SimonWhitfield.Blogspot.com

Where am I now!? Still in bloody Dulles airport amongst the Ben and Jerrys cafe, Heat and the b%$tard USA Custom officals, Airline check in guys and security officers who took away my last Olympic Games water bottle!

We left Des Moines at 5:00am.  Arrived in Washington to be picked up by our legend Homestay Travis. Thanks for putting up with all our crap dude! You walk on water! We spent a nice day with him before he dropped us at Dulles Washington Airport.  Checked in fine…ish! Then boarded the plane and sat there for 3hrs while they tried to sort the problem with the Pressure in the cabin. After 3hrs they realised they couldn’t fix it and the flight was cancelled till TOMORROW EVENING!!!! We queued up with the rest of the cattle for another 2hr to get our hotel allocations then proceeded to drag 45kg of stuff across Dulles and go on to our hotel. Finally, got my head down at 12pm exhausted from the day and still the race!  We are about to head to the airport to try again now!:)

I hate these set backs. Especially when it delays my training another day I don’t have. Kitzbuhel is around the corner, to be honest I dont really want to race yet. I don’t feel ready!  I look forward to those 5 weeks of work to move my form up where it needs to be!

The journey was relatively painless to be honest, I had a good night sleep and here I am! Absolutely loving it so far, Washington DC seems especially good! For America, everything seems really close together so it saves us hiring a car to get about. We are staying in the Grand Hyatt right in Downtown DC. I went for an extremely historic run this morning. Thanks to all the tourist attractions being cramped into a 1 mile radius from our hotel, I took in probably the most sites ever on one run! Apparently Washington has 16.5 million tourists every year – and I can see why! White house, capitol hill, reflecting pool, national archives, history museum, war memorials, the mall and some far 1 minute efforts using Washington Monument as my loop

It is so expensive though…phew! Eating out 3 times a day is not cheap anyway… and especially not here. The Bell boy also wasn’t impressed when I tipped him 75 Cents for taking up 2 bike bags and 2 heavy bags! I looked in the manual after he left and it said the recommended amount is $1.50 per bag!  NEVER GONNA HAPPEN!

Feeling pretty good though, run was swift this morning and did some good 50’s in the pool! I hope it all comes together this weekend. I’m going to be nice and rested for this one so will be good to see what I can do… It’s all experimenting this year

Really have to go, Im meeting Barack in Starbucks, I hope he doesn’t bring his lap top…

I cant wait to be honest, training has been going great, and although its only been a week, if that week goes well it gives you so much confidence! The week has been full of PB sessions including that Track session I wrote about, and yesterday a MAX 100m + 2×50m swim (Just the 4!) and a very hard Bike/Run session with Alistair and Johnny Brownlee.  Was great to mix it up with those boys.  The week was chaotic though with the inclusion of packing and meetings with the Olympics Podium Squad. 

I look forward to writing tomorrow hopefully with some good news from the FGP.  I have some great memories from this course. It’s a real fast run and I want to try to test out my legs to a accuarte 14:45 5k off the bike!