Some missing news.

It's already  a third or fourth time when I am trying to update my blog. I missed a couple last months and now I don't know where I should start or should I skip all my last news and start from the last one. No, I'll just go through it slightly reviewing them without dip details, but with some pictures:

1. I left Ukraine at the end of January after the last Ukrainian winter Holiday. And I went to Canada for a first time in my life to meet my friend, Wolf and drive to Clermont with him for a few months of winter training and to see my best friend, Oksana. It was a nice 4-5 days in Montreal and a fun time at Niagara Falls, in St. Catharines. 

             

2. Then we went to Florida by car, it took us around 19 hours to get to Jacksonville from St. Catharines. It could be a nice big story for one separate post. A road trip, one day long made its own fun story, but I'll cut on this one. 

3. More fun in Jacksonville. One day (that was Wolf's birthday) we had a beautiful day, playing golf (just shooting golf balls actually), trying to take pictures with an alligator in a small lake (first one I've seen so far in Florida) and with a great Birthday Party at the end of the day. 

4. I miss that time now, but a few months back I started to feel like I've had enough of rest and fun time and I started to feel hungry for some serious training. And at the very beginning of February we arrived to Clermont to prepare for a season 2010. And this year is going to be different than my last few years when I was training on my own. Now I have a coach, Wolfgang Guembel, the Canadian Pro triathlete and one of NRG performance training coaches, who agreed to work with me and so far, I think, it's coming out pretty well. I thought I was working hard through all my years in triathlon, but only now I am realizing what does hard work really means (I still love it though  :) ) 

5. I am missin

g something here again: I am a Timex girl for the year 2010 again. And into three weeks of my training I had to leave Clermont for a weekend and join my team maits for the Team Timex camp in New Jersey. Either my English is getting better or in four years we got closer and made a really good friends in the team or maybe it's the cold weather held us indoor and we didn't spread out and we had enough time to get to know each other or maybe it's my room mate, but anyway I really had a great time in New Jersey, during the Team Timex camp at New York Giants facility.

6. After the camp I had a first few short course races back in Florida: one of them was USAT Development race here in Clermont and the other one was MIT race in Miami of course. The Miami race would be another good story to tell in my blog, but, sorry I am skipping this one too. I'll just mention that I travel to south of Florida with Wolf, Max and Viktor and it's always fun to hang out with them. I was very happy about my bike and run splits and a little bit upset to lose 3 seconds to the 6th girl.

USAT Development race results; MIT results.

7. I didn't have much time to rest after those two races. I've been invited to do All Japan Triathlon, Strongman, this year again. I am as excited about it as last year, maybe even more. I really like this race and the atmosphere and just an opportunity to go to Japan again. But I had three hard weeks of training blocks ahead of me. And now I can proudly say, I survived it without too much whining and complaining. Although my coach might think differently :).  

Now I have one more week before I go to Japan and I am looking forward to the long trip itself too. After staying at one place for more than a month it time for me to travel. 

The project.

After such a great and relaxing time in Truskavets I was well charged and almost 100% healed from my foot injury. I finally came home for a few months of settled life, which I was looking forward to. But it's usually not a fun time back home during the winter, when it is snowing one day then raining a next day then temperature drops down below 0 and nothing you can do, training wise, outside. But the worst part about the weather in my city, Lvov, that during this time of the year you don't see the sun very often. Actually you don't see it at all. So, I needed to find something to motivate myself to keep moving myself. And I came up with an idea to do the renovation of my apartment in 30 days. To go from that  

                through all that:

to make it lok like this: 

The idea was great and it really kept me busy (I was leaving my flat when workers arrived, trying to train for several hours, while they were working. Then I was running around city, buying some stuff that the workers were needed. I was coming home after 6 p.m. cleaning for an hour at list and on and on and on) till the last day of year 2009. Then Ukrainian holidays started, also one month long. I had a great week, spent with my mom, who came to visit me from Moscow. After she left back home I had one more week of my "settled" life, enjoying the time in my cozy flat. Two and a half months at home passed so fast and time to start prepare for the season 2010 was just around the corner.