Czech Trip - Day 3 MTB

 

I was so excited for Sunday. A long ride on our mountain bikes. 

After checking out of Airbnb #1 (to check in to Airbnb #2 in the afternoon - I wasn't able to book one for our entire 7-day stay in Znojmo) we drove just outside of town to Karel's friends house - Jirka. We enjoy seeing Jirka everytime we visit Znojmo for two reasons 1) I get to see Visty (Italian Greyhound) and her baby Bianca 2) Karel gets to talk bikes with Jirka. Karel and Jirka share a similar love of Colnago bicycles. They used to race together when Karel was a teenager. 

Another friend joined us (Stephen) and we set out for a long ride around 9:30am. Although Karel is somewhat familiar with the roads, it was great to have Jirka as our tour guide as we were able to see so many great sights and several beautiful look-out points. I've seen a few of these spots in past trips, but never by mountain bike. I am used to riding on very technical single-track courses so it was a nice change to be on different off-road terrain. We rode for almost 3.5 hours and covered almost 40 miles and over 3400 feet of elevation gain. Although the area is not "hilly" we had to climb up several 18%+ grades to get to lookout points - it was all worth it. We also visited the Iron Curtain, which always makes me stop and think about Karel's upbringing in a communist country. 

When we visit Czech, I really try to embrace being a local. Although we brought sport nutrition from home, we enjoy trying new products. Jirka gave us each a sports bar to try (mine was banana and peanuts and Karel had apricot) – it was really good. We had our sports drinks in our USWE hydration packs.

Near the end of our ride, Jirka took us to a beautiful lookout point where we could see all of Znojmo – a location that Karel had never been to before. It was the perfect end to our long ride.

When we arrived back to Jirka’s house, his wife had a meal ready for us – chickpea curry with rice and salad. It was so good.

At 3pm, we headed back into town with all of our stuff to check in to our next Airbnb, which is where we will stay for the rest of our time in Znojmo (until Thurs). After unpacking, we walked around downtown and then picked up a pizza in town – it was amazing. The dough was so good and I really enjoyed the tofu topping on the margherita pizza. We finished the entire pizza.

We haven’t been sleeping that well since we have arrived. I think our internal clocks are still a bit off and getting used to not having AC (we have several fans). We went to bed around 10:30pm but it was a restless night of sleep. We seemed to sleep a bit better toward the morning hours as it got cooler outside. With the pool opening at 10am, we were in no rush so when we woke up. Karel went for a short run to help wake him up and then we walked to the grocery store (there’s a store at every corner) to get a few things. I’ve been having yogurt, muesli and fruit for breakfast. After breakfast, it was time to drive to the pool for a swim workout.