Pia Sundstedt

This blog will be written in 3 languages. Depending om how I feel or what the information to be shared is, I will use either Swedish, Finnish or English. Many of my Swedish speaking followers have been asking for Swedish texts, Finnish speaking followers for Finnish texts. Now you will get it 🙂

It is christmas and the new year 2015 is around the corner. Some of you are following me on twitter, but even there not much has been happening lately. I have been very quiet for a long time. Not that there wouldn’t be anything interesting to tell you. You can write almost about anything and make it sound interesting. I just haven’t been really into tweeting “just did an awesome bikeride” or “just had a tasty lunch at Kempinski” or something similar. I mean, who really cares about that. So I have not had any great ideas and no subjects to write about lately. I am just an ordinary person now. How boring does that sound! Let’s make this text a bit more interesting.

In a year a lot can happen and let me review the year a bit. I was working with an awesome group of female bike riders here in Qatar during springtime. I planned the cycling program for Aspire for the girls multi sports department. I gave a UCI cycling coaching course in Dubai where 30 ladies learned how to coach. I spent a month in Switzerland at UCI’s hedaquarter and became a UCI Diploma Cycling coach.

So very much cycling has fit into this year, and next year will continue to be very cycling focused. More information to come…

We are going home for Xmas! I am looking so much forward to go cross country skiing. There is not that much snow in Black forest, but with a little bit of luck it will snow on Thursday. I am checking the weather forecast all the time and hoping the temperature curve will stay under the 0 degrees line. This means snow!

The biathlon stadium on http://www.notschrei-loipe.de should have artificial snow, so skiing will be possible. Yeah!

Bummer, I have an injury. A couple a weeks ago I was out stand up paddle boarding (SUPing). First I thought my hip got really tired from it and the muscles became sore. This soreness never really disappeared and the complete knock out was last Friday when I did a 10km run. After 3km I should have stopped because of the pain, but as a former athlete and a person who never gives up I continued. The result from this is now complete rest and some voltaren.

After 3 days of no exercise I almost start to climb up the walls. This morning my husband helped me to carry down our  to the beach, so there it is waiting for me. Now off to work at Aspire and as I come back I will go out paddling…. 🙂

As many of you know the Worlds in cycling road racing is taking place in Doha in 2016. Qatar is hosting another big sport event. Qatar has a men’s team, they have boys, but until now there has not been any girls riding their bikes. This has now changed. As some of you might remember, the cycling federation started a project last spring. Our goal was to get a group of girls who wants to ride their bikes. We have now reached the next step of the project. We have a group of 10 girls and training can start. 

Cycling has been my life and it is my life and now I can share my experience and knowledge to these girls by being their coach. Qatar’s national team coach.

Keen for some mtn biking? 22nd of November the Philippino MTB community is organizing a MTB TT in Mesaieed. Start is at 7am. Have fun out there in the desert folks!

The sport of triathlon has arrived in Doha! It is about time. UAE has come a bit further when it comes to organizing sporting events, but Qatar is doing really well now. With GMC Triathlon Series (4 events during this winter) and the first ever Marathon, which will be held on 10.1.2014, all leisure time athletes will have a goal to aim for.

Today’ striathlon was organized by TriClubDoha. This club was founded last spring and they did a great job to make all things go smoothly in Aspire park. The swim was in Aspire Academy’s pool and we started with 30 secs intervals. I do prefer mass starts, because in a pool things usually become a bit stressful when trying to overtake slower swimmers. My swimming was not super today, but also not too bad. I knew that the pretty technical (lot of corners) cycling course would suit me. Anyway, I think was a bit too sure about myself and not paying enough attention to the different road surfaces in the cycling course. I came a bit too fast into the first R/A and almost slipped away. After this incident I had more repect for the slippery clinchers 🙂
I was quite happy about my running. It felt very good and I had a good 3’45” pace. If you want to have a look at the results, here they are.

After doing 2 triathlons and 1 aquathlon I start to know Doha’s triathlon community. It is very international with people from all over the world. I like this as you can learn so much from other people and other countries.

Another day, another competiton. Yep, the weekends here in Doha can be very active. It is up to you how you spend a weekend. There are people who love the shopping malls and people who tend to spend their free time here in Doha by doing various sports. I often hear people saying there is nothing you can do here and many of our friends keep on saying that “it must be terrible to live in the desert because you can’t do anything”. You are all completely wrong! Yesterday I had a great morning in Dukhan, today a great morning at Aspire Park participating in an aquathlon (500m swim + 5km run) and I just came back from a kayaking tour with my husband. There is nothing to do? Yes, for active people there is a load of things to do.
Next Friday the Century ride is taking place here in Doha. It is a 100mile bike ride, or if this sounds a bit too long you can do 100km. There is also supposed to be another triathlon on Saturday.
Guess you now are wondering how i did in the aquathlon. Not too bad. I finished 2nd in the women’s category and 5th overall. If you want to have a look at the results, you find it here

Folks! I am back! I haven’t been updating my homepage for a long long time. Why? I have been lazy and I have been thinking you might not even be interested to know what I am up to nowadays. Well, I will try to change this and update my homepage on a more regular basis.

After a great summer home in Europe, in Finland, Germany and Switzerland, (I took part in a UCI coaching course in Aigle and became a certified UCI Cycling Coach). I returned to Doha mid September. My work at Aspire Girls Center started right away with some cycling session planning to do. Good to have something to do, especially when it is something you like and enjoy.

So the days have been filled with work and some exercise since that. I still love sports and I how found running to be my new sport. In September it was still a bit hard to go out for a run because of the heat and high humidity. Now it is completely different. It is not hot anymore, it is warm and this makes exercising outside much easier. Enjoyable in other words.

With the winter coming the sports event season starts here as well. I already did a 10-mile run 2 weeks ago. It was quite an experience. The race was at the US Army base and I had to be at the gate 3.30 in the morning. the start was 5 o clock. The car was checked before I could enter the base and a bus picked all the participators up and brought us to the start. The day was indeed interesting, but getting up 2 o’clock was a bit too early. It is in the middle of the night! On the other hand it was an experience that I will not forget and the event was well organized. After the run we were offered breakfast wich made the morning complete.

Today I did a triathlon in Dukhan. Dukhan you find when you drive across the country and before you hit the sea. Probably better known as the Qatar Petroleum area. Dukhan has s beautiful beach with crystal clear water. If you would cross the sea you would hit Saudi Arabia. If you still not know where Dukhan is. Google it 🙂

The swimming leg was in the open sea wich made me a bit worried. I am not really comfortable when 100 starters rush into the water and starts to swim. I have always been ran over and I thought the same would happen today. But no! I got some good advice from my husband how to tackle the first part of the swim and actually I came out of the water in 4th place! Then off for cycling. I have my road bike here, so no problem to take part in triathlons. Not really the best aerodynamic position, but what the heck. It is just “racing for fun” nowadays 🙂 After the cycling leg I was about a minute behind the leading woman. I knew that my running is not too bad and that there is a tiny little chance to pass her. I did and I crossed the finish line as the first, even before any man. This was quite a great moment for all female spectators. Not very often a woman is faster than a man. Also the second position of the day was taken by a woman. So great day for us ladies!