Can I get a blog from you? A question I have never been asked before but have been asked twice in the last two days! Writing has never been my forte but I will tell my story the best I can!
So lets start at the beginning – Months of training, early mornings, long rides, intense pool sessions and generally just hectic training sessions day in and day out – But would this all pay off? Would I finish? How long would it take me?

Would my foot injury hold out? All questions racing through my mind every single time I thought about the race. It did, it all paid off.  Janine, yes, beginner Janine, here I am.. but as of the past weekend, as Luc would say, no longer a beginner. I took part in the Sun City ultra this past weekend – My very first one! And yes, I managed to somehow cross that finish line!

The power of team work in an individual sport is something so precious. It doesn’t happen often enough for me. My schedule usually finds me doing many of my sessions on my own, but there are two sessions in the week when I immerse myself in the “group”. It is when I get to run in harmony with track team mates or push a long sweet stretch of tar side by side on the bike with sweat sitting on the front edge of my helmet.

When it’s over we laugh at the fact that we did it and did it well, or console that it was shitty but so much better to have hated it with company. It’s special for the words of encouragement received as you ache to the end of a set that has left you lagging, or the “come on – push to the line – you are looking strong” that you say to those who need it.

My husband, Chris, was the first to join team TriFacTri. It was a big deal you know, not just anybody got to train with the infamous Lucie Zelenkova! So when Lucie decided to take Chris on as an athlete we were so excited! He flourished from the minute he started training with the group and had many podiums to show for it.  I was the ‘team photographer’ which made me so proud. I loved every second of snapping these super-humans (whom I looked up to each time I got to spend time with them)… and I still love photographing each athlete every chance I get.