Opening weekend

For all you die-hard cycling fans out there, this was opening weekend. Never mind what went before, that was all just fun and games. Yesterday and today was "koers" for real. On Saturday, Omloop Het Volk, now renamed Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, -because the latter paper bought Het Volk-, was held under relatively mild conditions. There was even some sun on the course. Spectacular video on the internet on http://www.sporza.be. Look under "wielrennen," i.e. cycling.

The Omloop ended in a rather bizarre way and a crash near the finish left many competitors, including Boonen in a bad spot. The race was won by Thor Husvod from Norway. Today Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, in somewhat worse weather, saw a spectacular win by Tommeke in a sprint finish. Both races are held in Flanders and cover some of the same cobbles and climbs.

I, for one, decided not to ride this weekend and Alistair came down with a rather nasty stomach flu. Furthermore, the weather in Northern California wasn't much better than in Belgium and I already did four days of that recently. Additionally, the Boston marathon is coming up and I need to train if I am to do well. So once again, I absconded to the gym and ran on the treadmill. I ran the same 8.8 miles, keeping nearly the same pace as yesterday, which is pretty good I say. 

I am thinking about running 100K this week, or 62.5 miles. To do so, I would have to run nearly 9 miles a day every single day of the week. That may be a bit much but we will see how things evolve. Maybe I need to insert one or two slow days, where I take a bit more time to get to 9.