Sadness From Korea

In the past couple of days, a number of things in Korea have made me sad…enough to warrant a blog listing these things.
First, I will start with the most ‘positive’ sad thing…we are LEAVING Korea! Our training camp is OVER and I’m sitting in the Jeju airport typing this blog. The Marathon Training Center was a great place to spend the 10 days between World Champs and the World Cup. I got a chance to acclimate to the local heat and humidity. My body is completely on the race time zone (Beijing is actually one hour ahead but that shouldn’t be hard to adjust). Now I just have to go have a fast race!
The second sad occurrence in Korea was how much animal cruelty I witnessed. On the very first night we arrived in Jeju, I had to close my blinds to keep out the bright lights coming from the sea. After a few nights of these bright lights and some dinner-time discussion with my teammates…we concluded that the lights were coming from the hundreds of fishing boats that are out on the water from sun-down to sun-up. These were not just cabin lights or lanterns…they were huge spot-lights hung off the sides of the boats to attract fish and other sea life…I’m almost positive that this method of fishing is completely illegal in the USA.
The other example of animal cruelty I witnessed up-close and personal. I even have a photo…but I’m not going to upload it (lets keep this blog ‘lite’). We were leaving the beach after our second open water swimming session on Sunday morning when we wandered to the edge of the cliff to take a group photo. As we walked around the edge of a building for a better angle of our beach…we saw three cages with live animals. The first cage was the size of my queen bed in COS and contained two HUGE California Sea Lions. Half of the cage was a 4 foot deep pool of water that reeked of chlorine; the other half was a painted slab concrete. The second cage held some penguins while the third housed another seal. Although the animals appeared to be fed and healthy, it was easy to tell they were mentally unstable (a 6-foot long sea lion swimming non-stop in a 4-foot circle is not a normal action). From their location, it also appeared that they never left the cages for a bigger area. Some of my teammates could not stand the sight and they had to walk away.
Finally, I was saddened and completely shocked by the complete disregard that local drivers had for traffic laws! RED stoplights were merely suggestions. Making a stop (or even slowing down) at a big stop-sign was apparently just optional! The use of turn signals (blinkers/indicators) did not even exist.
It was one thing to be in the team vans (driven by local Koreans) going to and from swim practice. It was a whole other thing to be on our BIKES with these drivers…there wasn’t a moment to relax on the road and assume that you could put your head down or look at the beautiful scenery. Fortunately, no one on the USAT team had a bike accident. Unfortunately, we did witness an unusual number of car accidents…a few where it was completely obvious that some of the victims did not make it out alive!Okay, that is enough from me about the sadness in Korea. Don’t think that my whole trip was negative…it was an amazing experience with beautiful water, roads, trees, parks, etc! You can see from all my photos that I had a great time and I’m so glad that I was offered (and accepted) this opportunity offered by USA Triathlon! I feel completely prepared for the Beijing World Cup race this weekend (which was the goal of the camp)!