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XTerra Italy 2014

Although I entered the race in January, I still wasn’t sure to be on the start line 10 days prior to the event. A couple of encounters with the tarmac resulting in a few broken bones and a stressed body had put me out of xterra Portugal and IM Nice already. However as I was finally starting to recover some fitness and motivation along the way, I thought I’d give the race a go as I’d heard raving reports from last year’s inaugural event.



Scanno is a couple of hours drive away from Rome, tucked away in the Abruzzo region. The meandering road to get there is stunning, the lago is rather inviting, and sitting at 1000m altitude this is mountain territory with not an inch of flat in sight. Typical authentic Italian village where a lot of life is concentrated around the main piazza, which conveniently enough is where my accommodation Albergo Centrale happens to be.

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Season On Hold

I have done a lot of crazy stuff in my time, willingly or not, but it seems the most extreme sport out there is commuting in Babylon, London town that is. After 12 years of daily commute, often on the edge and with quite a few incidents along the way (mostly resulting in material damages), I’ve been hit twice by careless drivers within 5 weeks. Once in plain daylight the day I got back from a key training week in Nice, and the 2nd one at night as I rode back home from the cinema – only to be hit head on by a drunk driver pulling out with no lights on the wrong side of the road…

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70.3 Mallorca 2014

As I toed the start line for the 3rd year in a row amongst names like Raelert, Llanos, Aernouts, Drietz and even the ‘revenant’ super fish Sanson, I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing here. Like really not. Not only had I spent the whole winter partying and hence not trained much, but yet again (as with the 2 previous editions) I wasn’t 100% fit – while it is necessary to be out of your comfort zone, but this time I felt I was probably a bit too far out..

 

Less than 3 weeks prior to the race I got knocked unconscious by a car while commuting to work. This left me with 2 broken fingers, stitches on my face, and road rashes all over. Worse my body felt really tense and not quite right following the crash. I swam like I forgot how to after that, all my power was gone. On top of that, as I was starting to itch for exercise, I went for a run 5 days after the accident and proceeded to flare up my old friend Achilles – who had been unusually silent for the last few months. Running pain free was a bliss, but it didn’t last long (about 3 months)…

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Beauty & the Beat Tokyo Feb 2014

This was my 4th trip to Japan and I am always surprised by how amazing it turns out to be. The people, the place, the love, it’s a bliss. I feel instantly at home when I land there, it is my 2nd family !

 

Here’s a stop motion video of the party that was held @ Lighthouse Records in the heart of Shibuya, courtesy of Michael the wizard:

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2013: A Year in Music – What We Got Down to

Despite the naysayers this was another great year in music, whether for the feet, the soul, the body, the mind, all of it. More and more music is being released every year, most of it is crap but digging (literally or not) for treasures is an art, and very rewarding it can be.

There are 6 records I can think of that were ubiquitous at our Beauty & the Beat parties (and pretty much everywhere else I played for that matter). Records we will be dancing to for years to come, pure dance-floor pleasures:

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Brilliant Corners

It’s been a long time coming but it is finally here, Brilliant Corners, our new hub for music, food, poetry, wine, and whatever else we fancy. Looking great, sounding amazing, the space is a blank canvas as Amit loves to say, nothing is definite, only quality.

 

For the time being I will be hosting SARAVA ! every Saturday night until the end of the year with members of the Extended Beauty & the Beat family – we’re throwing ‘construction parties’ inna Paradise Garage style every week-end to fund the missing bits such as tables, chairs etc. Very exciting project to say the least !

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XTERRA ENGLAND 2013

The 3 weeks between Xterra Germany and Xterra England weren’t the most exciting part of the year – I got the shingles (!) pretty much as soon as I got back to London, which meant a week of antiviral drugs followed by a week of antibiotics as one of the wounds got infected, together with a mix of ibuprofen and paracetamol every 3 hours or so for a good 3 weeks, and a few antidepressants thrown in for good measure (supposedly to kill the nerve pain, but these only succeeded in killing my brain…). The pain experienced from the shingles is debilitating, I’d forgotten how much pain one could endure for such a long time…I am yet to find out what triggered the virus, but it is likely to be a mix of general tiredness and a weak immune system…I didn’t know what the shingles were before, but I will make sure I won’t get them ever again !

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XTERRA CZECH / GERMANY

The original plan of racing XTERRA Italy didn’t happen because of my old grumpy friend Achilles, and instead of a nice week-end in the Abruzzes I was now in for an extended 10 day trip between Prachatice in eastern Czech Republic and Zittau at the corner of Germany, Czech and Poland. Not quite the same vibe. However this meant 10 days of living the high life of a pro triathlete (sic), which hadn’t happened since my SE Asia tour of 2012…so while not quite the same vibe still, why not…Fellow pro superstar Nienke Oostra would join me on this glamorous tour, along with the usual suspects of the Xterra gang.

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