USJNT Scullers (and about 55 others) have landed in London!! We arrived at the London Heathrow after a smooth 6 hour flight, surrounded by the sea of Nalgene-toteing, polo and khaki clad JNT athletes an coaches. Right away I'm going to say how impressed I've been with the efficiency with which everything here works. It's like a well-oiled pre-Olympic machine. Within 45 minutes of landing the entire team was through customs, loaded luggage and all into the coach buses, and Royal Holloway bound. For those of you just starting to read, the Royal Holloway is the official 2012 Olympic Village for the rowers and kayakers. And, with last year's venue in mind, it's glorious.
There's about 10 staff members to every athlete-- whether it be the army of man-maids that clean our bedrooms, the friendly flourecent-vested traffic controllers, or the extremely generous cafeteria workers, everyone here is super friendly and fun to talk to. That or they're all making fun of us. Either way no complaints!
We also had a sightseeing day in Windsor (where the castle is). But as is typical, we spent the few hours looking for food, looking for bathrooms, and trying to locate the drugstore (we found it. It makes cvs look ridiculous). It looks like this is all the sightseeing we'll get to do on this trip, as our London day was cancelled. It's not a big deal, especially getting close to racing our focus is on the rowing.
Second to the rowing, the FOOD! We have yet to find anything in the cafeteria that hasn't been delicious. Everything is healthy and fresh, complete with labels telling you all the calories, protein, and carb count. There's been a few local things that we weren't used to-- Summer pudding (G-Man had four), Shepard's pie, and treacle tart to name a few... but mostly everything is standard, and high qual. Lots of potatoes, and veggies.
All the sculling girls, plus Eliza the spare are on a ground level flat in one of the buildings that will be used to house athletes next year. Above us, the rest of the US team, and the Greeks. Across the lawn from us is Zimbabwe and Australia (win). And down to the right is the GB team (we've yet to see them). The Germans have also arrived, as we saw about 12 of them in their underwear this morning and its only day 4. With racing only two days away, almost all the teams have arrived, and things are starting to get into motion.
We've had four sessions on the water so far, working technique and distance per stroke doing laps on the course. The Eton Rowing Centre is famous for a screaming tailwind, making a lot of the results from previous events here look very impressive (we were watching some video from 2006 World Championships while waiting to get accredited). Especially rowing a single (equals around an 8 minute 2k, versus around 6 minutes in bigger team boat), I was looking forward to this. We had a little bit of fast conditions the first day we rowed (we were extremely jetlagged so I might be wrong), but since then every session we've done has been into a headwind-- so let's hope that switches back before Wednesday!
As far as the actual schedule of racing, the official draws have not been posted, but as far as I know the quad starts heats on Wednesday, and the double and single start heats on Thursday. So stay tuned! We've just had our last bit of speedwork this morning before racing starts-- everyone executed really well, and it was a good confidence builder going into this week. We'll see what G-man says at our secret sculling meeting tonight (it's in our kitchen, it's not that secret. There's a huge window).
We just adventured around campus a little bit (thanks to Erin's keen directional senses), went to the store, bought the first pre-bottled water I've had in months, a new toothbrush, and Erin bought breakfast beans. Pretty per-usual.
Anyways I'm sorry this has taken me SO long (literally almost 4 days) to write-- it's better for everyone I waited for the jetlag to wear off, it's a lot more coherent that way. Especially to the best crew mom ever Mary Youngling!! Lizzy is still alive! and has a very organized closet!
I've got a prefect hour to take a nap (first one since arriving) so I'm going to wrap this up.. I will post some pictures as soon as I can, and as soon as racing starts I'll be sure to post info and results!
Thanks to everyone back home who's following and supporting! LET'S GO USA!
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