I Heart Korea

I made it! It was a full 24hours of travel on only about 30min worth of sleep I arrived at midnight in Tongyeong! For some reason, I love Korea. I have a soft spot in my heart for Korea, last year I was here for this very race and finally got my 1st top 10 finish, putting me on my way to qualifying for Beijing. Then the Dutch team had our pre-Olympic training camp out here. I love the randomness (or what I think is random…probably makes perfect sense to the locals) of this place—something always happens that makes me laugh and wonder why but the people are great.

Here is a picture of my room. No sheets here! Note the Nathan bag that I used to travel with, we got these as a part of our Team Timex loot, they hold a ton of stuff! I also used my new soft-case bike bag to travel with, it so much lighter than the hard case one!

Here are some things that sum up Korea in my mind: neon, polite, high-density high rises in the oddest places with giant cartoon murals on the side, golf courses, hills, fishy smells and food, NCIS (yes, the TV show—it’s on multiple channels all day long!), slippers, spicy pickles for breakfast, a TV channel dedicated to selling bras. Ahh Korea!

I’m super excited to race this course again, I just get a good vibe from this place. Today I road and ran on the course. Another interesting fact about Korea, they like to put a nice rubber track surface down on their walkways along the water, always a treat to run on—wish they would do that in Calgary along the Bow river, I’d be in heaven! Now I’m fighting the jet lag, the evening are the hardest part, I just want to close my eyes and sleep, but I know it’s best to push through it. I’ll just watch them build tankers in the shipyard next to the hotel, I have my very own “How it’s Made” outside my window, very cool.

The view from my room! For those of you interested in staying up late on Friday night, here is the link to the website for the live feed www.triathlon.org. They should have a link to the tricast from there. Warning though, the start time is 11:10pm mountain time on FRIDAY night.

Back to forcing myself to stay awake until dinner....maybe I'll watch a NCIS...

Lisa