After coming back from Dover on the 18th, my energy and training went down. I planned another long swim in the lake but never made it that week. My parents live about 200 km away near Nürnberg and my mother's birthday is on the 25th, so I decided to go for a long overdue 12-13 hour bike ride on Sunday, stay for a day and take the train back home.
On the way to my mom's birthday - Neckar valley near Hirschhorn on a peaceful Sunday morning
It was a great weekend, chillier than the Channel in the morning, but with the sun coming out warming up during the day, quite autumn-like already.
Some parts of the hilly route through beautiful countryside even forced me to get down and push the bike briefly (the triathlon route will only be ondulating in the first parts but not hilly, so I haven't been doing much hill-training), but endurance was not a problem. I felt better at the end than at the beginning, except for some limping around at the birthday party due to muscle ache. Tuesday on the train back I still had this deep inner feeling of peace and love which often comes after a long distance event.
With my mother - after 12 hours on the bike
The ride also made my family understand a little better what this triathlon project was about. My father had been reading my blog regularly (brushing up his English), it was great to feel their support and encouragement, and conversations started to turn to mountaineering, Mount Everest, and of course swimming and sports in general and its tradition in the family. My mom told me I would just jump into the big pool at the age of 3 and doggy paddle back, and I remembered that my father took me on my first ultra - a 12 hour mountain hiking tour in Austria - at age 16! Even my nieces got excited when they checked out the photos on the blog.
Jojo and Maria
Thanks to the kids, things were quite light-hearted with lots of laughing and fooling around, and after watching "Silly Walks" with John Cleese on the internet we ended up having to do "silly faces" for the camera. It was the nicest family birthday party for a long time, with a special spirit due to challenge ahead!
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