Bevrijdingsdag
May. 5th, 2005 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arwen_luneIt's 60 years ago today that WWII ended for the Netherlands.
I've been working the past few days, packing 4-metre long awnings into boxes. The guys who also do this keep complaining but to be honest I've done far, far worse work. This company is nice, no pressure of 'you must do so many pallets a day', no timing the breaks with a stopwatch, and all the usual employees are really nice. The work is dull as hell, but that's pretty much a given; the upside is that it doesn't seem to matter if I've slept 8 or 3 hours before I do it, I don't really need to wake up for it.
But today I have off because of Bevrijdingsdag. My parents have gone off camping for the weekend. This afternoon there's a big (freee) festival in the next town over, and the Levellers are playing! I was going to go with other people but now I'm alone... and I'm really uncomfortable with going to that kind of thing on my own.
Last sunday we had a competition, the 30 km in Laag Soeren. It hit 30 degrees celcius (!) and Laag Soeren is heavy terrain, deep sand and hills. The ride felt fine, but we didn't pass the vetcheck after the finish, which was very disappointing. It just confirmed my decision to give up endurance, at least with Rowan. The heartrate limit is 60 and for 4 competitions previously he lowered to 58 or 60 (so a really narrow pass) and now he was 64, so a fail. This inability to lower seems to be independent of whatever I do; conditionally he is up for a much faster lowering, we rode calmly, cooled where we could, and it all felt fine - yet still the rate wouldn't sink. I'm out of ideas and unless I get some major epiphany about what could really make a difference, this was Rowan's last competition.
I've been working the past few days, packing 4-metre long awnings into boxes. The guys who also do this keep complaining but to be honest I've done far, far worse work. This company is nice, no pressure of 'you must do so many pallets a day', no timing the breaks with a stopwatch, and all the usual employees are really nice. The work is dull as hell, but that's pretty much a given; the upside is that it doesn't seem to matter if I've slept 8 or 3 hours before I do it, I don't really need to wake up for it.
But today I have off because of Bevrijdingsdag. My parents have gone off camping for the weekend. This afternoon there's a big (freee) festival in the next town over, and the Levellers are playing! I was going to go with other people but now I'm alone... and I'm really uncomfortable with going to that kind of thing on my own.
Last sunday we had a competition, the 30 km in Laag Soeren. It hit 30 degrees celcius (!) and Laag Soeren is heavy terrain, deep sand and hills. The ride felt fine, but we didn't pass the vetcheck after the finish, which was very disappointing. It just confirmed my decision to give up endurance, at least with Rowan. The heartrate limit is 60 and for 4 competitions previously he lowered to 58 or 60 (so a really narrow pass) and now he was 64, so a fail. This inability to lower seems to be independent of whatever I do; conditionally he is up for a much faster lowering, we rode calmly, cooled where we could, and it all felt fine - yet still the rate wouldn't sink. I'm out of ideas and unless I get some major epiphany about what could really make a difference, this was Rowan's last competition.