The Netherlands...

today- we drove to the netherlands for our next three races. we have three drenthe races- thurs, sat and sunday. they are LONG, FLAT, fast windy and VERY hard! so- we are expecting to suffer.

for now though- today was a day off of training since we spent four hours in the car. my ass is really starting to show the colors of the bruise from my crash. it hurts badly when i sit down, but thankfully- it does not hurt while riding. toilet seats hurt the most. i also found some various other bruises on my body, they are sore and bruised too. but, given JUST how hard i went down?! i am very happy with the low degree of damage to both body and bike! when i went down- we were going at full speed and i was just about to jump for the sprint. i am not sure HOW fast we were going since i did not get the powerdata- but it was fast. a fully wound up lead out mass. i was very relaxed when i crashed, so i think that helped me not be as injured as i could have been. it is nice that the bruising is starting to show now though- since there are few things more annoying than pain that is not on display! if it is going to hurt that badly- it better look bad! in this case, i think that it looks much worse than it feels since it is on the side of my butt more than the bottom half. i am just glad that i am not a skinny little climber who went down!

so far- it has been uneventful. we are staying in spier holland- in a super nice hotel. it is the race hotel and really quite swanky. we have been living pretty high on the hog here... the whole trip really. i had been expecting us to be sleeping in a trailer and eating peanut butter and jelly. but no... we stay in nice hotels and eat REALLY good food! this hotel is no exception. it is nice and the food is really good. we just had a buffet dinner (VERY nice to have buffet since the 3 hour european dinners really start to get old quickly- especially when your butt is swollen and the seats are hard). next to the hotel is a nice wooded area where i went for a walk for about an hour today to wake my legs up after being in the car for so long.

one thing that i have noticed about both the areas that we have been- is that it is all cultivated. every square inch that we have seen has been cultivated at some point. there are no natural areas. people are big on planting trees here- which is awesome- but there are no natural stands. all the trees are in rows or are planted in grids. even this wooded area- which is billed as a natural area- is clearly planted in at least some spots. so that is kind of interesting. and i have seen storks! one farm that we drove by had a platform for the storks to nest on and sure enough- there was a big nest with a stork sitting on top. the birds have been really interesting, but i don’t know them and i don’t have a book or binocs. that is a bummer- the biologist in me was coming out today on my walk. i am the lone biologist here- that is for sure. so i can’t ask for help.

tomorrow- we are just riding for a couple hours and getting ready for the next race. i am very excited- we are expecting a bunch sprint and i get a chance to redo what i wanted to do on sunday!

as it is now- this hotel is nice, but it does not have great internet access. so, i might not get to post every day. but i will try and keep it up as much as i can. bye!