Vauban Triathlon 2012

Citadel of Besançon by Vauban

The Vauban triathlon took place in the beautiful city of Besançon this sunday (20th May 2012).
This tri is called Vauban in reference to the citadel of Besançon that was built by the Marquis of Vauban in 1668. 
These fortifications are Besançon's main attraction. It is a fabulous construction dominating the whole town.

Proud to be a volunteer!

I really wanted to participate in the Sprint distance (750m swim / 20km bike / 5km run), but having not yet fully recovered from the Paris marathon, I thought that it was wiser to give my legs some more rest. However I wanted to take part to the event somehow so I enrolled as a volunteer. 
In the past 6 years, I have attended many sports events that did go really well thanks to dozens of volunteers making things go smoothly. Given the fact that I had nothing special planned last weekend, I thought it was the perfect occasion to, in my turn, give some of my time for the others. 

Mom is in the house!

 My mom who did volunteer last year already came with me again this year. From 8am until 2pm, we prepared sandwiches and then sold them. From time to time I was escaping my work station to follow the race and watch the athletes. 
It was quite frustrating to watch and not swim, cycle or run with the participants. I could feel the excitation in my veins but the only thing I could do was to shout encouragements. 
But it was great anyway to be there and I really enjoyed the good mood and the nice talks with the other volunteers. 
That being said, I hope that next year, I will be in shape to do the triathlon. I really want to swim in the river Doubs, especially since last year, the swim was cancelled and replaced by a 2.5km run due to the water not being clean enough.

The winner of the female sprint

Swimmers in the river Doubs

Let’s start a new chapter!

Several months have passed since I last wrote on this blog. This is mainly because I moved back to France and made Paris my new home after 7 years spent in the UK. I started a new job back in November 2011 which took a lot of time and attention hence the long silence...

Moving back to France was a big decision for me as I was really enjoying living in London and I had my training routine pretty much worked out (gym during the week, cycling club & open water training sessions at Heron Lake during weekends…). Paris is a bit of a disappointment as it is not a city as convenient as London for sports. Parcs are either minuscule or far away from the center, no lakes, no Richmond parc for my saturday morning ride and no leafy riverbanks for my Sunday run…

That being said, I still managed to train for and run the Paris Marathon back in April this year (I will write about it in a next post). During one training session I met with the friend of a friend called Olivier who is writing a fantastic blog about running. Reading him really did give me the desire to start writing on my own blog again about my sports experiences.

I am glad because thanks to the triathlon and the running in particular, I have managed to recreate a social network extremely quickly. It has made my return to France much easier than I had expected.