Mr Felt - a wheely well travelled bike

mr felt having a rest while his rider takes pictures of road signs (!)

mr felt ready to race

Mr Felt is having a bit of a mixed time of it. He's getting to go out and do exciting things like, er, well go for bike rides! Up hills, down (some) hills, into the wind, out of the wind...the rest of the time he has a nice lie down in the beetle and recharges his cranks for the next outing. He's been everywhere with julie - several times to Australia, Singapore and the UK, he went to China and Brazil, he went to Malaysia, the USA, Cyprus. He's been to more countries and on more planes than a lot of people have! So he considers himself pretty special. He IS pretty special. So he was a little perturbed lately when he went to the bike shop for a fixing of what he thought was a minor problem and then gets told he needs replacing with a younger model!! He was a bit sulky for a few days - stuffed his brake pads in his ears and put his pedals up, refusing to come out of the beetle. But then pulled himself together and is currently proving himself up to any road put in front of his wheels. His opinion is that it's his rider that needs improving, not him! Go mr Felt!

how julie spends her day - part two of a hundred and one: Learning Choreo!

Essential tools of my trade: itunes, ipod, dozens of Les Mills choreography notes and dvds for RPM, BodyPump and BodyAttack. I spend hours every day listening to music (constantly - in the car, while i run, while i'm multi multi tasking doing another bunch of stuff), learning and re-learning new tracks for my classes, preparing new playlists to keep my classes fresh! Can't say more now, got to find an exciting track 5 for this morning's RPM and and a shoulders and abs track for Bodypump...see ya!

how julie spends her day - part one of a hundred and one

julie's notorious sunday morning circuit training class ready for action!

julie's triathlon demons part one - downhills on the bike

So this is the sign that strikes fear into my heart! Most triathletes i'm sure love the sight of this or at least prefer it to the 'up' one. Sigh. I even have Down Escalator Terror - i either take the lift or the stairs or i apply the 'tuck in behind a bunch of people and only look at their feet' strategy to get onto the moving horror steps. 'Lost Cause' i can hear you sniggering. Anyway believe it or not i AM improving and some downhills i am even starting to enjoy! Today someone even remarked 'but you were going quite fast' (that must have been the bit where i had my eyes shut). I still have no feeling in my hands and brake lever indentations in my fingers though from yesterday where i managed to descend the top and bottom part of one vertically (to me) downward stretch but still had to walk the middle bit (Really Steep - honest even someone else agreed with me - so there!). During which time i did my usual 'just checking my bike' act which attracted a passing local in a car who wanted to take me for breakfast, a pleasant lady in a car who bombed past me only to drive back up to see if i was ok, and two more cyclists who thought i was struggling going up and clearly didn't believe me when i said i was going down, actually! Mr Felt (my bike) disowns me at times like this and pretends he's waiting for his real rider who is totally fearless. I have six days until my next downhill challenge and i am not going to sleep all week!! Actually that may help, as I at least won't have nightmares!

bringing it up to date

Apparently i need to keep my blog up to date (have been seeking blog advice!) so here's an overview of the week before it runs away into another one. It's been a blur of training, work, tri talks and not much sleep (normal week then!). It's been a week of cycling hills - two done, one session to go tomorrow, coaching others, being coached, being spontaneously 'life coached' by some very special people drawn into my life right now...who the hell needs negativity??! so much positivity in my life, time to get rid of those crabs in a bucket!
Time also to face two of my triathlon demons - wetsuits and downhills - which to most triathletes are Good Things rather than Bad Things! More to follow tomorrow on these issues with pictorial back up!
More pressing now though is dinner with my tri camp crew, one of whom is celebrating his 56 years young birthday. we have had a great day of mountains, pool and grass and now off to trough to fuel up for tomorrow. Who exhausted who more - the coach the crew or the other way around is up for debate, but hopefully they like me more than they said they did earlier in the pool!!!! :-)

2009 gets off to a Very Good Start!

So I had decided that Singapore was going to be my turning point race in the meantime i was just going to enjoy it (which i did - i even made the startline just before the gun went off which was a slight improvement on the previous Sing race!!). I had nerve damage in my arm after falling off Rocky my mountain bike two weeks earlier and that was so sore I had to take painkillers on the way (and I Never take painkillers!) amazing how how you can block pain out until you cross the finishline! A few days after i got back to Dubai I heard from the British Triathlon Federation I'd got a place on Team GB for the world champs long course in October in Australia. Did i need any more signs? Could i be any happier?? A few weeks later, Julie's inaugural international tri camp decamped to Cyprus and stayed here (above right) and had an absolutely marvellous time, chilling by the sea, chilling in the sea (flipping cold!), sleeping a lot (one night we all went to bed at 6pm and didn't resurface until brekky the following morning - not the same bed i hasten to add, the trip wasn't THAT exciting :-D), making new friends and meeting up with old ones...oh and yes we did an Olympic distance race which was the reason we went. A freezing but lovely clear swim followed by a four lap bike ride and a three lap run that partly took us across a beach (on a slope so that one foot was partly avoiding the waves and the other getting sucked down by greedy sand) and then up a sand dune which shot the HR up and then along some crazy paving - but with a view so stunning it really didn't matter! Ah now, this is what being a destination triathlete is all about!

This is the real start of my 2009, the day I decided that now I had to get serious about what I was passionate about instead of winging it! (I'm referring to getting the trophy for placing 3rd in my age group at the Singapore 70.3 not the Tiger beer drinking ;-O)