Woke up at 3.15am at Alison's house.. after not much sleep! My hair was a mess, so out came Alison's straighteners and with the help of Marney, set about taming my hair! Ate my packet of crisps for breakfast donned on our 'Make a Wish' t-shirts which we were going to be ambassadors for (Jenson is a Patron for them), and jumped into the taxi that we'd booked, which got a little lost due to all the road closures, but we got there, and dropped off right outside the London Excel centre.
Walked up the steps, wondering where to go... when this really helpful bloke told us where to go!

We waited for the shutters of S7 to open, before we dived in to see racks and racks of neatly lined up bikes on racks from A-Z -I've never seen so many bikes in my life!, we headed for the lift and up room 7, we met a guy outside waiting for it to open.
Once inside we registered our arrivals and were given our media pass -MY FIRST MEDIA ACCREDATION PASS.

Once we sorted out which cameras and which was going to be the best lens to use , before we headed downstairs outside to the exit of the swim area, but decided that having 3 of us there was wrong, so we left Marney there, whilst myself and Alison went to the start.
We saw the 7am swimmers come out from inside the Excel Centre and enter into the water, to swim over to the the start line..
Soon after that the 7:30am swimmers came out.. this was Jenson's group... I completely MISSED JENSON coming out!! only realising my mistake when Jule's his PA came running out with her video recorder, it was literally like looking for a needle in the haystack! All the swimmers had Pea Green swimming caps on..
But I did get Jenson on the platform before he jumped into the water.. and then snapped him on the other side of the water with his trainer Mike Collier, who was also do it with him.
We let Jules record the start on the camcorder before we had a good old chat with her, and we waved to the rest of the Button clan that was watching from up on a balcony, before we went and joined Marney at the finish line of the swim with Jules...

Jenson was soon out the water and we got some shots and cheered him on and then headed back to the media room, looked at our photos, watched some of the other guys work away on their laptops editing photos of Jenson. We were the only females in the room and only ones without a laptop too!
There wasn't much we could do as Jenson was on his bike cycling round London before he began the run.. so we hung about and before we knew it we all headed to the finish line, we sat down on the floor by a TV camera tripod, we saw Jules with her camcorder, we frantically tried to find the right camera settings, I finally found something I liked and then Jenson came running through across the finish line, so we had to quickly dive up to where Jules was heading.
Looking all sweaty Jenson did some long interviews, with various journals, got chatting to another female photographer giving me some tips of knowledge of being a female and smallish photographer..whist Jenson was being interviewed with Andrew Shovlin (Jenson's race engineer) before we got some excellent photos of Jenson with his medal :)
Then us and Jenson headed off to the RG active stand.. but we headed over the bridge to get there. Jules was already there completing the recording on her camcorder of Jenson's triathlon support video for his website, and then we asked if we could have our photos taken with him.. which he was happy to do, he told us he maybe a little sweaty, The first shot was by Alison, of Marney and myself with Jenson.. he is soo tall against me.. so when Marney took the next shot so Alison could be in the photo, I asked Jenson if he could bend down a bit! It was funny, his remark was 'don't get the knees' as he and Alison laugh like crazy.. sorry can't help being tiny :)
And then we stood there having a good old chat with him whilst all the while theres a zillion people there who want his attention too, but he wasn't bothered at all.. we chatted about Brawn GP, and Alison told him it was our first Media passes he was like 'ah you must be good with THAT kit!' then we left him to get on with other media people, we thanked Jules and then headed back to the media room to get our bags really happy of the experience, thanked the media chaps and head back to the hall, where we could see Jenson had now got changed and was signing autographs for fans, we went back to the stand took a few shots and Alison asked John (Jenson's dad) for a group photo, got one and then left the Excel centre..
MISSION COMPLETED.....
But getting back to Alison's was another story.. as all the roads we still closed from the triathlon..once back the kettle went on and it was just after lunchtime.. we were knackered and it felt like evening! We reviewed our photos and chatted over the morning... before myself and Marney both headed home..

Thanks to Marney and Alison for letting me post these photos above