USA- The first 2 weeks

Hello everyone! I have been in the US for over 2 weeks today and in San Francisco itself for about 9 days. The time has blasted past but I have had a lot to do- finding a house being the main thing, my family came out with me for the first 2 weeks but have returned back home now. I was so glad that they were able to come out to see me off and though I am already missing them a great deal I have a lot to occupy myself with so try not to dwell on it.

Bye bye for now

 

Vegas Baby!

View of the strip from an above ground walkway

The first few days were spent in Las Vegas, obviously as we were going as a family there wasn't much gambling/strip club action but we still managed to entertain ourselves in a more British way. The one thing I would recommend doing in Vegas if you were pushed for time and money is to walk down the strip (preferably early in the morning as it gets HOT in the day) and check out all the hotels and sites. You can wonder in and out of all the big names and themed hotels such as The Belaggio, the Venetian, Caesar's Palace and the Luxor. They are all air-conditioned as well which offers a nice break from the 40c+ temperatures. I'd also recommend doing the same walk again at night because it looks completely different, the lighting is amazing but if you're out with friends rather than family you will probably be doing most of your traveling around at night anyway :)

Same area at night

 I made an effort to go out for a run every morning at about 5ish to avoid the heat but going out of town was the best thing as it is not possible to go straight down the pavement heading along the strip because there are raised walkways used to cross the streets rather than pedestrian crossings, luckily we were staying at the Mandalay Bay hotel which is right on the edge of town so I was able to head out into the desert and watch the sun rise as I was running along.

Inside the Venetian hotel complete with own river & gondola service

The shop from Pawn Stars

The best part of the trip to Vegas was taking a helicopter trip at night into the Grand Canyon, we saw the Hoover damn and Lake Mead before stopping at the bottom of the Canyon. We then did my favourite thing (eat) and headed back to Vegas as the sun was setting, very well timed & properly American. This was a more expensive excursion but I can honestly say that those sites will stay with me for the rest of my life (in my memories as well as on my hard drive :P )

Vegas from above

Colorado river running through the GC

City by the bay

We touched down in San Francisco after little over an hours flight from LV, I had already had my hopes of living in eternal sunshine dashed by some folks in Vegas asking if I'd packed all of my sweaters for living in SF (I had packed only T-shirts and shorts...), so I wasn't surprised by the sudden temperature plummet and swathes of freezing fog when we got to the hotel. We stayed Downtown in the Sir Francis Drake hotel, it was very different from the glamour and glitz of the Mandalay Bay and my brother really didn't like it. The decor is done up like an old fashioned hotel you might expect a building from the 40's to look like, it's a hotspot for anglophiles apparently but I must have missed them while we were there. I enjoyed staying there as it was close to everything downtown and the restaurants nearby and in the hotel were fantastic. While staying in the luxury of a hotel in SF before my parents left I had to make my priority findign a house. I really regretted being unable to join in most of the fun touristy things that my family were doing while they were there but I have come here to live for 10 months and my 3 class-mates from Brunel were staying in hostels so the sooner we found a place, the better.

Finding a house for the first time... the international exchange directors at SFSU told us it wasn't a renter's market in SF at the moment and they were not exaggerating! Long story short- Countless emails, phonecalls and texts were sent within the space of a few days, craigslist was ravaged mercilessly for 4 bed houses/condos within our budget and we heard very little back from anyone, as the situation started to seem at its most dire (i.e we would end up living in a hostel/on the streets) I received a text from my class mates saying we'd been offered a house virtually next to the university! It's not exactly cheap (or anything like the amount that we were told to expect from Brunel) but it comes in at around $200 less per month than all of the other places that were still available and we can all live together as we hoped = 4 happy Brits. As I write this post I am currently staying in a hostel, where you can get free beer (and margaritas for the ladies) every evening, for another 3 nights before we can move into our new home, I cannot wait to move in and start classes.

We started 'orientation week' at SFSU on Monday and so far it seems like a colossal waste of time, e.g. there was a 1 hour lecture on how to say 'no' to any lecturers that try to harass you, I think it was mainly for the benefit of the Uni to relieve themselves of any liability and international students coming from countries that aren't used to standing up to people in positions of authority. Either that, or the 'Professors' at this university are sexual deviants who can't control themselves, time will tell...

Training (a lack of)
Quick update on training- been getting my runs in quite well and am up to 12 miles on my long run with no prior nutrition (mainly because if I wanted to eat before a run and still beat the tourists to the beachfront I'd have to get up at 4.am instead of 6) and feel quite good on the bike & in the pool, I have accepted that I wont be able to ride as much or train as specifically for triathlon on the bike this year as I don't have my turbo trainer or power meter here with me, but there are plenty of hills here you might have heard... so hopefully I wont get too bad on it. My first swim back felt ridiculous after 2 weeks off, I imagined myself looking like some sort of flailing monstrosity, and I was shocked when I got out to learn that I wasn't actually in a 25-yard pool as I had thought. I must credit this lack of post-break suckiness to the technique analysis given to me after my swim analysis by Fiona Ford, swimming is such a mental process and it really helped me to remember the advice she gave me about my stroke and the cues I can use to correct myself.

There's nothing that can be really done to help the loss of 'feel for the water' after so much time out of the pool, in my opinion, other than swimming more regularly before you take time off. For example, I was swimming 3-4 times a week before my end of season break in 2011, this year I have probably averaged 4-5 swims a week with some 7+ session weeks (when I was injured from running at the start of the year) and the prior feel for the water has nearly come back after only 2 sessions.

Thanks for reading, double thanks if you made it to the end of this one! I will keep it shorter next time but there has been so much going on lately- probably even more that I have forgotten! Next time I update I will hopefully be settled in to my new home for the next 10 months :)
Take care,
James x

Last week at home & Bedford Classic triathlon report

Hello everyone! I am writing this post a bit later than planned due to a combination of laziness and being busy sorting everything out before leaving for America. The time since my last post has been filled with a race at the Bedford classic triathlon (olympic distance), saying farewell to friends, a minimal amount of training, and Packing! I'll start with the race as its by far the most interesting out of the above.

The Bedford Classic Triathlon

This race is an olympic distance (1.5k/40k/10k) that took place on the 29th of July this year in sunny Bedford, the swim was an out & back route in the river running through the town country park up to the main bridge and back again, the bike course was a single, flat loop through the countryside with a few lumps (nothing major) and the run was 3 flat laps around the riverside and crossing a bridge at each end constituted the only climbing reqiured on the course. You'll notice a similar trend on the description of this race as I did- FLAT, which in my mind is meant to mean FAST! It was also an ETU 2013 qualifying race so there would be a good field to race against.

The race didnt really go to plan for me however, despite my best efforts. The week leading up to race day I actually tapered properly (by my standards anyway) and clocked up around 10 hours of training all together, mainly race pace sessions on the bike out on the road, running around ladywell park @ planned pace on Friday & track with Kent AC on Tuesday and a few swims in Charlton Lido and with my club. I skipped out on the usual 'filler' sessions I do at a steady intensity to boost the mileage in each sport and eventually (read: hopefully..) yield long term gains by founding the aerobic base I missed out on during my later teenage years (building more of a carbon-monoxide/tar/alcogol foundation during those years ;) )
So I was feeling pretty confident on race day, I positioned myself well in the swim but soon after the gun I realised that unless I managed to get on the front line then I would encounter a fair amount of biff. As it went - I was on the 2nd line in the narrow river when the flag dropped, not having the confidence to go right to the front- fool! I was soon swamped by the 100 or so swimmers behind me trying to sprint to the same place as each other, I literally couldn't get my arms out of the water to start and made my way over the side til the madness subsided. I waited about 10 seconds then I thought- I'm not going to lose any more time, just get in there and swim through them all! I sought out the biff that I had just hidden from and found I was a lot better at giving it than taking it and got into a good rhythm soon after. Fortunately it didn't take long for the adrenaline fueled super-swimming exhibited by most at the start of the race to wear off and the field was very strung out after the first 200m, I managed to swim through them all and join a decent group of 2 other swimmers on the way back. The only problems I encountered on the way back were not being able to see due to the sun being in our eyes, we managed to move into the shade during the final 400m of the swim though and fortunately didn't overshoot the exit ramp!
The swim time came out as around 24 minutes including a 50m+ run to transition, I wasn't very happy with this when I saw the time later as I have been training to swim 1500m in around 22 minutes and have done so this season already with a 400m p.b of 5:40... Oh well!


Once on the bike I knew I wasn't going to have a good day, I felt absolutely awful for the first 20 minutes, my legs became very sore as if they had no blood in them and couldn't get the power (that I had been holding with relative ease during the week on race pace sessions) up at all. It wasn't until climbing one of the few sharp hills on the route that I started to come good, I decided to stop looking at my power meter as it was making me depressed and just went on feel- this coincided with the sudden revival of my legs somehow, maybe I'll just race completely on feel next time. I also believe that the short hill which I went up quite hard possibly 'woke' my legs up and got them used to a harder effort.
The run started off quite well but just went downhill after the first of 3 laps, I had lost all my nutrition on the bike as I had cack-handedly cellotaped them on earlier and they just fell off about 10 minutes in to the bike. I ended up cramping horribly on the other 2 laps and having to run-walk the rest of the way.


Alas, this race did not prove to be the PB-setting scorcher I had hoped but I still really enjoyed it. The organisers at Galeforce events threw on a cracking race in lovely settings, the swim was one of the most scenic that I have ever done (not that I should have been paying attention to the scenery!), they got very lucky with the weather on the day and the announcer kept me amused for an hour in transition while waiting to go in the water. My only gripe is that the wave sizes were very big and caused problems for many during the swim in such a narrow canal, being an ETU qualifying event though would have meant that they received a lot of sign ups and probably had a load of other regulations to contend with in that context.

The Final Week

My last week before heading to the States for 10 months! It was spent mainly resting and being sick, on Monday night I started to feel stomach pain and was preparing myself for another bout of gastroenteritis after having suffered it once after a 10km river swim (although that was in the Thames and I was lucky to escape with just that really!) The illness persisted through the week and interrupted most of the training I had planned, I wasn't too fussed about this really as my season ended on Sunday after Bedford and I find it difficult to do any tough sessions without a race on the horizon. By the next Monday it had cleared up though and my fears of having something more serious than a tummy bug subsided (seriously, it brought out the hypochondriac in me- Big Time).
Saturday night was my farewell-do with friends and club mates, I had a fantastic evening- Mo Farah won the Olympic 10k for us to improve our night- and realised just how much I will miss everyone while I am gone. Triathlon is obviously a big part of my life and I spend a lot of my free time training for it, without the inspiring, challenging group of clubmates I am honoured to share the pool with twice a week I will find it hard to keep motivated this year. I'm hoping one or two of my friends will be able to come out and visit me while I'm away after our exams are over. The next big task on the horizon, apart from getting safely to San Francisco, will be finding a place to live in with my 3 uni-friends also on the exchange as we were hoping to share a house together, hopefully it wont be as complicated as I'm dreading...
Til the next one!