Episode #5

During the last week of my stay in Namibia my home country the Netherlands was treated with temperatures as low as -15 during the nights and a nice layer of snow in most parts of the country. Completely the opposite of what I have been used to the past weeks and I wasn't really looking forward to this huge weather difference….. Someone in the weather-control-room must have heard me, because the wind has changed directions and it's now pushing the warmer southern temperatures towards the north 😊. Nice on time now that I'm back in the Netherlands and ready to continue my training here. Welcome spring!!

In the last episode I promised to give you a race report of my participation in the Namibian ITT national championships, so here we go…. As mentioned, I was invited to participate in the race, even though I'm not from Namibia, so this was pretty nice of the organization. And a local team borrowed me a nice TT bike for the race and this was great, because I only brought my regular road bike for the training camp. During warm-up I felt pretty good and the position on the bike, which was not set-up specifically for me of course, was not bad at all. I felt pretty confident that I could do well that day. Unfortunately the race didn't completely go as planned for me, because the TT bars came a bit loose early in the race and I couldn't really stay in the optimum aero position for the rest of the race. I made the best out of it and finished 3rd in the end. Not bad at all and a big thanks to the organization to let me participate!

Now it's time to carefully build on the foundation laid the past weeks and stay focused on the big goals which we have set for this year, like the world cups and the Tour of Flanders in April. And of course the biggest goal of all, the Olympic Games in Japan! I'm very happy that the event is still happening as it looks now and hope that we will be able to get the pandemic under control together.

In Episode #3 I briefly mentioned the MISSION 48.1000 Challenge and after reading the story on the website and understanding how hard it is, I quickly sent in my application. I like to suffer 😉. And even though they think no-one will finish, I think I will prove them wrong. Did you apply already?! I'll be back with a new Episode soon. Thanks for following my Road To Tokyo and stay safe!

Cheers,

Daniel

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