retreatless....

 This weekend my guild goes on retreat, but alas I was too slow in getting my form in and missed out. First time in over 8 years I think.  But I did have a birthday last Monday and was rather spoilt.  Gift vouchers from my friends for massages, a day spa voucher from my girls and the fisherman to be pampered.. money from my mum to buy some new cycling knicks that I have been banging on about getting.

 My bestie and training partner knows me too well and bought me this awesome coffee cup... we call ourselves team coffee so this was pretty apt.  Apres Velo means after cycling and no ride is complete without a coffee at the end.

 One of my other friends from the gym bought me a beautiful bunch of flowers, what girl doesn't like flowers on their birthday?

 And of course my beastie didn't miss out with the gifting and received a new bag for under the seat, my bestie got me a large size so that I can fit in her favourite killer pythons!

Are you blessed with good friends?  I know I am.  My life would be incomplete without my looney friends to make me laugh, drink coffee with and be there when I need a hug.

I survived

I survived!!!

what an amazing day. I rode 73km in 4 hours. I killed off 3141kcal.... gotta love that!

I think I drank 6 litres of water.

We left just after 9am from Geelong and set off at a nice steady pace, we had people overtaking us left right and centre.... but we just plodded along at our pace which was around 20-25kph depending on the hills etc.

My poor buddy really felt the heat and was done in about 10-12km from the finish line. We had an angel appear with a jug of iced water from her house that we were sitting outside in the shade that helped us continue on our way... it only took about 20mins and the water was hot.

I phoned her hubby to come and pick us up in the car..... she decided that she felt better and we started to ride again.... got a call from him to ask us where we were.... then we saw him.... on his bike!! omg, I think my buddy wanted to murder him. BUT she finished the ride, we stopped for another break and devoured lemonade icypoles then rolled into the finish line.

It was bloody hot!

the question is would I do it again??? YES I would do it tomorrow! Was a challenging ride without being ridiculous but the temperature.... no I wouldn't ride in 40 degrees if I have a choice.

Thank you to team coffee for participating in this event with me, makes eventing so much more enjoyable with friends

busy busy busy!!

Well those that know me, will be nodding their heads at the above statement heheheh.

My friend and I did our 2Nd round the bay in a day. We had her hubby, her 12yr old son with his new road bike and my other gym buddy come along. Was a great day out, I didn't enjoy the headwind at all, which was all the way to Altona. The best thing about the headwind is that I knew I would have a tailwind home whoo hooo. But it rained on us for a while so that was rather chilly.

We got a really nice finishers medal when we got back to Alexandra gardens so that was a lovely finish to the day (not to mention a crunchie bar or two!!).

Cookie was sitting eyeballing something this afternoon, he was supervising the unpacking of my new fabric purchases.

I took the noisy one and my mum for a little jaunt today, we visited Gail B's patchwork shop in Bayswater.

She has a large selection of fabrics, notions, and everything you may need to create a masterpiece.

I picked up these 2 yummy jellyrolls and was told that the yardage wont be out for a couple of months....

No probs I thought as the pattern I was going to use doesn't need any any extra yardage.

But then I read the pattern again and started to measure my strips and discovered to my horror that the pattern doesn't really suit these fabrics at all. so fortunately I had 3 other patterns that I was considering and was able to change my mind. The bad news is that I now need some background fabric grrrr. The good news is that I think I can get away with some other fabrics from other ranges... the stripey stuff is for binding (hope I have enough) So I may have to make another trip to Bayswater.... damn! Will go without non quilting people this time!!


Tomorrow I have my first ever fun run. I am not a big fan of running due to the fact it hurts my feet. This run is local and is only 7km I know the track as my team coffee mate and I have walked it several times together in the past weeks.

I will post how I go. The froglet is doing the 3.5km walk with some of my other friends. I know my friends will help me keep on going, I'm not doing this to win but to finish so wish me luck. I only did 4 training sessions this week, last week in 5 days I did a whopping 9 sessions! so hope it pulls me through. Just adding a little extra note here, will be dedicating this run to a fellow blogger that I admire greatly, she knows who she is...

too many things to do

My friend made an awesome picture for me, so I stole it and put it up on my face book profile and thought I would show you all here.


this of course is our special team name which started over a year ago in a boot camp training session.

On Sunday I managed to get some sewing done and have blocks ready to get their sashings and be ready to go to the quilter in the next week or two. Still have to do the binding on the baby quilt (I wont look to the right of me as it is glaring at me right now). Then there is the sister-in-laws quilt that needs to be quilted....hmmm.

no photos I am sorry but will take some when it is light outside.

Work again tomorrow, got some new contact lenses... gosh they are soooooo comfortable!! I thought my old ones were good, these shit all over them! Have to go and have the eye drops on Thursday..yuk Must make a dental appointment (double yuk)

Oh and I finally made appointments for the fisherman and myself to get our tax done.... yes for the LAST financial year.. thought we could do it real late then do our next one early and get a double hit lol!

computor problems

I have been missing in action off the net for the last 2 weeks. The program that was protecting our computers had a meltdown and we had to wait for the fisherman aka Mr I.T. to come home and fix it for us.

this is now done and I have much to catch up on.

I have now finished my 6 weeks of boot camp and I'm feeling rather sore but I know I have lost some inches and gained some fitness. My instructors were brutal in the nicest possible ways and my team mates kept me inspired and on target, I don't think I would have achieved some of the things without my team coffee to push me on.

I did a class last week and will post about that over the weekend with luck

I have muscles in my thighs....

I can officially say that I am in pain. Yeah yeah, I know its self inflicted, I'm cool with that :) I expected to feel pain and I better see results in 5 weeks time!!

Tuesday morning saw us lining up in 2 groups... those who could run 3km and those who could run 1.5km I must admit I took the easy way out and lined up with the 1.5km group. I'm glad I did, as the 3km group immediately took off in the dark for a run around the streets.... I have done this run before and its not the easiest 3kms.

the smaller group who stayed behind were brutally punished by John our evil instructor from hell. He made us put on gloves or pads, that in itself was a punishment as they stank and were wet inside ewwww (I was dry retching from them alone!) Anyway he made us do lots of sets of punches and core work and one of the girls slacked off so lucky us got to do an extra 50 push ups.

When the 3kers got back it was light enough for us to go outside for our turn with the other instructor from hell. We started off doing step ups on the wall (in the drizzling rain) and then off we went for our run around the park. I didn't stop and kept up with the front of the group so was happy with that. Back inside for a few more drills and home to shower and get ready for work!


We had an extra session on Wednesday night... only 4 of us turned up!! John was rubbing his hands with glee as it was an intensive hour of pain :) More drills, punching (brought my own gloves this time!) push ups, burpies with weights, squats with weights and chasing partners around the gym. I also stayed after and did a yoga session with Carlos.... he does tai chi and I find it a relaxing class after running around like a looney in most of my classes.

Back to the gym at 6am this morning for what we thought was going to be an outside session. Instead it was another team challenge CIRCUITS!! whoo hooo, love circuits! So we named our teams.... we are team Coffee! there was 3 sets of everything. 100 skips with ropes, 5 runs around the gym, 20 burpies with weights, 20 bicep curls, 10 stage runs,10 jump ups and the list goes on. our team came a very respectable 2nd by 2 mins which was good as the winning team was 3 big blokes and we are a team of 2 girls and one bloke.

Poor Seb, his leg was hurting by the end of the class so only Georgina and I ran around the park as we had finished earlier than the other teams (great reward lol). Of course that wasn't enough for us so Georgina and I returned for the knockout class with John (suckers for punishment aren't we!)

I figured that I have done over 6 hours of classes in 3 days! 4 of them within 24hours.

Ahh well its all fun isn't it :)
Have I been sewing? yes I have gotten some embroidery done on my final block for the quilters journey. Need to go and cook dinner so that I can go out to sew tonight with my quilting buddies