Can you Feel It?

Finally it's here, World Cup Soccer. One could feel the vibe and how everything is building up this past week.

I must warn you this is one of my unusual longer posts but I have so much to share and are so excited about a lot of things.

First of all I need to share this post by Raoul de Jongh, a great triathlete who is going to Kona again. He won his age group and below is a post he written regarding the soccer world cup and what South Africa is all about, Brilliant. http://www.urban-ninja.co.za/index.php/2010/06/dear-world-cup-visitors/

He also left a comment on one of the post I wrote, "Who's your coaching Daddy" and is also worth reading. http://tri-stemmet.blogspot.com/2010/05/whos-your-coaching-daddy.html

On Friday before the game there was even an informal World Cup Parade down the main street of Springs (town in which I work). Everybody went crazy and was just having fun.

Below are two of my staff members who joined the parade as it moved past our dealership and blowing the "famous" Vuvuzela during the parade.

The opening concert on Thursday night was good but I was expecting more, especially from the Black Eyed Peas and the Parlotones as they only performed for a short period but I guess that's how an opening concert is, it's not a specific artist's concert and they must cater for everyone.I did however enjoyed the mobile "Keganators", picture above. They made sure I wasn't thirsty for the first half of the concert before they ran dry. Lot of thirsty people at the concert.

Yesterday we were at a dance competition in which DJ participated. I am so proud of her. She only started dancing competitions beginning of the year and is really doing well. They have four categories in which you participate: Beginner, Novice, Intermediate and Champion, which is in Triathlon terms the "Elite" section. They award points for the top six dancers who reach the final at each competition, and as you accumulate points you move up to then next level.

It took DJ only 4 events to gather enough points to move up to the Novice level in both the Freestyle and Slow dance disciplines. Yesterday she participated in this category for the first time and achieved an amazing 4th place out of 27 competitors in the slow dance section.

Even in the Freestyle section she reached the semi final before being eliminated, also a great achievement

Her performance in the semi-final was one of those where every move were just perfect. I can't dance to save my life but if I can compare it to Triathlons, it was one where your swim, bike, run and transition during the race just worked out perfectly. Pity you are not allowed to video the children when they perform??

Took this picture of an airport worker sleeping when I did IMSA70.3 in East London during January. Hope he "Can Feel it" by now.

Training was difficult this week with all the World Cup activities and everybody trying to squeeze a last minute meeting in before the World Cup begins. I missed two session during the week, one due to a meeting and the other due to the concert.

I also missed Saturday's Brick session but did it Today. It was a great session up to the point where I got two punctures right after each other and a 3h30 brick ( 2h30 bike, 1hr run) turned into a 2h30 brick (1h30 bike, 1hr run). I could maintain 37km/h on the IM New Zealand Computrainer course and a 4:30min/km during the 1 hour run. Tomorrow is a rest day and it suits me just fine as we are going to watch the match between Netherland and Denmark. Going to be just awesome!

My training plan with CTS is still going great and I am so happy with the program and the service. During one of the bike specific sessions during the week, I realized for the first time that I am losing power during the bike when I bike above 240 watts for long periods. Not having professional bike fitters or Retul around my bike position is a three year trail and error exercise.

That's the advantage of having a coach, Powermeter and Computrainer. Coach asked me to send her some pictures and video to see if we can see where the problem lies. Super excited to see if we can tweak it a bit the get some more watts out of these legs.

This is the "famous" Vuvuzela which irritates a lot of people but has been part of our soccer culture for so long and the noise doesn't even bother me.

Here's a short video especially for Bryan, where Yours Truly demonstrate the Vuvuzela