Saturday, August 27, 2011

3 days out

We are three days out from the start of racing. Things are starting to look up for us getting used to the track, because at this point it is what it is. Good, but not great. Much better then Colorado still. We are stuck eating terrible food everyday. Think of eating Golden Corral buffet three times a day everyday, yuck. So we resorted to Pizza Hut last night and then McDonalds tonight, neither of which I recommend but when you are stuck eating bad food it becomes instantly awesome.

We practiced three times today on the track which was slightly overwhelming but the workload was split up enough that it wasn't draining or anything. We've been working on going fast on the track because if you don't enter the turn right you end up slipping and the turn spits you out early and you end up at the wall really quick.

The trip hasn't been too bad besides the food and the fact that we do not have a translator which makes life in Korea way more difficult. Team wise, we have been getting along really well together probably the best I've ever seen 30 people get along, but at the same time we skipped three weeks together that we normally have so, it makes getting along a lot easier when you only have to make it two weeks. Even when we joke around the team all gets that it's a joke. The place we are stuck eating at is so bad that we all chant about how bad it is, and make jokes about how bad it is, and talk about what we really would like to eat if we were in the states.

That's pretty much all I have for right now, stay classy America, and of course stay safe if you are on the east coast.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Back on the Blog

Well, the easiest way to communicate when you are 13 hours ahead of the east coast is to write.. so I'm blogging. Traveling, well, sucked but oh well we are here now. The weather pretty much sucks, it's Asia so the sun is something I won't see for the next two weeks. Plus we are in the 'rain' season which makes it even better. During our AM training session it drizzled most of the way, not enough to stop us from skating, but enough to be annoying.

The track is not quite what we've had the past few years but it's not terrible.. as of now. The last few worlds we've been completely spoiled by some of the best/fastest tracks the world probably has to offer. With that being said, skating on them is like skating with glue, sliding was the thing of the past along with tearing wheels up. This year we don't have quite the glue feeling, in fact there is some slipping that has gone on and will continue but that's okay. It will still go pretty easy on the wheels which is a good thing. It has a 'wavy' feel to it. Not quite bumpy but a little wavy. It's still way faster then the track we have in Colorado, plus it's not parabolic like Colorado, which means the fastest line is to skate pretty much low the whole time.

Other then that nothing has really happened for us here. We've spent most of our time on a bus it seems like. All of our meals are 15-20 minutes from our hotel, which just opened for business last night.. when we got here.

Friday, August 12, 2011

Time to Roll

Well, apparently its that time of the year again for me. This is the height of my training and I love every minute of racing her at trials, all of the racing in a short period of time. It's a little different this year, when I've already told everyone that I will not be going to worlds, if it was funded and I qualified I would definitely be going but that is not the case and probably won't ever be the case again so, I fear I may have skated my final world championships for inlines.

It's a tough reality because you get into the area of what-if's which is never fun because the fact of the matter is you will never know. Even now I know I've prepared about as well as I could, but in Salt Lake it's just different. I skate straightaways, turns are foreign to me simply because there isn't anywhere sufficient enough to really hammer out an oval track. Sure, I can go somewhere is practice crossing a little, but practicing crossing and sprinting through a turn are two separate entities. I've pretty much only been skating inlines since June, plus a lot of road biking which I enjoy doing.

Basically, I'm here to race hopefully win a handful of medals, go back to salt lake and start all over on the ice. Ideal? No, but you take what you can get. All I can do is train as hard as I can and see where it takes me no matter what the sport is.