Saturday, August 16, 2008

Practice back in Beijing

Today started out with a morning practice at BNU, the US-only training center that's about 15 minutes (give or take 30 minutes depending on traffic) away from the village. We had a little longer warm-up than usual due to our day off yesterday. It sounds funny, but sometimes you kind of need some time to get re-acquainted with the water again after a day off!

Unfortunately we didn't get to eat lunch at BNU, as we had to head strait to the competition pool after practice. I was looking forward to the food there because it is so outstanding! But the boxed lunches the food staff made for us were pretty decent: plain turkey sandwiches w/ condiments on the side on nice, soft, American bread. My kind of sandwich!

We had a really good afternoon practice at the cube with some music time in the competition pool. The coaches were impressed with both our programs, but especially free since we didn't do too much to warm it up and it still looked pretty good. We only stayed in the the warm-up pool for a little bit to fix things...sometimes the warm-up pool time lasts for hours! And now we have some time off to relax before dinner and a video/land-drill session later this evening.

Our coaches also told us today that they've made official decisions about our players in each program, which means that Becky is well enough to swim the tech program next week in competition. For those who don't know, she was recovering from an arm injury that has been plaguing her for a couple months now. I'm so happy for her--there was a time when she wasn't sure she was going to be here! At the same time that means I'll just be swimming the free program since I was filling in for her in the tech during her recovery. I'm a little disappointed about not swimming tech, especially since I've been working on it for so long now. But that feeling is definitely overshadowed by the honor I feel to be in the free program and to be competing at the Olympics with the world's best athletes. It's just incredible to look around the computer room where I'm typing this blog, the cafeteria where I eat dinner, or even the elevator up to my room and be surrounded by so many talented and amazing people. And it's incredible that I'm part of all of it!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey Janet! I been enjoying reading your blog so so much! I am living your Olympic experience vacariously through you! So, I know you are very busy with your prep for the competition, but just out of curiously, is there any way we could watch the duet competition when we are not subscribed to the Oxygen channel? Is it not going to be on NBC? If you can't get back to me, I completely understand! Best of luck! I am rooting for you and your team as always!

Janet Culp said...

I'm honestly not sure about the schedule...sorry I can't be more help! Thanks for your post!!

Anonymous said...

The NBC coverage on their website (nbcolympics.com) has been very comprehensive. I'd be very surprised if you couldn't watch it online.