Things I should be doing right now...finish packing, clean house, make sure everything's in order, online check in, blah blah. What I'm actually doing, obviously, is reading blogs and writing my own. Oh well.
I've had a great couple of days, no work, just me to please. On Monday I did a kind of race test run. Cycled to the pool near where I work, around 7 km, swam 2 sets of 500 m, cycled home and then went out for a 5 km run. My transitions were pretty long, around 10 and 5 mins or so, but it gave me a great idea of how it's really going to feel. That 5 km run was tough and my legs were on fire. It was really slow too, 30 minutes. I really talked myself around it. Felt great to drench myself in the fountain at the end.
I'm so excited about crossing that finish line. This gave me a lot of confidence that I'm going to finish and finish ok.
Yesterday morning I had planned a lighter day, but of course, it didn't work out like that. It was a gorgeous morning and I decided to do a light, easy ride out to Liestal. Apart from finding myself heading down to the motorway at one point and having to do a crazy U-turn, the ride to Liestal was perfect. It's really flat and 90% on no- or very light- traffic roads. There are long, straight stretches where you can just peddle and peddle. I got up a fairly good speed even on my mountain bike.
Then I reached Liestal and saw a sign saying "Gelterkinden 11 km" and I thought how great it would be to make it to Gelterkinden. That's where things went a bit hairy. First, I got horribly lost trying to get across Liestal and somehow ended up going up two very steep hills - possibly the only two hills in the whole town - and going round in circles before finally finding the little red bike route signs again.
It was about 11.30 by this time and getting very hot. My sexy bike/running shorts tan line was getting ever more intense, and I needed to get back home in time to shower and pick my daughter up at 2 o'clock. I realised I didn't have time to get to Gelterkinden, and turned around at Sissach, just 4 km short.
Guess what, I got horribly lost in Liestal AGAIN on the way back. Is this my poor navigating or their bad signposting? I circled the station 3 times getting hotter and crosser. I was very happy to find the route back to Basel again and hammer home as fast as possible. Total distance was around 50 km, which is the furthest I've ever ridden. I realised that as I'm picking my old road bike up in England, this was probably (hopefully) the last time I'd do a road ride on my mountain bike. I think it was a good send off.
I took my daughter to the swimming pool in the afternoon and splashed about in the kids pool with her, very grateful not to have to actually swim.
This afternoon we're flying to England, which is always a bitter-sweet trip for me. There's so much about it that I miss, even though I love where I live now. Looking forward to seeing some good friends, getting a few rides in on my road bike (remembering how to cycle on the left!) and some SHOPPING. I'll be online though, don't worry about that!
