I was nervous heading here, I have never been on a plane for as long as I was for this trip, leaving the girlies made me sad and stressed (although they are having a great time with ma and pa!), the Hungarian cuisine scared me a little and the whole unknown had me a little shall I say uncertain. However, SV and I have been making out alright. Our first meal here didn't give me a lot of confidence but we have done much better since....we are managing to find our way around the city easily and we have been able to keep our exposure to the "stressed" triathletes to a minimum....and we have met some great new people as well.
The jet lag was pretty intense, we slept 12 hours last night but I think come Sunday we will be good to go (I feel human today compaired to yesterday that is for sure). We headed out with Team Canada and went for a ride on the bike course...the race description said they are great roads...not going to agree with that as there are a lot of pot holes and a section of the road that is under construction (but is supposed to be paved by Sunday) but it is very flat... the route has 3 turn arounds in each lap, with three laps.... this is very new for me, I have never done a flat race or a race with laps, so I am excited for the new challenge...I also like that the turnarounds are in roundabouts rather than pylons, should make the course a little less congested.... the one concern I do have is the amount of people that will be on the course, they have penalty boxes and you will have to serve any drafting/blocking penalty on the route, but with such a flat course and so many athletes I am hoping that it won't be too difficult to have my own ride (the first laps should be fine but lap 2 and 3 have me a little nervous) SV has told me to just do my ride and try to get by any slower athletes as quick as possible... sounds like good advice to me.
The swim may not be as pleasant as we had hoped, the water on Wednesday for the Aqua-thon was only 14 degrees... they are telling us it should be 18 for us on Sunday... we are going to do the swim course tomorrow afternoon so I hope it is a little warmer... we won't be able to have a warm up swim on Sunday so tomorrow is our only chance to try it out...
The weather hasn't been the greatest since we got here, our cabbie told us that the weather here is usually beautiful up until October but the last week or so has been cold, and it has rained all day today... but he told us it will be nicer tomorrow and even better Sunday... SV and I went out and did a short run today, we ran down to the river and then to where the race finish line is and the bridge that we will be running across 3 times on race day... again very flat run course but despite the rain, it is a very beautiful route, rain or shine I think I will enjoy the run for sure! The finish area seems exciting and seeing it all set up today got me pumped. I look forward to running in my race outfit and being cheered on by the spectators... it made me feel very proud to be somewhere so far from home representing our country.
A few observations I have so far:
--people really like the Canadian Team uniform (they will like them a lot more on Sunday as the see-through quality becomes apparent! I chose the bathing suit option as a race outfit.... something I would never normally do, but the options of uniforms led me to choose the lesser of the 3 evils... SV went with the one piece tri suit and mine at least came with a shammy and the seam of my outfit doesn't need to be strategically placed to hide anything :) but we are in Europe so being out there is expected right, lol) I am on the look out for which team uniform I like best and hope to be able to do some swapping on Sunday night at the closing ceremonies....
--I hadn't realized how wonderful we have it in Canada, to be able to go to a restaraunt and have an enjoyable meal... here the service is very slow and people smoke everywhere...I really prefer my meals without a side order of cigarette smoke.
---the city of Budapest is prettier than I thought it was going to be, don't get me wrong there are some depressing looking areas but the buildings and setting is very pretty (I can't wait for a sunny day to enjoy it to its fullest).
---the bridges are gorgeous. I have this thing with bridges (think this is part of why I want to someday do the NYC marathon)... Budapest has 4 amazing bridges (that we have seen) all so very different from each other but I hope to get pictures of them all so that I can show you... the Szechenyi Bridge, which we ran today and will be crossing 3 times on race day is gorgeous and I tried to take it all in today because I know on race day I will not appreciate its beauty but honestly the views from both sides of this bridge are impressive... although the river Danube below isn't beautiful (brown)
---I am a small town girl... yesterday our bike ride took us through the city... I am very comfortable on my bike but I have never ridden in a large city and I was stressed... the amount of cars, stop lights and finding our way around was intense... I found it so crazy and I tried to only focus on following SV (or other team members) but as we were heading back to the hotel we took one of the bridges that I find very beautiful and I thought I was going to die, lol... it was crazy, I could not do that every day of my life, but I was actually impressed with how great the traffic was with us on our bikes, a few people did get close to us but no one honked their horn or tried to cut us off... something that occurs almost every ride back home. So although I did not enjoy riding in the city and was concerned about safety the drivers here in Budapest seem to respect cyclists more.
--SV and I won't be able to race each other here at the World Championships. My wave is set to head off 40 minutes before he starts, I think we may get a chance to see each other out on the bike course or run course and I will get to see him cross the finish line but other than that it will just be us and athletes from around the world.
Tomorrow we are going to head down to watch the Men's Elite race, I am very excited to see such a fast paced race... these guys will be running a 30 minute 10 km run after doing the bike and swim... should be impressive. We will head down to swim after and then check our bikes into the transition area.... I think I am ready to go, I may not have done all the training I could have done, life and loved ones are more important though.... but I think I will do alright, all I can do my best and at the end of the day if I put in a 100% effort I can't be anything but proud
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