DAY 3 at the tri worlds!

day 3 at the worlds...

A nothing day today, except it managed to be quite busy.

Woke to pouring rain and hammering winds... intentions of a morning workout were irrevocably revoked after seeing the weather.  We shuffled around the apartment a bit, and then, annoyed that the previous occupant had been a smoker, we went to the front desk and requested a room change.  Great new room, but it took till about noon to get that all settled and our crap moved.

Race registration for Canadians finished at 1pm so I hustled off to the 'Cloud' (a giant convention centre type building on a huge platform in the middle of the harbour) to get my race package, numbers and timing chip.  One catch: our hotel, while looking quite close to the venue on the map, turns out to be on top of a crazy steep hill with about 45 degree slopes, so coming and going from here to the waterfront is always an unintended workout.

The crazy steep hill!

Reg was easy, chatted with the friendly but hard to understand Kiwis who were volunteering.  They asked jokingly if there was any Canadians left in Canada, as so many had turned up here for the race.  The Cloud has a sports expo and some fun events on, I like the endless pool that people can race in - its like a big hot tub with a raging river in it, and you can swim full blast.  They dial up the speed until you can't keep up and get washed against the back wall, and then everyone watching cheers.  I think the speed goes up to about 1:10 per 100m speed, which if you know swimming, is pretty fast.

Came back to the room to meet Sato and Ame was burning up with a fever - up to 39.2.  So we got the front desk to call a hotel doctor to come have a look.  Like the bad dad that I am, I had to take off again promptly, since the Athlete meet and greet was starting and I was supposed to show up for the President's award.

There was about 3 or 400 hundred of us in our slightly nerdish team Canada track suits milling about at the Marvel Grill, the restaurant the gathering was held at.  The several tourists and locals quickly abandoned the area as maple leaf track suits swarmed the restaurant.   The awards didn't quite go as well as I'd hoped, the speaker had kind of a quiet voice and all the loud triathletes drowned out his announcements.  I listened carefully and went up to get the award (for being age group national champ) but I doubt if more than 10 of the 400 people heard anything.  I guess that it won't count toward my 15 minutes of fame.

We finished up with the athlete parade into town, with all the other nations.  Chinese Taipei (?) was behind Canada, but there was only a flag bearer with no athletes.  He looked kind of sad following the tremendous herd of Canadians.  I guess he drew that short straw.  Also noted the cook islands were really popular with their  hawaiin shirts, straw hats - and bikini girl flag bearer!  That always helps to boost interest in your country.  Also tons of yanks, ozzies, brits, french, mexicans, brazils, etc...  even a few Japanese.  Big parade.  Walked past tons of confused looking kiwis in town and various supporting family members on our march toward the Cloud and pasta party.

a horde of canucks

Dad and I skipped the pasta party and went back to hotel to meet with Sato who'd been locked up inside all day with a sick Ame-chan.  Hope she's better tomorrow.  I've gotta get out for a couple workouts and would like to hit up something touristy, 'one tree hill' sounds like a cool place to go.