This is super cool and gets the point across in a cool and Funny way, don’t sit in the box, think and live outside of it and get noticed that is why brands will get involved  with you.

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1. You are going to work hard and long hours

2. You are going to drink a hell of a lot of beer and eat a lot of meat and carbs

3. You are not going to sleep that much

We had some time to kill in Amsterdam on Monday when we flew in on the way to Head Office in Germany so we did the Heinekin Beer factory tour. It was awesome, I really enjoy the red star beer anyway so seeing how well they present their brand was a treat. Plus we drank 4 beers in 90min as well.

Was a little drunk and tired from having only left CT at around 11.45pm and not sleeping a lot on the plane, I feel asleep before the plane even took off and woke up when we landed in Germany, only 1hr later but slept dead which was awesome.

This week has been really good, we have some amazing new product coming for the start of 2014 and being a World Cup year there are some really cool things going on. Its always good to come home to the mother ship and see how passionate and excited the guys are about the products and the brand and was I was needing and hope to carry the excitement back to show our customers.

Loads of late nights, too many drinks, carbs and huge laughter has been the order of the day all week and I have now found 2hours to kill and do some work, emails and reports before we leave to fly back to Amsterdam.

We are a group of 12 now and its the Biggest event in Amsterdam tomorrow night, the changing of the Queen to a King. There hasn’t been one for oer 100 years so they are expecting over 2 million people to fly in for the next 2 days. Knowing my PUMA family we are going to dive straight in and get in the mix, so should be a awesome next 48hrs. Jennifer also starts her first ever international travel tonight and joins me for the week as well, which I am really looking forward to.

No exercise this week, did manage to get in a 40min jog on one of the days, forget which one as they all blur into one when we do these trips but my knees and ITB are still so sore from African X which is expected but also a little worrying.

But for now, need to grab a quick coffee and head to the Taxi rank to catch a cab. Hope you have all had an amazing week and that you working on turning your passion into cash or planning a epic adventure. Ryan and I are involved with running 8 marathons in 8 days in September , but more on that later.

It was the shortest day of around 24km but wasn’t going to be the easiest as we were all badly damaged. The gun went off and I tried to settle into my stride but every step almost bought tears to my eyes, my left knee was so sore that every step I took  felt like someone was stabbing me with a knife.

I popped a mild anti inflammatory tablet, stepped aside,stretched a bit and had a talk with myself about being in trouble before and surviving it and about sucking it up. I changed my running style and forced my myself to land on my heels and roll more which seemed to help stretch things out and as I warmed up it felt better but still very sore.

Managing my pain was hard but when you have a partner who is also in a similar spot it’s even more difficult. Jennifer was in a bad place without much experience on how to deal with it, so I was teaching her, this is what I wanted her to learn,How to suffer,How to switch your brain off and keep going. The process but breaking me into a 1000 little pieces but I knew she needed it more than me so I pushed through my own boundaries to help her.

At 1 point I looked into her eyes and she wasn’t really there and I smiled. At this stage I’d pushed her up almost every climb, we hadn’t walked much and we were running in a higher place than the last 2 days. With 6km to go all we both wanted was to get home.

Things are a bit blurry from this point as we both kept moving despite everything in us screaming to stop, we caught up to a few other teams and chatted a bit which helped.

Finally we could see the camp and I got goose bumps and had to hold back the tears, we had made it against the odds and survived, we crossed the finish line dazed and confused and went and fell straight into the pool.

My learnings and thoughts on the race will come later, for now it just feels like learning to walk all over again.

3 movements before the start made me make a last minute good call of taking some white gold with me as I was very pleased to have it when I needed it deep in the bush. Around 3hrs in.

So at 8am we were off and every step hurt, I had sharp stabbing pain in each knee, but then a strange thing happened, when I ran faster it was much less painful. We have been discussing this quite a bit this last week. Your own personal optimum cadence and speed. I found mine to be around 5.30min / km on trail where everything felt comfy and easy.

Its very interesting thing, its a cruising speed which just works for your body and its different for everyone, so try find yours, you will be at your most efficient.

So I was running ahead and stretching allowing Jen to catch up. So physically easier but mentally tougher. Ryan had also surged ahead which meant we were chasing and seeing our 17min lead disappearing.

Luckily at 26km we got a 2nd wind and Jennifer and I both dug deep and surged and managed to catch and pass Ryan and finished strong. We ran just over 4hrs which we are very happy with. I am constantly amazed at how well this race is organized and great value for money as a athlete.

Day 3 looms tomorrow but I’m confident we will finish this tomorrow , which is refreshing because there has been times in last 2 days were I wasn’t sure we would.

Challenge yourself to something that you not sure you can do, it’s rewarding when you do.

Shortest day is the last day, 24km. Today was first day of 31km and tomorrow is 34km and also the hardest of the 3 days.

Here are a few facts:

• Jennifer has never run more than 24km  
• I last ran more than 21km at Comrades last year.
• I haven’t run more than 30km a week for over a year
• Spent 6 weeks lying on back in December after accident and 6 weeks learning how to move again

So lets just say we are very under prepared for this. But then again when has that ever stopped us, right ?

So this morning we started our journey and we are running steady at 5.30km/h pace till around 14km when the run started to eat at us and we joined a lot of people walking every hill. At 27km both Jen and I were broken and teary eyed. But in true warrior spirit Jen kept asking where Ryan was..ha haa, Ryan runs Puma retail and they have a race going so they kept pushing through the dark spots.

With 3km to go, everything was hurting and all we wanted to do was stop and sit down, kept pushing home. We crossed the line broken in 23rd place in mixed teams and around 90th place overall out of 250 teams so we are happy. I think we ran clever and didn’t push too hard so hope tomorrow doesn’t become the longest day of my life.

On another positive note, not 1 piece of litter on the course and most teams in high spirits.

Tomorrow we rise again with our fellow warriors and take to the trails to yet again push our own physical and mental boundaries.

But now I’m on the hunt for a cold beer and some shade. If you considering doing this race, enter, great few days away and one of the best organized races I’ve done. Just remember you sleep in tents which adds another tricky element to it.

Jennifer a little broken after day 1

But come race day I wanted to race because of my love for TT bikes, I had recently pimped out the LUMO racer and was keen to see how she went. I ran the first 10km well within myself which I was happy with as I ran just over 40min which is pretty fast considering the year I am having.

Onto the bike and I felt ok so I decided to pick up the tempo and see what happened. The bike was smooth and felt awesome to be riding fast again, unfortunately short lived, after passing the 20km mark I experienced a violent coughing attack almost like asthma and had to pull out. Body clearly not ready to go hard.

Good to be out there though and supporting local racing, also great to see all the first time athletes racing. WP doing a great job to grow the sport and its visible.

Next week, Jennifer and I run African X, 3 day Trail run race covering around 100km, so keeping my fingers crossed that all goes well for that because I fly to Europe for 2 weeks the day after the finish of the race so wont have any time to try and fix anything if it goes wrong.