Downtime

we race tomorrow- so today, we rest. we recover. we eat, nap and sit around. i am a mover. we all are. we would not be cyclists if we were not active people. so one of the challenges of this type of a situation is dealing with downtime. letting yourself relax and NOT do a million things. today- is downtime.

we started our day with a short, super easy ride to wake the legs up and get race ready with a few jumps. check- legs feel good. ready to race.

then it was back to the hotel room to whittle away the day and conserve energy: tomorrow is going to be a big day and it is gonna hurt! i am not always so good with conserving energy... as most of my friends and family can attest. although i confess that this trip has been the first time in months that i have been ABLE to relax. i have been reading fiction (a great book- “the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay”- taking me a while to get through it) and napping when i get a chance. i have been bad in that i have neglected some aspects of my thesis from time to time, but it has been so good for me to actually get a chance to slow down. we don’t always have a lot of slow time, as we are frequently traveling, riding, eating, running around. but i realize that those moments that have found us idle have been good for me. there is a huge part of me that really needed a break. and here, in between our hard racing and our hard training rides, i have been able to find it.

now i SHOULD be working on my thesis- and i will go back to it after this is posted. i am going to get my chapter 2 sent off to my committee today. i have been making some changes to it that i hope will meet with their approval. but in the mean time, i have been really enjoying my downtime today. i have not been feeling the typical antsy-must-get-outside-brooke rearing her head. instead, i feel relaxed and calm. i have been thinking about my thesis and feel optimistic that i can get it off today. unfortunately, our evening will be interupted with a hour long drive to the race presentation and back this evening. before world cup races- there is a team presentation to the press, where we go there and they take our picture and what not. it is cool that they do it and makes the race that much more of a big deal... but it will take several hours out of our evening... time that i had been originally planning to spend at the computer doing that odd thing called work...

ps... the picture above was amusing to me. katheryn and i did a big load of laundry in the tub and had turned our hotel room into a large indoor drying rack. we are leaving for italy tomorrow after the race, so we had to get laundry washed and get everything packed tonight to be ready to catch a plane after fleche.