I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
At this time of year, from November to February, I like to relax and be a bit lazy and concentrate on rebuilding my health and fitness for next season. I have been training around 25 hours per week for the last 5 weeks with an emphasis on swimming. I train mostly alongside Laurent (actually mostly on his wheel) and sometimes with other triathletes with Pole France in Montpellier.
On the 29th November we ran the 20km of Montpellier. The course began in the centre of town, in La Comedie at 10am (French time!;)). 1441 runners began up a narrow way towards the West and looped around the North of the city. The course winded through the streets, weaving around the city's two centurys of history notably from the Roman Ages and finishing through the Military Base and back in La Comedie. I ran at 15.90km/hr and finished, first female, in 33rd place scratch in 1hr 15min 27sec. Laurent ran up front and finished 2nd running at 18.83km/hr in 1hr 3min 44sec. Pretty good after a 25hr training week. In December, we went to Paris twice. The first for an Adidas day (pictured - with hair and makeup) and the second trip was for my club, Beauvais Triathlon.
My first winter Christmas begins tonight in Sète. Then on the 29th, Laurent and I will fly from France to New Zealand and celebrate New Year's Eve on the opposite side of the World in summer in Christchurch.
I sign off my 2009 blog with a video, made by Laurent, of our season.

Hello NYC

Over a year ago, there was a small chain of events that somehow ended up with me saying "YES I will run the 2009 New York City Marathon".
Laurent's brother decided he wanted to run. He asked his Dad if he wanted to run it again, he had run in New York 20 years ago in 1989. Then his Dad asked if we wanted to run. All and all we said yes, not knowing in what state we would be in at the end of our triathlon season. So here Laurent and I are, in New York City after both our great seasons, 6th and 3rd in the World in 2009. We just had a small break and restarted running 2 weeks ago. Our stay is for 9 nights with the France Marathon Club package. I am registered to run as: Andréa Hewitt - France.
We arrived 5 days before the 1st November event. And we didn't just sit in our hotel room waiting, like we would normally do for a big race.
The first day, we spent all day shopping, we walked from 19th st to 56th street up 5th Avenue. We also swam at the Bally's gym pool, ran in central park and the other days we ran on the treadmill at our hotel's gym.

New York's Time Square where we saw Mamma Mia on Broadway.
I was race number 17385 which put me in the middle of the green section of the first wave starting at 9.40am. I was pretty close up front, because after the starting gun it only took us 1 minute to run over the start line, we ran straight onto the Verrazano bridge off Staten Island.

I prefer to call it a long run rather than a race because the pace I was going was not my normal race pace. The longest training run I do is 2 1/2 hrs, so to run almost 4hrs was a struggle. I ran alongside Laurent's Dad, not worrying about my pace and not thinking about my time. I finished in 14 thousand and somethingth place out of the 45000 or so competitors. (3hrs 57min 51sec)
The crowds were huge. There were singers, cheer squads and even a whole orchestra at one stage which gave the race an awesome atmosphere. One thing that surprised me was that the course was not flat at all. There was either a slight up or downhill throughout the entire course which got pretty steep over the Queensboro bridge. My final 6 miles were very slow. I walked a bit and met randomly people to talk to. I had a silver fern drawn on my face, so I received some kiwi support which took me through to the end!

Looking back to New York City from Liberty Island with Laurent(left) and his brother Arnaud.

2 Magazine covers in 2009

Triathlete - Italy, September/October

With my new Italian bike - Milani.

Multisport - New Zealand, July/August

Winning the Madrid World Championship Series race in June.