Newcastle (WA-United States) - Time flies when you are having fun! And guess what? I am having fun and time flies just too fast at the moment. Training and racing have been good to me. In Groningen I had my first win of the season at the ’70.3’ race I did. Training wise everything is nicely on track and things are feeling great! Once again my home has moved, not to Lanzarote this time, but to Ben & Cindy’s. Last Monday I flew to Seattle to do my race in Coeur D’Alene next Sunday. Up till now I have been trying to get rid of my jetlag and trying to get the 22hour trip out of my system. And things are looking great. Yesterday I had my first great day at the office in Seattle!

Somehow I always get up early in the States. It might be the jetlag, but getting to bed early just makes me wake up early too. So after getting up at 5AM, having breakfast and a great cup of coffee we went to one of the many lakes near Seattle to do an early morning swim in one of the coldest lakes I have ever been in. BUT this was nothing they told me compared to the  CDA lake in which the Ironman is held…. Oooh, boy I am looking forward to that swim….. NOT! Wearing two bathing caps was nothing  luxurious! The first few meters were a real shock to the system, but things started to feel more and more comfortable and the cold water started to feel great. In the end the swim was really great, but what else could I expect? Clear green water, nice bright red buoys, great looking shores and a lot of other crazy early swimming triathletes and swimming in some lake near Seattle early in the morning made this swim one to remember for a long time. But perhaps the best of all was not even the swim itself, but a Bald Eagle who happened to be hungry and grabbing his/her breakfast out of the lake right in front of the beach and returning to a tree at the shore! A sight which I do not see that often, or well, have not seen ever before. It just made my day!
This however was just the start of a great office day in Seattle. Ben hooked me up with Matthew to go on a ride through the Seattle countryside. But first we had to get second breakfast in at Brown Bag Café in Kirkland. Someone said that ‘the bigger the people that come out of a restaurant the better the food is’! And that proved to be right! The size of my French Cinnamon Role was enormous, but luckily half the size of Matthew’s one! Enough to get me through the 5 hour ride we were going to do after this great second breakfast!
We got dropped off at Matthew’s and started from there! I was excited to go and see if the Seattle countryside would be really as great as I was told by many…. Since I am visually orientated, I formed an image of what it should have looked out there, but the real sight just beat all my expectations! Riding with snow covered mountains far away in the distance, with the sun high up in the sky, somewhere near Seattle, in the Washington State, through a green valley, along a little twisty river, up and down the road, with waterfalls over 50 meters high, with rock faces straight up in the air, now and then a steep climb and more, is just something I do not on a regular basis back. Groningen is just totally different and this was just a welcome change of riding! I was smiling all the time and looking around to try and see everything and print it into my mind.
he hours ticked by without noticing it! A quick Starbucks coffee refreshed us for the last part! I enjoyed every piece of the ride and my day at the office in Seattle was one of the greater days I have had while living my dream! Today will be an easy day with a short run and swim and then there is only a couple of hours left to the next ride tomorrow morning! I just can’t wait to get out there again!