How Past Meetings Relate to Future Travels

I can’t believe that almost 1 week has passed since my last race…time really does fly when you are having fun…or in my case: time really does fly when you are really tired because as soon as we got home Coach Cliff threw some seriously intense training sessions at us!
I had a fun swim on Monday morning at the Belmont pool in Long Beach…Barb, Laura, Greg, Sarah, and I loosened up for about an hour…3000 yards. We had to get in and out of the pool really early because the National Teams Summit started at 9am in the conference room back at the Hyatt. They had some yummy breakfast foods out for us and as soon as all the National team members had shown up, the meeting was in session.
We talked about a lot of things pertaining to USA Triathlon elite/pros…future meetings…early season and pre-world champs training camps in different parts of the world (I was ALL for the training camp in Australia in January)…creating an online forum for everyone to communicate easily and quickly…qualifying criteria for the Pan Am Games in 2007 and the Olympics in 2008…how the National teams are structured and how they are funded. We also got an in-depth presentation about the World Championships for this year in Switzerland…where the USA team hotel is located, how the course is designed, when we travel, and lot of cool info about the Air Force base in Germany that will be the location of the pre-world champs training base.
I’m really excited to be able to use the training base in Germany…they’ve got great training facilities and it’s in a really beautiful countryside. I will be flying to Europe in early August (after the Continental Cup in Connecticut on the 5th) and dropping a bit of luggage off in my room on the base. Then I’m going to fly to the World Cup in Hungary on the 13th. After Hungary, I’ll be staying at the training base right until I take a short flight to Switzerland…there’s about 3 weeks between the two events and it will be much easier than flying all the way back to the USA between!
The U23 World Champ race is on September 3rd, the men start at 6am, the women start at 8:30am, and the elite men and women race later in the day. We must be out of our rooms at the chateau in Switzerland on the day after the race…but I’ve yet to make my final decision about where I head next. I am entered in the Germany World Cup race on the next weekend (6 days later)…I can travel back to the training base in Sembach, Germany for a few days and then travel again to Hamburg, Germany for the race…or I can go straight to Hamburg…decisions, decisions, decisions!
One thing that’s for sure is that traveling in Europe is going to be easy and cheap compared to traveling in the USA…plane tickets are cheap from one country to another…or you can even take a train! Another thing that’s going to be easy is mail…the Air Force base we are staying on is American so mailing packages and letters is just like mailing it in the USA (except is traveling all the way to and from Germany).
All of these plans are so far in the future…I’ve still got a few races in North America to complete before I even start making Europe travel plans! I’m officially on the starting list for my second World Cup on July 23rd in Corner Brook, Canada. My travel plans are all set (expensive little plane ticket to this island on the East Coast!) and I’m waiting to hear back from the race organizers about a home-stay for the weekend.
Now that I’ve entertained you with my travel plans for the next 4 months…its time to start thinking about my next workout. I’m heading to the treadmill in 15 minutes for a 70 minute INSANE running workout…if you never hear from me again, you’ll know where my heart exploded…probably around number 5 of 8 times: 3 minutes at 10k pace with 2 minutes at ½ marathon pace!!!