Relaxing Today...Adventures Yesterday

Today is an easy/off day…meaning we each have the choice to do absolutely NO athletic activities or do something light and easy…like the 30 minute jog/drill session that I plan on doing at 4pm if the rain would STOP!!
I woke up at 9:25am when my coach knocked on my door. I didn’t set an alarm because I didn’t think I would have a problem waking up by 9am and getting ready for swim practice at 9:30. Oops…I guessed wrong about how much sleep my body wanted and fortunately, I can get away with missing a few easy swim practices now and then (sometimes I think I can get away with missing EVERY swim practice for the rest of my life…but I show up and work hard anyways:).
I had a relaxing breakfast in my room and started on some homework until 11am rolled around. Coach Cliff planned a meeting with me to chat about how I’m feeling and about some race strategy for World Champs (which is THIS Sunday!!). The chat was great; it got me very motivated and ready to race fast and tough on Sunday. Cliff is on his way to Switzerland today…and the rest of us travel on Wednesday to Lausanne.
So I’ve got 2.5 more days here in Sembach before moving to the Hotel Savoy from Wednesday afternoon until Monday morning. I’m rooming with Jasmine (no surprise there…she’s my perfect roommate during races and we’re also teammates!). We race at 7:30am on Sunday, September 3rd…the forecast for weather that day is right above FREEZING at 37 degrees Celsius!! That is very exciting and very scary news because that temperature could cause the race to be canceled or worse: turned into a DUathlon!
As I mentioned above…it is non-stop raining outside today which puts a damper on any sort of outside exercise. I’m finally feeling like my body is completely over the sickness that I picked up after the Hungary World Cup and the last thing I want to do is go run around outside in the 50 degree, overcast, and rainy weather! Instead, I’m sitting inside my warm room with pants and a jacket on...taking advantage of the day-off to get a head start on my homework.
I’ve managed to read through 2.5 chapters of my Economics book (unfortunately, I’m supposed to get through chapter 7 by this weekend). I’ve also been working on my Self-Application paper for the Leadership class and have about 3 or 4 pages typed out (again…unfortunately, about 10 pages are due THIS weekend:)! Lots of things are taking my focus in other directions…like wasting time on the internet, doing laundry, packing for traveling, watching crappy Air Force TV, napping, and hanging out with all my other teammates that are also bored because of the rain!
Fortunately, we’ve been doing quite a lot of activities in the past few days that have not been boring. Yesterday we took our second team outing to a nearby town with tourist-y activities. Bacarach, Germany is located on the Rhine River about a 1 hour drive from Sembach. We left a little after noon and it was a short drive for me because I took a nap the whole way! We parked near the river and purchased a ticket for a sightseeing boat trip down the river…it was all planned out by Hunter and Val Kemper who were our official USAT trip planners and tour guides. We wandered around the local a wine tasting festival while we waited for our boat to arrive.
The trip on the boat was beautiful…the sun actually came out and the views were spectacular of the old castles and the present day vineyards on the steep hillsides. We got off in a different town and toured the ruins of a huge castle before taking the train back to Bacarach (1 hour by boat, 4 minutes by train). We chose a delicious restaurant for dinner…not quite ‘traditional’ German foods, but very influenced. After wandering the town and stopping for gelato (Italian Ice) we headed home which was also very fast because I napped the whole way!