Internationally acclaimed artist, Kehinde Wiley, has partnered with PUMA to create four original works of art inspired by three of football’s most decorated players, Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon, John Mensah of Ghana and Emmanuel Eboué of Ivory Coast. Wiley painted three individual portraits of each player wearing the Africa Unity Kit, and then a fourth ‘Unity’ Portrait was painted with all three players together, symbolizing the united countries of Africa.

These individual portraits, measuring 5 feet by 6 feet and the ‘Unity’ portrait measuring 9 feet by 12 feet, were unveiled in Berlin in January 2010 and have been travelling as an exhibition beginning in Paris, and will finally end up in South Africa in June.

The Kehinde Wiley exhibition will be held at Studio One, 186 Bree Street, Cape Town, from 24 June – 3 July 2010. Viewing will be open to the public from 10am – 6pm daily. Join in celebrating Africa’s heritage and unity by coming to view this exclusive exhibition. For further information please contact Splash PR on 021 790 9911.

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Click the image into a new page, you won’t regret it. YUUUM!

So we spoke about real food right, and that I was going to send you a list of where you can buy real food at markets and where to get real meat that hasn’t been force fed with corn & tubes. I asked the honorable Jamie Who? to help me out with this, considering the lengthy discussions we have had about real food. It will generally accompany a RealBeer or a glass of RealWine and possibly a prego at &Union but hey, who are we to judge, right?

Real Food goes beyond buying “Organic”. It’s the approach you take to food. It’s how you buy it, how you cook it and the preparation you take when it comes to being healthy. I compete in a sport more prone to Athlete Anorexia than most. Triathletes are obsessed with their bodies. Gordo wrote a great piece on the Nutrition of Performance here that you should read as well.

Jamie Who and the Ninja wanted to take it above and beyond for you and do some Real Meals as well. Something realistic and easy to make that looks freaking awesome, tastes incredible and doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg either. Also, locally available options for meals is always a concern.

So when approaching food (even at Pick n Pay, Woolies) make sure you do at least some of the following:

1. Make sure you walk slowly getting there. Breathe. Being in a rush is going to make you buy the wrong stuff. I guarantee it.

2. Buy what you can in raw bunches that have to be weighed. No pre-packed already chopped nonsense. Skins are good for you, people!

3. Opt for the organic version where possible. With meat – it’s not even an option. Go with something that you trust from the source.

4. Avoid plastic wrapping and long lists of stuff you can’t pronounce in the ingredients list.

5. Avoid concentrates.

6. Try something different while you are at it. You never know what you may discover out there.

I realise you are expecting a list of places to shop, eat, browse etc. There are various lists up. To start, why don’t you try this one. It’s quite comprehensive.

Give it a go, won’t you. Try it for a while.

Jamie Who and myself are going to do a series of recipes & suggestions on how to cook and what to avoid using when cooking, all those things. In essence, he is my first contributor to the site on a more formal basis and I am quite excited about taking the food thing more seriously going forwards.

Keep it real out there.

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There is so much to hope for in life, based on such a powerful concept. Sports, work, love, trust, friendships – these are all things in our lives that rely quite plentifully on hope as a major part of the puzzle.

Wikipedia says: Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one’s life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.

Sounds like a worthwhile investment if you are into the whole positive living thing. Belief being the critical factor here. Belief is a very necessary ingredient to our lives and it’s easy to find examples at the moment as thousands of sports spectators are in our beautiful country to celebrate the World Cup Finals of Football. They believe in their teams, in the preparation of their teams. The hope stems from that. That they will bring the cup home, or stand up to the bigger, more established countries and do their own team, their own countries proud.

How the British media has climbed into their poor goalie for his fumble on Saturday has been atrocious. There is no hope in modern media and this saddens me. We rumble from one negative story to another and positive stories make the bottom corner on page 14. Cultivating a society filled with hope is amazing. Being an active part of the transformation of our own Bafana Bafana in the last 6 months is proof that society can do it.

A year ago we didn’t have any hope for our team, but with the kaizen approach we have a team we believe in now. Players who believe they can make the difference to a score line. I saw it first hand on the streets (and in the bars – eish) of Slaapstad last Friday. This infectious belief has our nation filled with hope, that powerful emotion. That is what we are feeling when we are all repeating “Feel it, it is here”. That hope that all will run smoothly during the festival, that our team is going to make it to Round 2. That the weather will play along.

It is all going well. Hope is reigning here, right now. It’s a special time. Make sure you are a part of it in some way.

Have a great week.

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Saturday:
Instead of going for a ride, I served wine for 8 hours, drinking a bit of it (ok, a lot of it) and proceeding to do hyper extensive calf jumps for 4 hours (commonly referred to as crazy dancing/bouncing). Judging by how sore I was the next morning I`m going to add it as worth while training.

Sunday: OFF day. Wrecked from Wacky Wine Weekend.

Monday:
AM: Swim 40min
PM: Indoor Ride 60min easy + 20min core work

Tuesday:
AM: Indoor Ride 90min easy with some ME work (about 20min total) + 15min core work
PM: 45min run + 75 min yoga + 25min run. Tough work-out, running an extended route to yoga, then 75min of Vinyasa based yoga and a 25min run back in the dark and in the rain.

Wednesday:
AM: 40min swim
PM: 60min run easy easy, forcing myself to slow down. Sore throat now in full effect.

Thursday:
AM: Skipped session due to sore throat.
PM: 2h30 ride super easy, focus on riding with mouth closed to keep intensity down. ME work on the climbs (x 4)

Friday: OFF

Total around 14 hours which is on track even though I have a sore throat. So many sick people around it’s tough to stay healthy. Am trying to sleep regular hours and eat well and not let it get into my chest. I pushed the limits at Wacky Wine though, standing on my feet for 9 hours a day, then proceeding to party it up with family and friends for 2 days. I have nobody or anything to blame but myself.

Today is going to be a day of recovery and hopefully getting my health back on track before we start long, slow work-outs tomorrow, hoping for 4 hours tomorrow and 5 hours on Sunday as the start of the next week.

But for today, we are going to be going large for the opening of the World Cup. I hope to not run into too many Mexicans, especially in square bottles.

Overall I would give the week a 6/10 out of effectiveness for training. Not great. Work to do.

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Now that you are safely in our country you are no doubt happily realising you are not in a war zone. This may be in stark contrast to what you have been bracing yourself for should you have listened to Uli Hoeness or are an avid reader of English tabloids, which as we all know are only good for wrapping fish ‘n chips and advancing the careers of large-chested teens on page three.

As you emerge blinking from your luxury hotel room into our big blue winter skies, you will surely realise you are far more likely to be killed by kindness than by a stray bullet. Remember that most of the media reports you have read, which have informed your views on South Africa, will have been penned by your colleagues. And you know what journos are like, what with their earnest two thousand word opuses on the op-ed pages designed to fix this country’s ills in a heartbeat. Based on exhaustive research over a three-day visit.

Funnily enough, we are well aware of the challenges we face as a nation and you will find that 95% of the population is singing from the same song-sheet in order to ensure we can live up to our own exacting expectations.

We are also here to look after you and show you a good time. Prepare to have your preconceived notions well and truly shattered.

For instance, you will find precious few rhinos loitering on street corners, we don’t know a guy in Cairo named Dave just because we live in Johannesburg, and our stadiums are magnificent, world-class works of art.

Which is obviously news to the Sky TV sports anchor who this week remarked that Soccer City looked ‘ a bit of a mess’. She didn’t realize the gaps in the calabash exterior are to allow in natural light and for illumination at night, and not the result of vandalism or negligence.

The fact that England, the nation which safely delivered Wembley Stadium two years past its due date, is prepared to offer us South Africans advice on stadium-readiness should not be surprising. The steadiest stream of World Cup misinformation has emanated from our mates the Brits over the past couple of years.

If it’s not man-eating snakes lurking in Rooney’s closet at the team’s (allegedly half-built) Royal Bafokeng training base, then it’s machete-wielding gangs roaming the suburbs in search of tattooed, overweight Dagenham dole-queuers to ransack and leave gurgling on the pavement.

In fact what you are entering is the world’s most fascinating country, in my opinion. I’m pretty sure you will find that it functions far more smoothly, is heaps more friendly and offers plenty more diversions than you could possibly have imagined.

In addition to which, the population actually acts like human beings, and not like they are being controlled by sinister forces from above which turns them into bureaucratically-manipulated robots.

Plus we have world’s most beautiful women. The best weather. Eight channels of SuperSport. Food and wine from the gods themselves. Wildlife galore. (Love the Dutch team’s bus slogan: “Don’t fear the Big 5; fear the Orange 11”).

Having said all that, Jo’burg is undoubtedly one of the world’s most dangerous cities. Just ask those Taiwanese tourists who got out of their hire car to take close-up snaps of tawny beasts at the Lion Park a few years back. Actually, ask what’s left of them. And did you know the chances of being felled by cardiac arrest from devouring a mountain of meat at one of our world class restaurants has been statistically proven to be 33.3% higher in Jozi than in any other major urban centre not built upon a significant waterway? It’s true. I swear. I read it in a British tabloid.

Having recently spent two years comfortably cocooned in small town America, I’m only too aware of how little much of the outside world knows about this country. The American channel I used to work for has a massive battalion of employees descending on World Cup country. It has also apparently issued a recommendation to its staff to stay in their hotels when not working.

Given that said corporation is headquartered in a small town which many say is “best viewed through the rear-view mirror”, I find the recommendation, if it’s true, to be utterly astounding. In fact I don’t believe it is true. Contrary to the global stereotype, the best Americans are some of the sharpest people in the world. The fact they have bought most tickets in this World Cup proves the point.

Of course I have only lived in Johannesburg, city of terror and dread, virtually all my life, so don’t have the in-depth knowledge of say, an English broadsheet journalist who has been in the country for the weekend, but nevertheless I will share some of my observations gleaned over the years.

Any foreign tourist or media representative who is worried about his safety in South Africa should have a word with the Lions rugby fans from last year, or the Barmy Army cricket supporters (lilywhite hecklers by day, slurring, lager-fuelled lobsters by night). They managed just fine, just like the hundreds of thousands of fans who have streamed into the country over the past fifteen years for various World Cups, Super 14 matches, TriNations tests and other international events. Negligible crime incidents involving said fans over said period of time.

Trivia question: which country has hosted the most global sporting events over the past decade and a half? You don’t need me to answer that, do you?

In addition. Don’t fret when you see a gaggle of freelance salesmen converge on your car at the traffic lights (or robots as we like to call them) festooned with products. You are not about to be hijacked. Here in Mzansi (nickname for SA) we do a lot of our purchasing at robots. Here you can stock up on flags, coat hangers, batteries, roses for the wife you forgot to kiss goodbye this morning and a whole host of useful merchandise.

Similarly, that guy who runs up as you park the rental car outside the pub intends no malice. He’s your car guard. Give him a buck or two and your vehicle will be safe while you refuel for hours on our cheap, splendid beer. Unless someone breaks into it, of course.

We drive on the left in this country. Exercise caution when crossing the road at a jog-trot with 15 kilograms of camera gear on your back. Exercise common sense full stop. Nothing more. Nothing less. If you want to leave wads of cash in your hotel room like our Colombian friends, don’t be surprised if it grows wings.

Bottomline. Get out there and breathe in great lusty lungfuls of this amazing nation. Tuck into our world-class food and wines. Disprove the adage that white men can’t dance at our throbbing, vibrant night-clubs. Learn to say hello in all eleven official languages. Watch at least one game in a township. You will not be robbed and shot. You will be welcomed like a lost family member and looked after as if you are royalty. Ask those Bulls rugby fans who journeyed to Soweto recently.

With a dollop of the right attitude, this country will change your life.

It’s Africa’s time. Vacate your hotel room. Join the party.

Waka waka eh eh.

From the Supersport website. here by Pete Davies

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That is correct. I am back at regular sleep.

The cause of that is regular training. Added to quite a hectic work schedule. Scheduling and prioritizing has become number 1 again. No more regular late nights, no more regular bad eating. It has all had to go because the next 16 weeks are going to be quite crazy, but I am looking forward to it.

Scheduling training is always fun and here is the general schedule to fit in:

Mondays:
AM: Swim
PM: Run + Gym

Tuesdays & Thursdays:
AM: Ride
Lunch: Run
PM: Yoga

Wednesdays:
AM: Long Run
PM: Swim

Fridays: OFF

Saturdays:
Swim + Bike

Sundays:
AM: Bike
PM: Run

That is more than I have done in the past and the most ambitious schedule I have ever tried to tap out, so we`ll have to see how I cope with the workload. The aim is to be hitting ALL these sessions by the end of this 4 week block and take it from there. All I know is regular sleep and regular good food are going to become part of the routine again.

The routine is a great thing for me. I get into a groove and my energy levels return and actually get boosted. I work harder, smarter, faster as well. I just have to watch them tequilas. My mates are known to enjoy a few of them.

But then again, all of that only totals 19 Hours, so it’s broken up in smaller pieces than you think, with far more specific work than you realise. If you want to know more – buy me a real coffee. Something Harrar or Lima, from Oojah preferably. Can’t seem to stomach the other stuff any more.

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Too good a picture to not include this week. A topic I am hugely passionate about. Hence the yoga, the extra 10 minutes of core after every bike ride. It was one of the things I worked hardest on this year already. The dividends it paid out were superb and hence why I wanted to talk about it today. You should be doing more core.

As an endurance athlete, it’s one of the things I guarantee you we neglect. We train our legs stukkend bru, we swim till we can’t drive home afterwards and we will do calf raises until we can’t operate the clutch pedal.

Why when the one part of us that connects everything, which holds us upright, is in the middle and contributes the major part of success 30km into the run at Ironman. Why do we neglect to do even an hour of focussed core work per week in our hectic 20 hour plus training schedules?

It is a question which was tough for me to answer. One which changed how I felt in races when I had to swallow hard and accept that I was neglecting a vital part of my “weaponry”.

If you look at Crowie there, in the front. Notice his style. He is perfectly poised. He is 38, giving the 25 year old lightie (a triple world champ) a lesson in running with perfect form. He is able to do this, late into any race, because his core is one of his biggest strengths.

When 98% of us get tired, we slump over, or back, depending where our biggest weakness is, on the run. For some of us, the pain already comes on the bike. A sure sign of a weak core. Running with perfect form late into any triathlon, marathon, etc requires a very strong core.

Houston, we have a problem, right?

Now you want a solution, right?

You need to just follow the man over here and do what he does. Not so hard, is it?

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Today is all about pictures.

We start here. All of us.

We progress. We make mistakes, but we might have the opportunity to redeem ourselves. Take Basso for example. Made mistakes. Had taken him years of work to get close to where he was. It used to look effortless. Tell me this looks effortless.

That is the moment. The attack. The work that follows shows:

It hurts but his head is up. He has a goal. He has his reasons that draw him to the goal more than the reasons that make him want to quit. It means alot to him. A. Lot.

The smell of reward is sweet. It’s intoxicating. It’s what keeps him going.

Work smart, clear & with purpose. Do NOT put a time limit on how long it might take you.

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I hope this inspires you for the week.

Change the world…

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