For all my English speaking fans;-) I 've a new blog on our team-website! I won't put the news any longer on this site because it's easier you click yourself to the new blog!

Sorry that I’ve not written earlier in my blog but the last days were very busy after the Ironman South Africa. I left the country right after the awards ceremony and it took me 40hours to arrive at my 1^st stop: fetching my dog Laika from my aunt! Oh, I was so happy to have my dog back while I haven’t seen her for almost 7 weeks. Longest time ever! This was late in the night and the next day I had to pick up my husband and his parents in Berlin which is 300km away. I decided to stay at my aunt’s house the night and wanted to get up early. When the alarm rang the 1^st time I decided to close my eyes for 5 more minutes…oh my dear – when I opened them again it was 1hour later! Jumped out of my bed and into the car – 20min later my phone rang: NADA. It was perfect timing – so I had to do the doping test. Couldn’t call my husband because he has no phone! Finally I arrived 90min too late in Berlin – but luckily everybody was happy to see me;-)

Now I’m back to normal and enjoy the time with my dog and the fantastic spring in Germany. The sun is shining and we’ve 20°C. I resume the race and after all I’m very happy with it! It was my 1^st podium in an Ironman race and hopefully not my last! I don’t want to borrow you with race details – it was a normal race without big mistakes. After I got out of the water on place 14^th I was upset but I found my pace and could roll through the field till I reached 5^th position. The last 50min I had to cycle without any drink because I lost my bottle and on the run I felt the heat in my head – it pumped! But in the marathon I overtook Amanda and Belinda and from then on I only focused not to lose my place and it worked! I’ve never given up during this race and always believed in myself and my coaches – that’s one important reason why I got my 1^st podium in such a great field! Thanks to Joseph, Brett, Alex and all our sponsors – without you I couldn’t fulfill dreams!

I got out of Thailand to a perfect time…the day I left we had sunshine and the hotel owner told me that they’ll have rain the upcoming days! But nobody expected a flood like this – oh my dear! Whole Krabi would be flooded only 12hours after my departure. Really felt sorry for all people there and my team mates who stay there longer than me! But I’ve had to leave because I want to do the IM South Africa on April 10^th. My travel route was Krabi – Kuala Lumpur – Dubai – Johannesburg – East London and therefore I travelled 40hours with 4 airlines. You can imagine how exhausting this was – but then I thought better than to stay in a flood. I arrived well in East London without any problems and here I’m hosted gratefully. BIG THANK to family Rossouw! 3 days later my husband Sebastian and his parents arrived in East London – what happiness: I haven’t seen them for 5 weeks! Only my “little” dog Laika is missingL Here I’ve really good training conditions and the best thing is that I’ve a whole pool for my own! I’m allowed to swim in a school pool and at the moment they have holidays! What luck! So I spend the last days in East London – training hard! – before we drive to Port Elisabeth… There you’ll hear from me! Cheers Diana

Now I stay with our TeamTBB in Krabi for 3 weeks and somehow I lose every feeling for weekdays – the time is flying away… I’ve already 2 hard training blocks behind me and till the IM South Africa – which is on April 10^th in Port Elisabeth - minimum 2 will follow. Even if I fall half dead in my bed every eve I recover over the night and the next day I can still stand upright;-) It’s amazing which power you can deliver even if you don’t believe that you have it! While we train 5-7 hours per day there is no time for any other things – every free minute between the session I use for reading, drawing and keeping contact to my family and friends;-) We had 1 change in our training life: our TeamTBB photo shooting! We got our new trisuits for this season and some of our sponsors were visiting us for getting to know us better and to see how we look in their stuff;-) It were 2 really great days – although real relaxing does look different – we jumped from one shoot to the next. But therefore the result is more than great! The best was our boot trip to the uncountable rocks and nice Thailand beaches. While only ½ of the team had to join the shoots Christian and I used the time for diving around the great riffs: it was wonderful – I’ve never seen such water world before!

From now on I stay 1 more week in Krabi – afterwards I fly straight to South Africa to my guest family who gives me my 2^nd home! But at the moment I really enjoy Krabi and don’t want to leave it;-)

Thanks to Christian - he took a nice video of me, my bike and typical asian traffic;-)

A few days ago I arrived in Krabi: the famous Brett Sutton Heat Camp location! Well, it’s my 2^nd time here and from the 1^st stay I knew how it’s working;-) Before my 1^st arrival I was so excited: what would it be like? And it was hard, harder, hardest - but it was great! This time I haven’t been that excited beforehand – I only feel lucky to be here and can do 3 weeks of hard training under the Thailand sun and control of the Doc. And that’s one reason why I’m doing triathlon: working hard, push your body to the limit and overcome new barriers. And the best thing at all is now that I can do it in our team! A few years ago I was dreaming of travelling around, learning new languages and getting to know other cultures but I would have never expected to do it like this. Sometimes wishes become true via obstacles! But what is the heat camp like? We live in a normal hotel – Thailand standard, not western European standard! There we have a little restaurant at the front where we can eat every thai food you want to eat = rice, vegetable, chicken, egg, rice…  Get up early in the morning – do the 1^st session – have a little breakfast – meet the whole team at the 50m pool – have lunch – do the 3^rd session – have dinner – go to bed. And all the time between I enjoy my time like I do it during the training. And when I have muse I read or draw some pics. Around our hotel is an elephant station and not far away there is a monkey pack who both welcome our team every time when we stay here – I really enjoy to watch them;-)

Before I flew to Thailand I and my family wanted to do something special – no triathlon in mind! And what is the perfect thing to forget the daily grind and to do something different to triathlon? Once I said that I love the nature and to be outside. During the last weeks I only had training in my mind but there’re things next to my profession. My husband and my little dog Laika have to get along on their own 80% of the year and before I left them we wanted to do something together.  And what is better than a trip through our home nature – just with our back bag with a sleeping bag, a pot and a boiler in it. At that moment we had -3°C! Everybody said “You’re crazy” and “You can’t do it with your dog!” But we wanted to walk 80km – get your head free and enjoy life! We started in the dark and walked 11hours the 1^st day: only 3 breaks where we had a roll and a little soup. Then we got tired – stopped somewhere in the forest – unpacked our sleeping bag and fell asleep. While I’m the small person in our family I had to share my bag with my dog! Oh, I felt like a sardine:-) I had the whole night her pads in my face – and added to this the great dog smell-hahaha!

The next day we started at 5am. again and it was snowing! Oh my fingers – but after a while they got warm. 5hours later we reached our destination: our parent’s home where my husband’s dad celebrated his 75^th birthday. It was so great to eat such great food after 2 days with almost nothing! And everything was delicious:-)

Over the next few days you hear something from me about the heat camp in Krabi - I arrived here 4 days ago;-)