2/10 – I take my hat off…

…for all the underestimated sportsmen and women within the world of motor sport. The exterior not seldom display jet set lives with lots of beer and party and the attitude of that it’s all about skills. They were born to drive like that, they just get in the car or on the bike and win, and that’s what they do. At the most, they can admit to that they might spend some time behind the wheels every now and then, but just for fun of course. No way. Just like the real surf dudes, there are hours of training behind it. And then I mean the kind of training, which the rest of the sports fanatics would call real training as well. Cardio, weights, sprints until you taste blood and hour after hour on the track, again and again and again. Or massive runs before the sunrise, so no one will actually see you training. That’s what the surfers with the perfect bodies do before they head to the beach to catch the first waves, trust me, even got one to admit it once.

It’s more than 48 hours ago now and I’m still moving in some sort of staccato pattern. My right calf gets sudden cramps and as soon as I lift something heavier than a ball pen, the lactate acid seems to start bubbling in my arms again. Went for run to see if I could soften up a bit - what a joke. Got a PB the other night with 36.58 minutes, but today it felt like I wasn’t even half way around that stupid lake by then.

The thing is, that we’re not talking about an 8 hours enduro race, on muddy tracks while the rain is pouring down in a deep Swedish forest. Or a 72 lap F1 race in 42 degrees boiling sun in a flash city. We’re talking about 2 x 20 minutes in a Brazilian go-cart, with colleagues, a Thursday evening, as a fun and relaxed team-building event. Somehow, I wasn’t the only one moving in slow-mo in the office on Friday. I think most of the department was more or less limping around, with or without ice packs in strategic places. Perhaps that’s the team building part; comparing aches, bruises and count the number of broken ribs, together with your work mates?

Have to admit that it was, and still is, worth every aching part of my body to beat most of the guys though. Even though it’s just a game…erhm…