Relaxing evening

This is the first evening since ... well I don't know how long ago, that I don't have to do anything. Don't missunderstand me in this, I'm busy girl and I like that a lot, but the last 2 weeks I had to go back to my old job to give some assistance. This wasn't really my own choice, but some things just have to be done. Because of that I have been working regular office hours for 2 weeks, which seems to take more of your time off than working in shifts. Good thing about it is, that I have been working extra hours, which gives me the possibilty to get some extra time on my vacation card :-) .... and yessss.... that's good for my next holiday which I'm planning for Oct/Nov. You wanna know where I'm going to? Yep ..... New Zealand again. I had such a great time in March, so I just want to go back. Haven't seen the North Island yet, so that's what I'm planning right now. Again I want to go for at least 3 weeks, cause I want to visit Les Mills in Auckland again. More about that later.
Tonight I first planned to go to the gym, but later I decided it would be better to take some rest. Now I will be going tomorrow morning and do some BA team teaching with Josanne. No tropical out fit this time :-)

What did I do on my evening off? Well.... grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, some other household stuff that needed to be done..... relaxing I said??? Mmmm sort of. At least I could do it without being in a hurry. I have been enjoying a cup of tea outside, and read a magazine. I have put some candles out on my balcony and I looks nice. Temperature outside is better than inside the house, so I prefer to sit outside right now. There's nothing interesting on tv, so there's no reason to sit inside anyways. I still can't believe that the only drops of rain I have seen this month have been falling down last saturday. Which bring me back to the BODYPUMP on the beach, I'm still waiting for some more pictures. There have been a few articles in different newspapers this week as well. They were talking about 700 people .... can you believe that. I could see people everywhere, but so many? And the best thing was ... so many smiling faces all together!!

19 August I will be going to our quarterly here in Holland. Still one release behind as I just read the filming is done 13 august for BC 30, BP 60 and BA 55. We will be getting BC 29, BP 59 and BA 54. I'm wondering if there would be any filming in November since I'm gonna be in NZ around that time. Would be nice to experience that once.
Well I'm of to bed, since I have to wake up early tomorrow morning. Good Night 2 ya all.

Winter and Summer

First photo's...

This is just a first impression of the workout. I do not have any pictures from BB or XCO yet, but I will probably get some later. Just by watching the pictures I get this great feeling again. Tomorrow I will play the BP tracklist again during BP class.

Today I went to my parents' boat. It was pretty cloudy in the morning but later on it was really nice. I still can't believe, that we managed to pick this only one day of rain we had during this summer to do our workout. At least near the beaches we didn't have any rain in July so far. I was watching the news this evening and only about 150km from here, they were able to use their kanoe's in the streets because it had been raining so badly this afternoon. Strange country isn't it?! Yeah that's our own little Holland.

The day after....

Awesome!!! I can't tell how amazing it was yesterday. There were people everywhere. I did not have enough fingers and toes to count them :-) Right now I don't know where to start to tell you how it was. Maybe the beginning, but it will be a pretty long story.
I woke up pretty early yesterday as I had to be at the beach at 9.00am to help out with the last preparations. It was a bit cloudy but very warm already. When I got to the beach we fisrt had a cup of coffee and later on got started working. Putting up the flags, getting stuff from the car etc. Then we started to make the goodiebags. The sun was shining at that time and it was hot .... no complaints from me, cause I love it. It took us about 3 hours to fix over 700 goodiebags, with T-shirts, caps, toiletbags, flyers and blue ice. Eveyone was working there butt's of in the heat. We had to drink a lot and when we were finished we went to eat something. We could see more and more people coming in. They even came in with full busses from the other side of the country. Cool hey! At around 2.00pm big clouds came in ..... uuhh... that's was not completely what we planned..... at 3.00pm it started raining. Can you believe that.... sun for over three weeks... not a single drop of rain.... and 1 hour before we start our beach work out ... RAIN. At 3.30pm there was a XCO workout planned....that one was moved. The guys from the beach club told us that they saw on the radar that most rain would be gone by 4.00pm..... and they were right. It was not raining anymore when we started the workout. Few people left, but luckily most Bodypumpers are tough people who do not get blown out of the field easily and certainly not cause of a few raindrops. Thank you all for staying !!! During warm up, I can;t tell how cool it was to see everyone moving at the same timing. There is this transition from upright row to overhead press. Wow!! First we saw all the heads of the people, then we could see the ellbows move under the bars and after that it was just bars in the air. Amazing. Everyone could feel the vibes, happy smiling fases everywhere... and about fitness magic ...... it was all over the place. Spoke to a lot of people afterwards and they all had a great time. No one was talking about the rain, most people forgot about it because it was so good to be a part of it. For us as presenters it was an awesome experience as well, but our main concern was to bring all thes people an amazing event and we succeeded. Special thanks to Harry who did all the work for this event. Good job!
Ofcourse after BP it was not finished yet, there was the XCO workout and after that the Bodybalance. I did not do the BB as I wanted to see how it look like fro higher up. Beautyful to see all these people. The six girls on stage did a good job with keeping their balance. The platform wasn't that steady but they all stood there. Unfortunately there weren't as much balancers as there were pumpers, but still it looked really good.
After all the workouts there was BBQ and belive it or not .... the sun came out!! The party was outdoors and we danced and danced and it was a great day!!!

Tracklist for BP:
01 BP 50 Scream for More Kate Ryan
02 BP 50 Celebrate Good Times DJ Bobo
03 BP 43 Enter Sandman Metallica
04 BP 44 Heaven DJ Sammy
05 BP 39 Let's Get Loud Jennifer Lopez
06 BP 43 The Power H Block/Snap
07 BP 41 Silence Delirium feat. Sarah McLachlan
08 BP 39 Operation Blade (Radio Edit) Public Domain
09 BP 44 Just A Little Liberty X
10 BP 56 Angels, Robbie Williams

Pictures wil come up later.

BODYPUMP on the beach!

Right now it's 8.00am, I'm eating my breakfast and I have just packed my stuff for this afternoon. The sun is shining and even tough it's still early it's already warm outside. I was looking to the weatherforecast yesterday evening and there are possiiblities that it will rain and that there will be lightning .... uuuhhh .... Please no!! It's really amazing that it's only 22 july, and we already had so many days of sun. Lot's of people are complaining about the heat, but I think they are the same people complaing when it's raining like usual during a dutch summer. Well.... I love this kind of weather and I hope it'll go like this for a long time :-)
I have to be at the beach by 09.00. We're gonna do some music tests, prepare the stage and everything. It's going to be so cool this afternoon. Tomorrow or monday I will tell you more and I hope I'll have some pics by then as well.

Almost to the beach

It's almost D-day, 2 more nights. I'm still really excited. I saw the weather will still be hot, but there's a slight chance for a few drops of rain.... unfortunately. Please keep your fingers crossed, that they'll fall down somewhere far away from our spot on the beach.

Schedule for saturday:
16.00 BODYPUMP
17.00 BODYBALANCE
18.00 BBQ & Party

8 More days...

Next saturday.... The big event: BODYPUMP on the beach. I'm really looking forward to it. Still keeping my fingers crossed that the weather will be nice and sunny, just like we have had the last couple of weeks. Every night I say a little prayer and I hope that'll work. If you want some more information or you'd like to take part in this event, just click here.
We have got the tracklist ready and I can tell you one thing about it .... it's GOOD!! If you want to find out more about this list, just be there 22 july 2006, Bloemendaal aan Zee!! Otherwise you've got to wait till the day after.

Hope to see you there!

Is everything possible?

It's too hot to be outside, It's too hot to be inside and didn't know what to do anymore so I started to sort out a few things from my days in Synchro. Didn't come very far, as I started reading old stuff and looking at pictures and just started thinking of the good times I had in Synchro. I found this text in between my stuff:

Anything is possible,
If you think it is worthwhile
If you're willing to go the distance,
To go the extra mile.

With determination and effort,
You can often achieve more
Because you don't always get what you wish,
But what you work for.

Dreams can become challenging,
But no matter what the cost
Strive to complete the task before you,
And you'll never end up lost.

So bring with you your goals,
And leave your doubts behind
Whether you think you can or can't,
You certainly will find.

You'll be right either way-
-so never quit, and this is why:
You'll never become a failure,
Until you fail to try.

When I started reading my diary from our National Team trainingcamp in Canada in 1995, I could hardly believe all the things we had to do and that we actually did all these extremely hard things. It seemed almost impossible... but indeed ALMOST... we managed to do it, so it was possible! We just had one thing on our mind's and that was to improve our skills and try to qualify for Atlanta '96.... Together with our whole team we worked our butt's of, but unfortunately we didn't qualify. Still, reading above, I don't think we failed as we did not quit as a team and we tried our best. We never gave up.

I always thought I would not be able to be a groupfitness instructor. Why? I don't know, that's just what I used to think. Then I decided to give it a try .... That has just been one of the best decisions I ever made.... I gave it try and I managed to do it and the best thing: I'm loving it.

Don't give up b4 trying something..... you might even like it.

Below some pics of my last year in synchro at European Cup In Bari, Italy. We got National Champions with the team that year and were selected to represent Holland at European Cup A in 2001: