Today was a crazy day. I'm really gutted that I left my charger in Brussels. Spen managed to get a travel plug from the hotel, so we shouldn't be without blog writing capability tomorrow on the most important day.
I saw a sign showing 41 degrees C today, it felt hotter, especially with the humidity. I ended up getting Spencer to throw water over me at one point. The heat really was today's biggest challenge. The hills we were fearing (our first chevrons) weren't as bad as we'd feared.
Spencer is now 3 without reply on the sprints, after I challenged him to an uphill sprint.
By 50 miles Spen and I were really feeling it. The heat was outrageous, our water was hot, making it at best just replenishing our fluids lost. Sweat wasn't doing its job. We had to stop in the shade every now and again just to try and cool down.
By the time we reached Maastricht, I was very tired with very little water left. Valkenburg seemed to evade us, we kept cycling and it never seemed to to get any closer. We eventually headed in the right direction and met up with Neal at the hotel, but I was exhausted and unbearably hot.
The knee felt much stronger today so that's a positive.
After a long cold shower to cool my body down, we headed to a Chinese, to find ourselves the only people in there! The food was pretty good.
We then headed out to find somewhere to watch the game, which passed without incident, we headed home at full time to watch the rest from our incredibly hot and stuffy room. There is no aircon so we're in for a sweaty one. There is some consolation though, because Spain won, the Dutch won't be keeping us awake, it'll just be the heat.
Spencer said it first, but I agree. I can't see me putting myself through all this again.
Into Germany tomorrow. I'm looking forward to that, just hoping the rain stays away. Though it may cool things down a touch, eh?
Good night one and all!
Good night my love - I knew it was worth waiting up for a last post!
ReplyDeleteI can't believe it's so hot there... and no air-con :(
Still, looking forward to the glorious finale tomorrow! xx
At last, the most stultifying and boring World Cup tournament in the history of the game has finally come to a mind-numbing and yawn-inducing end.
ReplyDeleteIt has been pathetic!
The Final, itself, was an absolute shambles.
I don’t know what the reaction was around you (let me know)– surrounded by Dutch fans – but the overwhelming reaction here was that Howard Webb let himself down very badly – particularly for not sending at least one, and probably two Dutch players off BEFORE half-time. They were literally kicking Spain off the pitch. It was shameful and disgraceful. By the end of the game 8 Dutch players and 5 Spanish players had been shown yellow cards (with one of the Dutch players getting a second yellow and, therefore, a red). It was a new World Cup record. As was the fact that Spain (who deserved to win, of course) only scored 8 goals in the 7 games they played. This beat the previous lowest scoring winners (Brazil in 1994, who scored 11) by 3! Spain’s last 4 games all ended 1-0. Talk about boring!
It has been atrociously abysmal!
The beautiful game has become hideous.
I hope Neal's spoke gets replaced, and you have a good day.