Operation Hawaii - Weekly Update 5: Brought to you by Velocity Sports Lab
Date:4 July 2010
Another uneventful week has passed us by. We’ve been blessed with extremely hot weather this week, most days at around 30 degrees C and this weekend at 35C. The hot weather meant the swimming pool water heated up to a non wetsuit manageable training temperature of 25C, but unfortunately also meant hordes and hordes of non swimmer types trying to keep cool.
It amazes me that after all the years we’ve travelled to Europe, I’ve never seen an average Joe that can swim. Grannies, children, middle-aged people, it doesn’t matter, when they jump into the water, they break out into what can only be described as a sort of side-swipe-breast-stroke-run, because to call the breast-strokers would be an insult to real swimmers who do breast-stroke. Anyway, who are we to criticise how Europeans swim. But what I would like to criticise is the total chaos at the public pools. They have a lap pool, a children’s pool, and a diving pool. The lap pool has no lane ropes, and although 90% of people swim up and down following the black line, there is the other 10% that insist on swimming across in front of the others and children who insist on jumping off the blocks on top of you, all while the “life guards” look on without doing anything to maintain order. Just doesn’t make sense. But to my credit, I didn’t hurt anyone. You see, these guys have probably been coming to this pool for the last 200 years and going about their daily routine. Then some foreigner with his fancy swimming style comes along and tries to rule the pool. Who does he think he is? So I exercised a little restraint, and just smiled and waved.
The most excitement we had this week was on my recovery day on Thursday. Another trip to Berlin and this time a shopping date at the Puma Store. I needed some racing shoes that I couldn’t get earlier, and when I saw them in Berlin, the guys from Puma in Cape Town organised that we do a bit of shopping while there. Without going overboard, we all came away with a few nice items. After the shopping frenzy we did a bit more sightseeing and then dinner on the premier street in Berlin, Kurfurstendam Strasse, with it’s miles and miles of shops from Versace to Nike Town and Puma Store, China Town to Little Italy, and many, many sidewalk restaurants.
The rest of the week was just business as usual, with this week’s training pretty much a repeat of last week, 30km in the pool, 600km on the bike, and 115km of running. However, the second week of a 2 week brick is always a lot harder. Times and pace that seemed easy in week 1 suddenly feel much faster and harder in week 2 due to the accumulated fatigue. The key is to stay positive and get through one day at a time, and pretty soon the hard stuff if done and you have some rest to look forward to. Now I’ll have 3 days to rest up and recover before the next 15 days of hard work starts.
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