There is absolutely more in life than sport, but I could not imagine a life without sport

After getting the website back into the air, this will be the second post. Today all about the new title of the website: Sport and Life. Since sport plays a major roll in recovery and also gives me a lot of joy and the motivation to get up and running in the morning on the more difficult days.

There is absolutely more in life than sport, but I could not imagine a life without sport. I think the title says it al, so you can stop reading if you are just here for a short summary ;-).

At the end of the first consult at the brain concussion centre (Hersenschudding poli voor sporters, KNVB Zeist), the doctor told me to continue to do sports. Several researches showed that sport is positive in brain recovery. I will not go into the medical and scientific details of it, but the short summary here is that during sport more blood goes to the brain, which helps the brain to recover the injured parts. Moreover, we all know that sport is good for your health and state of mind. For me, it often makes me a happy person.

But of course, it was also not possible to sport like before and for me, it was mentally difficult to do sports, but not being able to go to work. Although I knew that were two completely different tasks, it felt dual to go out on the bike or for a run. After visiting the doctor, it helped me to explain it to work and that did make it better, but even nowadays I still have mixed feelings.

On the other hand, I have also noticed last winter that during dark days, pushing myself to go outside for a least a walk, made the clouds in my head disappear. And no, that was absolutely not easy, but took a lot of discipline from my side with some help from the Mrs. and my closest friends.

So, I continued to do sport. Cycling, running, swimming and walking. Easy going, efforts, just focus on the technical skills and so on. Technical trainings were really good for brain training, the easiest ones for relax session, but for 95% for all trainings: joy was the major drive. I got myself a Garmin forerunner 945 to be able to do all my trainings with the current brain situation. Why?

1. Is has this function that during a crash Esther gets directly a message with the GPS coordinates. So far no crash messages :-)

2. Is has this function: navigate back home. So if the brains get lost, it helps me to come home. (Unfortunately I have had days where I needed this option).

3. I can programm my trainings so that I do not need to remind them myself. My trainer Paul write down my trainings and then I will program them in Garmin Connect. Then just do what the watch says and it will be fine.

4. And last: it gives me extra data about how trainings are going and that gives me some help to do not too much.

I started swimming with a course from the KNZB, just to learn how to do a proper freestyle and to be able to swim in open water. At the start in April 2019 I never expected that it would give me so much joy. Since November 2019 I train with ZV Hoogland and in the beginning it was really difficult, because they swim so fast, but with some extra training and effort it got better every week and more importantly, it made me happy. Learning new skills is very challenging, but also very satisfying and really to for rehab. After the COVID-19 break it really took some time to get back at the level I was before. I was fit, but really lost a lot of my technical skills. However, everyone who knows me just a bit, knows that I cannot cope with something I cannot do, so yes, I got privet lessons :=). A big shout out for Anne-Irene who is helping the last months. We both laugh a lot about the sometimes interesting moves I can make in the water which will be impossible to be done by others. Nevertheless, I make progress in these trainings. Combining that with the Tuesday 6.00-7.00AM training (yes, that early) and the Friday training makes me swim faster almost every week. I even did my first race and more to come. I am smiling while writing this part, so hopefully, you can feel something of that in my words as well. Swimming also helps me to get out of the house, I have met new people and I also know that they take care of me when needed. So thanks for that as well! (I don't think I need to give names here, they will recognize themselves)

I started training with Paul in April 2013, but last year things got to a whole different level during the rehabilitation, started already with coming back from the overtraining period. I think it is not always easy to train me, because I often want more then that is good for me, or in all my enthusiasm I really do too much, but after seven years together I think we know each other pretty well and I have learned to stick to the plan in ±90-95% of the trainings. In the last year we made some small goals to work on, focussing on technical things like cadans, a lot of work on my time-trail bike and the combination of swim/bike/run sessions.

I can tell my insecurities, doubts, but also the good feelings, progress and goals I want achieve. The short checks in the morning about doing a training or not are also something we introduced when needed and that helped me also to perform a training more conscious instead of doing it because it is in the scheme.

Hopefully, we will ride more often together with the gravel bike! Stick to: you make the route and I will be the wind breaker ;-).

This summer I used my bike to go on a bike pack session of six days. Just me, my bike and Brillie (my mascotte on the picture). The week before, it became clear that I could not be a teacher anymore and that working in general would be a real challenge. It was so good to go out on the bike, explore new routes and I was offline for all days. Jelmer made sure I got out of the country and Karlo made sure I got back home again, but in the mean time I was with myself and my thoughts. I was able to get things in perspective, had a mental breakdown at day 3, got over it during the ride and afterwards I really felt more stable. I got home after more than 600km, physically not even really tired and mentally really fresh and alive.

In August Esther and I went on holiday. Like said in the last blog, being in the car is something I avoid as much as possible. So, I took the bike for the 215km to our holiday apartment. The route to Bad Iburg was really beautiful (even with the one hour of downpour) and after the sun came through it was even beter. The first 200km were flat, but the last 15km really hilly with some steep climbs. That gave directly the complete holiday feeling. So sports helped me to avoid the car, arriving fresh at our holiday and we had a nice (covid-proof) holiday.

And for the future... I talked with the KNWU (dutch cycling bond) about being a pilot for vision-impaired people and that was a positive conversation. Why? Since I am able to sport safely, I also wanted to do something for someone else. I talked with the NTB (dutch triathlon bond), which was positive as well, but they don't have a vision-impaired woman athlete at the moment.

I already had coffee with Miranda and hopefully we will have our first ride soon. I am looking forward to this journey and let's see what it will bring.

So the summary is that this blog is not only about my life and sport, but also contains a big thank you and compliments to a lot of people. I feel blessed.