Our first full day in Changping. I slept in this morning until 7:30. Again I am sharing a room with Sharon, one of the coaches, and we didn’t get to bed last night until after 11pm- and after waking up before 5am yesterday, and playing mother hen… it was GREAT to sleep. I took my breakfast in the Western style restaurant which offered eggs with ketchup, hard boiled eggs, lots of noodles, rice, some bacon, some sausagey things, a variety of sweet breads, some fruit and vegetable… and COFFEE. It was great to have some good old coffee with cream and sugar. Sharon and I sat for at least an hour chatting, eating and looking out the window as China went by. How time escapes you. The athletes were then off to ride up to the venue and get in a swim at the venue in open water. They had a packed day from there it was to the Jundu Tourist Hotel for their race briefing and pontoon draw, and then back to the Auspicious for a quick change and back to the race venue for a press conference. Unfortunately since I am not credentialed staff, only 3 staff are, I cannot get into the race venue until race day. I got an AWESOME run in. You ran about 10 minutes from our hotel to this gate, go through the gate and you are at the base of foothills. All along the ridge of these foothills are rocky trails. Yes there’s some climbing involved- increased heart rate, fatigue and sweating, but when you get to the top, it’s amazing. It looks like it goes on for quite a long ways. I plan to head back early tomorrow with a camera and more time. You can see south into Beijing which I am guessing people haven’t been able to do for a long, long time.

So we are working through a company here called Bafanzy. I’m not quite sure what exactly their business is but they help us with transportation as well as the accommodations. Most of them are younger women in their mid to late 20s with very American names, Sylvia, Merry, Wendy, ect. I am working with Sylvia a lot and she is just as sweet as can be. She’s 26 and spent 6 years in Moscow so in addition to English and Chinese, she speaks Russian and a little Japanese. All the staff is so nice and eager to help then again we are paying a lot of money for their services.