Our athletes have big ambitions for the season and the staff has big goals for the off-season. The last few years my main targets for the winter break have been simple: Fix the damn roof of my old house and run 10km under 35 minutes.
Until now I haven't had success achieving any of those off-season goals.
How can it be that I fail to succeed year after year I ask myself? Looks like I underestimate normal family life year after year.
What I mean is that when we are on the road, I don't have to cook for two kids each morning, I don't have to get two kids dressed and drive them to school, I don't have to pass the post office, go to the shopping mall, visit my parents-in-law, have my mother running around asking 1,000 silly questions about the garden, do mathematics homework with the kids (I don't have a clue about that) go to BMX, or swim with all the kids in the neighbourhood. I even went to Sweden with three kids, sleeping in a tent, in a dark rainy forest, surrounded by wild bears, moose, and vampires (I told the kids).
Stuff like that makes you really tired. In the evening I feel like a riders who just arrived at the Velodrome in Roubaix - eight minutes after the winner.
Most Sundays I do some kind of competition. With competition I mean stuff where you get a number on your chest, make bets with your pals about who's the fastest, standing at the start line being nervous as you start in a Olympic pursuit final and getting your butt kicked big time.
Getting home and convince yourself, you'll be back much better and stronger next weekend.
We're all armed with a selective memory, we only remember our wins and never our losses.
Oh, please don't mention my roof or old house. I remember when we bought it; it was just one small week before the big financial crisis back in '08.
I Told my wife; this is going to be the best investment of our lives, a few things have to be fixed, honey remember I'm an old bricklayer and a handyman so before you know, you live in a castle ... hmmmm.
My wife has to understand a lot of things in life don't necessarily go as planned.
Something I absolutely did not plan at all this winter, but happened anyway, was my 50th birthday.
At my age you try to ignore/forget birthdays like that, but my brilliant friends kept asking: "How is it becoming 50 grandpa, will you make a big party, you need a walking stick or shall we cut your steak in small pieces so you can chew it old man ..."
For a while I was thinking: Hell! Why didn't I do Tour of Beijing with Schaffi and Lefevere. Just away from everything so nobody would know it was my 50th birthday.
The day of my birthday a friend of mine asked, if we should grab a coffee downtown Copenhagen in the afternoon ...Yes sure, why not I said.
Well just when I arrived at the bar, I ran into a young Gentleman called Mr. Cavendish, saying happy birthday old chap ...
The bar was full of 150 of my friends. The afternoon went to evening, the evening went to night and the night went to morning..
Next day I felt like 150 years old, but properly got my best birthday ever!
See you soon!
The Holm