Monday 28 July 2008

OLYMPIC TRAINING CAMP - ENTRY 1

So we have been settled in now for a few days at our pre Olympic training camp in Newport, South Wales UK. It’s no where glamorous in location that’s for sure but it’s still an awesome set up we have here and absolutely perfect for all our requirements during this last scary bit of lead in to the Olympic Games. The hotel is a huge, posh very lush place with fancy rooms etc. It’s the kind of fancy hotel that has posh coffee and biscuits in the rooms – bingo for me eh!!. I’m content to munch my way through tasty biscuits guilt free all day long because every time I get out of the lift to go to my room I can help myself to a rosy red juicy apple from the fruit plate that’s on each floor. That helps negate the naughty biscuits (and all the other cheeky treats I give myself)!

Whilst we are on the subject of food I should mention that the hotel is dishing up a fine buffet of food for our meals which pleases me. Although some of the other guys have been complaining that we keep getting pretty much the same food every day, so I have to remind them that better to have a bad selection of good food than a good selection of bad food!

So away from thoughts of filling my stomach and back to what I was saying about having all the requirements we could need. The accommodation is great as I’ve said except for the road to get here goes up a flipping great hill up a gradient of 16%. A golf course surrounds the grounds of the hotel and this is where venue for the 2010 Ryder Cup is (see I told you the hotel was posh). So we use the Newport Velodrome for training on the track and it’s brilliant because we seem to have pretty much exclusive use of it. For road training stuff we just head straight out of the hotel and pound the tarmac in the welsh land, again just perfect. It seems the cold and drizzly rain that I was doing my best to avoid recently finally went on its way to visit other places and in its place came clear skies and hot sunshine for a few days. I went out on the road for a couple of hours the other day and I was in my element. At long last for the first time this year I was able to train out on my bike with out a winter jersey or knee warmers.

So we have the accommodation and the actual training location requirements nailed on this camp. We couldn’t ask for anything better, except perhaps for a Starbucks coffee shop located next door so we can get a regular coffee fix! All the other help and services that are provided to all of us by all the support staff I think I will have to go into next time. Right now I’ve got to pay full attention to my mug of hot chocolate before it gets cold and below the optimal biscuit dunking temperature!

Friday 25 July 2008

INDOORS AND OUT OF THE RAIN

So this is July and it’s supposed to be summer….but it’s not yet arrived. The weather is foul, cold and rainy. Living in Manchester this is to be expected but only to a certain degree. As an athlete who has spent almost 10 years training outdoors, it is almost crucial to physical and mental well being that there are at least two months in the year spent training in hotter and drier conditions than the other ten miserable months of the year. We all know that last summer was a wash out. One bad year is tolerable but two is not. Hence I became a hermit and a full time indoor cyclist over the past month. My competition event being on the track means I get a reprieve from the outdoors every now and then which is good - but sometimes it’s just not sufficient. Some might say that substituting road training for turbo training is madness. Masochistic even! But that is me! I’d much rather batter myself and bore myself senseless looking at the same view (a white fan blowing air over me to cool me down and a data box mounted on my handlebars) than get drenched by the rain, smashed in the face by the wind and chilled to the bone by the cold. Oh, and not forgetting the dicing with death when fighting it out with other road users for a bit of space on the roads. At lest when training in the gym I can crank out some motivational tunes on the stereo. Whilst on the road the only music to my ears I get whilst on the road is ‘BEEP-BEEP’ and the revving of engines by impatient drivers.

So before I start grumbling about a whole new topic of ‘crazy drivers’ I better tell you that the photos I have included are a couple of snaps of me in the gym on my time trail bike warming up before a good hard session. They are only of the warm up because I’m not showing the grotty hellish state that I get myself into during the real hard grippy stuff. That wouldn’t be fair on the readers!





Sunday 6 July 2008

OLYMPIC KITTING OUT

On Friday I went to the Birmingham NEC to get fitted out and collect my Olympic Kit. Having been through the experience four years ago for Athens you'd have thought i'd have taken it in my stride. But no, I was just as excited as the first time. In actual fact I was more so and it took me by surprise. Already knowing what to expect from the kitting out was something that added to the excitement. What would the kit designs be like? What would the opening and closing ceremony uniforms look like and would they make us look like a bunch of silly sailors like last time? What would be the little surprise extras that made going through it all once I got it home feel like christmas morning?


The other buzzing feeling I had was that of reaching a marker point. It was the first feeling of really appreciating that it is all real....I'm actually going to be going to the Olympic Games. For an athlete the kit fitting out is one of the many unique experiences of the Olympic Games. Getting the kit represents the first step in becoming part of the Great Britain Olympic Team, representing your country and being in the privilledged position of competing in the pinacle sporting arena and fighting for the ultimate glory of becoming Olympic Champion. It is unlike any other event that we will compete in. Four years on from the Athens Games I've been given another opportunity to join a team of the most elite and talented athletes in Great Britain. A team comprised of the absolute best competitors from a multitude of Olympic sports. For the duration of the Games I'm not just a cyclist, but an athlete, and one who joins forces with athletes from other disciplines in a special unity to become an Olympic athlete.


It is because of this that I found the kit fitting on Friday to be so poigniant. When I decided to retire from rowing I made the decision knowing that I'd be retiring from International sport and would therefore not be going to the Beijing Games. I'd accepted that never again would there be all those special things that are unique to the Games like Olympic trialing and qualification, Olympic kitting out, opening and closing ceromonies, the Olympic village, Olympic poduims and medals, special Team GB events etc etc. But here I am doing it all again! It is an extatic feeling to have achieved so much and to be feeling the anticipation and exhilleration of another Olympic Games after I'd accepted that it wasn't going to happen again. Specifically energising for me is getting the experience from a completely different sport and with a different support network and team mates around me. I really can't wait to get out there and crack on with it!
So as you can see I've included a photo of the massive bags of the ludicrous amounts of stuff we get supplied with. Cool eh! Unfortunately somewhere in one of those bags is a pair of deck shoes........it seems the nautical theme did not escape the kit designers this time round either :-(