. Downhills and technical routes are better done in slow motion.
2. If you feel scared, it is perfectly ok to come down the bike and push. In fact, coming down and pushing is the sensible thing to do.
3. It feels good to be alive.
4. We definitely need more down time on those bikes, as the race gets closer we must implement the 3-1 rule: 3 Days of aerobic exercise per week and at least 1 day a week on the saddle.
B.E. Strong!
On a lovely Sunday morning we arrived at Emmarentia Botanical Gardens to take the gardens under our bikes.
The route we chose was rather technical, with a lot of narrow paths, a couple of grueling climbs and a patch between a cliff and a wall, literally. Our young team did remarkably well dealing with the route. We could assess our real fitness status and corroborated that young age is the best thing you can have if you want to do sports.
In the adult section of our team, however, we had a bit of an encounter with the ground resulting in hurt muscles, torn skin, a couple of bruises and a lot more pain than what we would have liked our precious team members to endure.
Yet, this is all about endurance, so a few scratches will not put our energy down, we are earning our stripes, with hard work, sweat and blood. We are learning, we are getting stronger, fitter and ready for the race.
Our team did really well in this one ride as we harvested many lessons from this tough and demanding route:
1. Downhills and technical routes are better done in slow motion.
2. If you feel scared, it is perfectly ok to come down the bike and push. In fact, coming down and pushing is the sensible thing to do.
3. It feels good to be alive.
4. We definitely need more down time on those bikes, as the race gets closer we must implement the 3-1 rule: 3 Days of aerobic exercise per week and at least 1 day a week on the saddle.
B.E. Strong!
