pics of the little beach house - well the view from!

view from my front door !

my front door! this was about 5am and thick humidity!

also early, beetle in the humidity

too tired to write the words, more another time...loads to update on!

frustrations of no internet and having the lergy

me and the stay warmer socks

still having problems finding internet i can't believe that in this day and age i am so unconnected! On saturday i finished the race report for liverpool and was so pleased with myself for getting it done, was about to upload it and.....it vanished into cyber space!!!! how very very frustrating :-( was so not happy. Since i have been back from the UK i've had some silly flu thing that's just dragging on and on and has been keeping me from precious training time and the lack of internet ahs prevented me from just getting on and keeping up with stuff! what to do without a blackberry - i'd have no idea what was going on!! Hopefully soon i will re-do the report and even sooner can shake the lergy and get back into training :-)

the swim

the 'elite' wave swimming in liverpool's albert dock. i'm at the back somewhere but not right at the back yessss!!

a shorter race report this time, reflecting shorter race (just wait until ironman!!)

In brief it was great and once we got going i enjoyed every minute. The emphasis there is on the 'once we got going' maaaan it was cold! It took me a lot of bravery to peel off the layers and climb into the wetsuit and i thought i would be warm in the wetsuit but hell no! i was freezing! and so was everyone else. We were standing at the swim assembly waiting for the pre-plunge briefing just shaking with the cold. The great british summer, huh!

newsflash!! The new bargain basement wetsuit and i are friends! wahey! it's so much better, more pliable and doesn't try to strangle me and i can move my arms. Not sure if it had the effect of helping me to swim faster this time as by the time we started i was a frozen iceberg and wouldn't have noticed if someone had stuck a knife in my arm, but hey at least i didn't suffocate from the wetsuit this time, just from the cold water and icy arctic breeze whipping over the water. Nice.

So, we got into the water for the 8am start. Bl**dy cold but hey we will be off soon. Not to be, we were kept there waiting for 10 minutes! we were as blue as our hats! There were 30-something in the 'elite' age group start and only 8 were girls. I had googled them all and they were all fast but they were also all ages from 17-19 age cat to 45-49 so a good cross section. I was not the only frozen competitor, everyone was getting worked up with being left in the water for so long and were getting rather riled and starting to shout at the canoeists and man with the tannoy. Once we started it took me a while to realise i was moving as my limbs had gone numb, i tried to follow some feet but they were all too fast for me after about 150m but i kept tabs on a small group just in front of me and didn't let them get away too far. I actually loved the swim once we were actually swimming and it was over too soon! And there best thing was that there people behind me still, yesss!!

flipping cold up north!!

me and mr felt wearing tons of layers and still absolutely freezing!!!

'summer' in the uk!!!

a lovely summer's day in england

how can anyone live here??! it's Freezing!! Yesterday went for a longish run which was awesome in terms of scenery (my parents live right on the coast and it's so fab for running) but in one direction the wind was so fierce i kept getting smacked in the face by my pigtails and it was like running the wrong way on a fast moving treadmill. The waves were steel grey and smashing onto the beach and there was so much sand on the roads that the cars were driving on the pavement! This morning me and mr felt went out for a spin and i was so cold my ears hurt...heck how are we to survive tomorrow??!

off to cloudy chilly breezy but green UK

supposed to be the other way around but that must be in 'advanced blogging'..... Two: landing in green UK

One: taking off in sand blown desert

So after the usual packing on the way to the airport palava (i was still half packed from my last trips so that makes it easier!) and Mr Felt was being fought over by my villamates who got to take him apart so i just left them all to it, though whether leaving a bunch of boys with a beer in one hand and an allen key in the other is a good idea i'm not sure but was too tired and too much to do to really worry! Met up with a client of mine at the airport who was off to cyprus to do his own tri camp weekend and then off to the plane which was packed. Am always surprised so many people want to fly to manchester ha. Flight was a bit turbulent which made me a bit twitchy after the recent air france crash, but got distracted with movie watching, yay - the only time i get to watch movies and with flying a lot lately i'm so up to date! We landed rather bumpily and there was a big *bang* and everyone collectively inhaled - god knows what that was but a least we were on the ground by then!! Had to wait for ages for mr felt to get off the plane, don't know what he was doing, probably too cold for him to bother getting off, then there was the usual stupid airport posts and narrow slamming security door debacle to contend with, and a snooty security man who said i had to navigate a a double set of narrow no-turning-back doors by myself which involved a bit of nifty bike bag shoving, trolley dragging circus type maneouvres. Then was another hire car drama as europcar had no car and was supposed to wait for hours for one to come in and ended up with some very nice hertz people who didn't take up my entire credit card limit. And i slept an unbroken 9 hours which was wonderful and haven't done that since 1972 it seems and the other good thing is that my new cheapo wetsuit is here and it's SO nice and pliable and soft and it goes on and comes off without battling and being strangled and bullied by the damn thing and ending up with bruises. It just remains to see if i can swim in it!

mr felt returns

So i whizz off to pick up mr Felt and he takes ages to get ready. He's such a girl sometimes. Meanwhile I amuse myself by causing havoc amongst the staff and customers of wolfis, great fun! Turns out that Mr Felt wasn't just preening and admiring his borrowed race feet in the mirror but needed a new rear shifting cable which needs time to stretch! Flip he's falling apart more than his owner!! Said have no time to ride him properly before the race...heck it's only an olympic, a bit of 'fun' ...yeah.... :-@

Almost 10.30pm and just home and have to be up early again - quelle surprise, lots to pack into tomorrow! Bees want shorter flowers and more honey!! Or is that more flowers in the day, would be handy. What am i on about??!! need to sleep!!!!!