I've reached peak fitness

But maybe not in the way you might think.

I've reached peak fitness in the sense that this is it. This is what I've got. Work at Trippz has been relentless these past weeks, and the reality is simple: I can't commit the training time needed to keep growing. Not right now. Not in the next month before we fly to Cape Town.

Next week we're off skiing for a week. I'm bringing the trainer (because of course I am) but Christmas holidays taught me a valuable lesson. During those family days, I learned that even with the best intentions and a Kickr downstairs, sometimes you just can't carve out those structured training blocks. Life happens. Work happens. Family happens.

And you know what? I've made peace with it.

When we get back from skiing, there are only two weeks (and a bit) left before departure. Two weeks (how exciting!) But the math is brutally honest: that's enough time for maintenance, maybe some minor increments, but not true growth. The adaptations I've been chasing over 8 months, the ones that require consistent overload, recovery, and progressive stress, those don't happen in a fortnight plus some.

My most recent BIG session

Last week I did tempo work: three blocks of 15 minutes at 265 watts, packed in 2h15 endurance ride. I felt strong. Properly strong. It was tough, tempo always is, but I could have done another block if the session was programmed like that. That feeling told me something important: I'm ready, and I am strong!

Not perfectly prepared. Not at my absolute ceiling. But ready.

The fitness is there. The endurance base is there. The mental toughness from months of Tuesday morning Kickr sessions and pushing through when motivation was below average, that's all banked. This is the form I'm taking to South Africa, and honestly, I'm very happy with where I am.

This is what it looks like

This is what it looks like when you chase an audacious goal while running a 17-person company and (trying) being present for your family. It's not the perfect training block from a coaching manual. It's not the linear progression graph ChatGPT will feed you happily. It's messy and compromised and real.

Some athletes get to structure their entire lives around one event. They can manage fatigue, time training camps perfectly, taper scientifically. That's not my reality right now, and I've never tried doing that (although the pressing thought is ‘’how far could I get if I could do all of that)

Instead, I've done what was possible: structured sessions when work allowed, maintaining consistency even when volume dropped, protecting the key workouts, and accepting that some weeks just wouldn't go according to plan.

The shift in mindset

There's something freeing about accepting this. For weeks I've been fighting the tension between what the training plan said I should do and what I could actually do. That gap creates stress and honestly can be frustrating. It makes you feel like you're (to some extent) failing even when you're putting in solid work.

But when you accept where you are, when you stop measuring yourself against an impossible standard, the pressure releases. I'm not going to arrive in Cape Town with 330 watts FTP at 76kg. That was always ambitious. What I will arrive with is the fitness I've genuinely earned while living a full life, and that feels more honest somehow. I’ll arrive in South Africa at 78kg with an FTP of ~300 watts. Which is still massive progress, compared to the lab test August 21 at 230 watts.

What comes next

The plan for the next month is simple: maintain. Keep the fitness I've built. Stay sharp. Protect against illness. Do the heat acclimatization sessions in the sauna .Test the race nutrition one more time. Stay engaged mentally without burning out physically. Slowly start getting your stuff ready to pack.

No heroic last-minute efforts. No cramming fitness in like studying for an exam. Just showing up for the sessions that matter, keeping my legs fresh, and trusting the work I've already done.

When Jeroen and I roll up to the start line in Meerdendal Wine Estate on March 15th, I'll have the fitness I have. Not the fitness I dreamed of, or planned for in October, but the fitness that was actually possible given everything else in my life.

And I am genuinely excited about that!

Because Cape Epic doesn't care about your perfect training block or your optimal taper. It cares whether you can suffer for eight days straight, whether you can manage your effort intelligently, whether you're mentally tough enough to keep pushing when everything hurts. Those qualities don't come from an extra month of VO2 max intervals. They come from the cumulative resilience you've built over hundreds of hours in the saddle.

I've got that. We've got that.

So this is peak fitness. Not because I can't get any fitter, but because this is where real life and ambitious goals meet. And I'm heading to South Africa with my eyes wide open, absolutely ready for whatever those 692 kilometers throw at us.

Time to shift from building to maintaining and get ready to roll!

Until then, Keep Chasing!