Was up at 7:00 and grabbed the computer to finish typing yesterdays happenings and get those posted. Went down at 8:10 to have breakfast where I met Michelle Santilhano who covered my 50 pesos cost as I have not converted monies yet. Peter Lefferts was sitting at a table with this young lady who I saw was hanging around him, Eileen and Michelle the night before. What a wealth of information she is and a such a kind hearted and beautiful person. I was in for a lesson on what goes on here in the Villa and the Parque.
Michelle Santilhano, Karla, Eileen Steil
To start the story first – she came about because Eileen, Peter and Michelle decided to have something to eat in the cafeteria last night – they had asked me if I wanted to eat as well but I was still full from the buffet that afternoon. After eating, they were just sitting there chatting and one of the security guards came in and was asking them in something Spanish. He had this serious look to his face and no one knew what he was asking, this went on for a couple minutes and his stern look on his face was telling peter that something was wrong – he was wondering what they had done and what trouble they were in. This kind hearted soul from another table overheard and came to their rescue. That is where Karla came into our lives.
She is one of the students here living in the Villa. She is fifteen and a former national weight lifter but left that sport to be a triathlete and biker. Her goal right now is to train hard for the Velodrome, which they have one in the Parque. That is the only hill that our athletes will have to travel, it is a portion of the two lane road that goes up so that the bikers entering the Velodrome can go under the road. In order to study and participate here, you need to be a national champion. And the only way to stay here is to study and train hard and “win” medals at the meets you go to. If you don’t perform, you don’t get to stay here and you are sent back home. So the young wrestler and weight lifter I was chatting with last night are also champions in their age groups. Karla is very interested in us and Michelle, Eileen and Peter have adopted her to come and help out and learn more. Which she plans to do and bring some of her friends to help. A few of the athletes are here without support crews so the help of Karla and her friends will help immensely.
The next meeting that we all had with Jorge was at 3:00 p.m. to go over technical questions, get your chips put on your bike and receive the one for the run portion. A few of us headed over to the main transition area/shelterville about 10:00 a.m. to grab a shelter to put your things under and just mess about. I checked out the wireless router to make sure I could get on and it works great. I will be sitting about 100 feet await where I can observe Michael approaching down the road and be able to write updates for the course. Works for both of us. There are also three computers that Jorge provides for athletes/support crews to use as needed, he handed me a webcam and asked me if I could hook it up on one of the computers so people would be able to video chat back home. Life is good.
Shelterville before everyone gets set up.About noon time some of Jorge’s folks started showing up to finish setting up the area, get the timing equipment ready, put up banners, start getting the music system readied and a few others items. This will be home for the next two weeks for some people. Some people are all set to go, all their gear is ready and they are just waiting around for the start. That is hard. Others still have things to do to get ready. Physical and mental preparation. Michael Gaertner is all set. He is ready for tomorrow morning to get here to slip into the water and swim for roughly fifteen hours. That is his guess when he will get out of the water. We still need to go over a few things but he mentioned to me his plan was to swim for one hour and fifteen minutes then get out for fifteen minutes and every hour after he will stop for fifteen minutes.
The times range from thirteen hours to twenty plus hours. Guess we will have accurate times after the race and can see who was on and who was off. Once out of the water they have about a one mile bike ride back to the Parque with a police escort.
The meeting started at 3:00ish and lasted till about 4:30 when all bikes had been checked thru the timing system and all questions answered. Everyone headed back to the Villa and whatever suited them. I few of us went out to get some Italian food in the bellies before things heat up tomorrow.
Not sure there is Internet connection at the Olympic pool – if there is I will post the times for the Quintuple swimmers and the Deca people that get out before Michael. If no Internet, it will be Monday morning before I can get things posted or you can visit the race website for updates. http://www.multisport.com.mx/deca/index.htm
Again – good night. As I was about to sign off this post, there is a student on the second floor sitting outside his door with a guitar strumming away – it is a very nice melody and makes it seem so good to be sitting here doing this. Such a different sound than what we had the past two days. Most of the students are gone so it is much quieter.
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