the three Muscat-eers!

so the muscat daily article went in last week. first I heard about it was a text from a mate saying I was the whole back page of the paper! I went to work and didn't get a chance to pick one up from the shop til dinner time. it was so strange reading about myself in a paper in the middle east, and it was interesting to see the the finished piece after Mohammad had let me proof read it.

they made a lot of my CDH and the car crash - I'll admit that I had a few rough nights sleep as the nightmares came back reading about it - but it was pretty good. they linked to my blog and hopefully I'll get some more donations through my virgin money page :)

I was also blogged about for the first time! Cat didn't just target newspapers it turns out, but also the most popular bloggers in Oman. so the lovely Heather added a post about me and clipper :)

also, Kate from Y magazine got back in touch to ask if I was planning on doing the 5km open water swim on thursday morning. I wasn't - as I'd been told it was just for boys - but the oman swimming association corrected us and I signed up. previous to this, I'd swam 4km for fahal last may and I figured it would be good training for this year.

it turned out to be the open water swimming championships... the international men were doing 10km, the juniors were doing 3km and the 5km was an open event. the course was really well laid out and there were loads of safety boats with OSA officials on each one, and police on jet skis!

the first 3km was pretty flat but then the wind got up and it got kind of hilly. I've never been slammed onto my face while swimming before, and Lea got hit by a wave so big that it nearly flipped her over! Lea finished in around 1'48 and I was less than 400m from the finish when the officials stopped me for being out of time. gutted.

owwwwww

I did however get a fantastic amount of chafe on the left hand side of my neck from my rash vest (which I'll now NOT be wearing for fahal...) and not enough vaseline.

and yes, it is as sore as it looks. I'm currently moisturising about four times a day. everyone at work is asking what I've done - even the guard!

apart from the chafe and a sore right shoulder, I've had no other problems from the swim. I just need to train more open water before may :)

what else is happening this week...hmm...it was the first meeting of the three Muscat-eers! I met Usama, who is an Omani doing leg 3 of clipper, for the first time. me, him and Chris all met up at the wave for coffee and to talk about the training we've done so far. Usama is away doing his level 1 this week and Chris has done levels 1, 2 and his coxswain training.

seven weeks today, we'll all be in portsmouth for crew allocation. this time in seven weeks, we'll know who is on our teams, who our skippers are and which yachts we'll all be calling home for almost a year.