How I spent my holiday

As I am writing this, it is the third week of July and the quietest work week of the summer. I have been a bit lazy, but I am finally sitting down to write this newsletter. As I look forward, my agenda shows that most clients will be back from their holidays in the first week of September, and then it will be full steam ahead.
It is often a time of year when I see some new clients join, too, with new goals coming out of the summer season.

As you know from last month’s newsletter, my summer has been full of training for my race that takes place in a couple of weeks. But this doesn’t mean it hasn’t been fun. My husband and I also went with my Mum to the Olympics in Paris for a couple of days.

If you know me well, you know that I love sports, and it is not just in recent years that I have loved the Olympics. When it was the Barcelona Olympics, I was 16, and I purchased a weekly magazine leading up to it. It featured all the sports and athletes to watch. Britain wasn’t such a strong team as it is now, but I still loved it all. During the Sydney games, I got up early in the morning to watch the British rowing coxless 4 win gold!

Then in 2012, the Olympics came to London and it was a real life opportunity to actually witness the sport first hand. It felt a bit like a once in a lifetime opportunity to “be there”, until this year when it was held in Paris and we got to visit again.

The two experiences were amazing! I loved watching all the athletes competing at such a high level.
We didn’t manage to get athletics tickets at the London Olympics (although we were lucky and did for the Paralympics), but in Paris, we made it to a morning session. I loved watching the track events. We were also right in front of the men’s javelin. I found seeing their movement right in front of me fascinating. How they managed to bring their shoulder and arm back so far and then create so much energy was amazing!

Even though we didn’t get tickets to the mixed relay triathlon, we were able to see it from the road. We didn’t arrive early enough for a front row view and by prioritising being on the bike/run course, we couldn’t watch the swim. The format is that each athlete does a triathlon of 300m swim, 7km bike, 2km run and hands over to the next athlete (ordered man, woman, man, woman; next Olympics will have the woman lead off). As we watch this sport a lot, we have quite a good idea of which athletes and countries are strong so, for us, it makes it more exciting.

To be able to follow along, we also had it playing live stream on a phone. Watching them on the TV at home on the comfort of your own sofa you don’t quite appreciate the speed they go at. On the bike leg, they just flew past so fast!
The run we could see better, and they were extremely impressive.

Water Polo Game

We also went to see a sport we didn’t know well at all. We did watch a match at home before we left to get a bit of a feel. It was water polo. It was fun, though.
On reading the rules, I found out that they have their nails checked before they start each match! I hadn’t realised how rough a sport it was 😂.
I noticed that if I just followed where the ball was going I missed fighting in front of the goals. We did have a French game during the session that increased the cheer levels.

I really love watching elite sports live. I love the energy that you get from it. It is really inspiring and motivating for me for both my own training and also for my work.