Northern Italy and southern Tyrol are fantastic areas for those with a penchant for beautiful nature, mountaineering, wine, cycling, good food and lots of sun. It's paradise for me as I now am back in training and cycling a bit again.
We've already been down here for a week and I'm feeling better every day. We've had one overcast afternoon and a couple of rain showers, but apart from that the sky has been blue with temperatures approaching 30 (degrees Celsius). We're living in the outskirts of Bolzano and we're really enjoying ourselves.
This last week I've been able to exercise for 10-12 hours and at present that's more than enough for me. After two months with almost no exercise, I'm in very poor shape. Even though my latest tests have shown normal levels again, it doesn't mean that I can just start up training as usual. This break has been very long and my body isn't ready for normal doses of exercise quite yet.
The good thing is that I feel great and have made a start on the exercise again. It's difficult to tell whether I'll be able to take part in any races before this season is over. The biggest mistake we can make is for me to start up too hard and get sick again. We're hurrying slowly. If we fall for the temptation of starting too hard, we run the risk of not being able to get going on our winter training programme, which will in turn have grave consequences for the Olympic season.
Even if the result is no more races this season, both of us have at least learned a lot from this experience. When, at the end of May, we decided to suspend the season for a while in order to go home and run some tests to find what was wrong, we imagined it would take a maximum of two to three weeks to get me back on my feet again.
To read the complete diary entry, click here.
