Greetings from Malaysia

Hi all

I am really enjoying my time in Malaysia.

A typical day here is breakfast 8am, catch the bus to the pool at 8.30am. I then walk over to the gym and do boxing and medicine ball work. We get back to the hotel in time for lunch before heading back out to swimming training at 3.30pm.

Today we had a BBq lunch put on by the hotel, followed by our team photo.

Yesterday i did a practice race in my FSPRO racing suit. It wa sthe first time I had worn it in a 50m pool and I did some really fast times. We also decided to change my backstroke start as my legs slip on the touchpads wearing the suit.


Last night I spoilt myself with a treatment at the day spa by a lovely therapist named Merlin.

It feels great to be in the heat after a cold aussi winter. Tomorrow we will finally get to do some sight seing, when we go to Kuala Lumpur tower and a big shopping centre.

Only 2 more days and we will be in beijing!

Enroute to Beijing

Hi all. I am writing this from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, we we have a one week camp to acclimatise to the heat before flying to Beijing.

It is great to finally be on my way to the Paralympics. My last week in Australia was a flurry of activity, fitting packing in around training and media interviews. I collected my uniform from the wedding dress shop where it was getting altered and am happy to say that it fits!

We flew out of Brisbane airport to Sydney on Saturday morning, before meeting up with the rest of our team for the flight to Beijing. Having left home at 6am saturday morning, I finally got into bed in KL at 3am Sunday morning AEST.

Our hotel- Palace of the Golden Horses- is amazing. I feel like a princess. So far all we have done is training (swimming and gym), so I havnt seen much of malaysia besides the pool and the hotel. This afternoon we head to a local shopping centre for some retail therapy.

We leave for Beijing on Sunday

xooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoox

Dressed for success one month before my race!

This time in one month I could be standing on the victory dais in China! wow what a thought. I have certainly been doing all the training to make it come happen, and am feeling quite tired as a result. Physically = tired and exhausted. Mentally= so excited!

Today I picked up my uniform for Beijing. always an exciting occassion as it makes the games feel that much closer. We have some great gear, from Addidas and Herringbone, in blue, green and gold. Unfortunatly most of mine doesn't fit (my arm muscles are just too BIG!) so i will spend most of my last week in Australia visiting a dressmaker for alterations.

I'm leaving in 7 days yay!!!!!

Second Last week of training

Hi all

After todays training session I can report that I am on track to swim fast in beijing.

Today we did a time trial for 150m Individual medley, wearing my new swim suit the FSPRO.

My time, 3.24 was 2 seconds faster than my best time of 3.26.86 so I am very excited!

Even though this was a broken Medley (with 5 seconds rest at the end of each lap) it is a good indicator of the time I could race in Beijing as in a race you have atmosphere and adrenalin to get you going faster. Before the Athens Paralympics my final time trial was exactly the time I ended up swimming to win bronze.

We finished off today with 20 25's freestyle off 1 minute, and I kept them all under 31.5 seconds which was great.Then a swin down.

Unfortunately I somehow ripped a huge hole in the leg of my suit so this will be my last practice in the suit till I arrive in Beijing and am issued with the team uniform swim suit.

Today I invited my mum Marion along to video my session, so I will have a record of my progress towards Beijing. It also added some incentive to swim fast, as I didnt want a slow session imortalised on film! Hopefully I can put together a nice little doco with footage from my race, the village and the training beforehand. We also took lots of photos which you can see down the side of this blog.

Out of the water I am starting to get organised. I have a giant list of things to do and buy before Beijing- everything from shampoo to an aussi flag to wave from the medal dais.

I have even practiced painting my finger nails green and gold, with a tiny Australian flag on the thumb ( a very intricate process to paint I can tell you!).

It has been super exciting watching the Olympics on TV and seing Steph Rice and Libby Trickett win gold, and local sunshine Coast swimmer melanie Schlanger win bronze with the relay team. I can't wait to get over to Beijing!

ABC TV covergage of the Beijing 2008 Paraympics to be best in the world!

ABC TV's daily coverage schedule is:

Daily highlights on ABC1 *6pm - 7pm - Hosted by Steve Robilliard
11:30pm - 12:30am - Hosted by Karen Tighe

Daily live coverage on ABC2 *1pm - 5pm - Hosted by Steve Robilliard7:30pm - 11pm - Hosted by Karen Tighe

* Also screens in high definition on ABC HD (digital channel 20). The ABC's Beijing commentary team will also include Peter Wilkins, PeterWalsh, Gerry Collins, Quentin Hull, Clint Wheeldon and ParalympianLouise Sauvage.