Beijing to Vancouver

This past week I have had the pleasure to hang out with the 2010 Team USA mens and womens Bobsled Teams here at the Olympic Training Center. One especially cool treat, was to hang out with fellow ITA athlete and fellow Olympian, Emily Azevedo.




A former 100m hurdler in college, Emily capitalized on her speed and shed her track spikes for the ice of the bobsled track and since has climbed to top of the world in her event! Join Emily's journey to Vancouver as she lives her Olympic dream on her blog here:

http://in-the-arena-emily.blogspot.com/

Joining team USA at the training center is also the Dutch Bobsled Team, as well as the Dutch and Chinese women's field hockey teams. It has been a very busy environment with all the teams tuning up for their respected summer sports and of course the Winter Olympic Games just a few days away. This is a special time of year for an Olympians, past and present. For a few weeks every few years, the eyes of the world are on you and the overwhelming pride of representing the USA on the Worlds largest stage shakes you to the core. I have no doubt that team USA will be locked and loaded and ready to pay for overweight baggage as they haul around all the medals that they are sure to rack up!

ITA Winter Athletes in Full Swing and Vancouver Bound!

This blog entry comes from a rainy San Diego, California...very different from the past few weeks where we have had temperature in the mid 80's and most of us here at the Olympic Training Center have been training like its the middle of Spring.

As the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games are approaching in under 20 days, the first news of fellow In the Arena athletes punching their tickets are rolling in! Emily Azevedo, a bobsled athlete, and member of the 2 man USA Team III, has just been named to her first Olympic Team.

Follow along with Emily as he Olympic Dream approaches here:

http://in-the-arena-emily.blogspot.com/

As other winter events are in the midst of qualifying and fierce competitions, In the Arena athletes Torin Koos and Laura Valaas both took Gold at the Methow Valley SuperTour Sprint Event. At the same Super Tour event, ITA athletes went 1-2-3 as Caitlin Compton won gold and Laura Valaas and Nicole De Yong picked up silver and bronze respectively in the 15k thriller. You can follow each one of these athletes here:

Torin Koos: http://in-the-arena-torin.blogspot.com/

Laura Valas: http://in-the-arena-laura.blogspot.com/

Caitlin Compton: http://in-the-arena-caitlin.blogspot.com/

Nicole De Yong: http://in-the-arena-nicole.blogspot.com/

The Altius Track Club, that was launched at the beginning of the year has gotten off to an unexpectedly slow start. Although Ian Waltz and Stacy Dragila have began personal training sessions, an ITA merger looks to be in the near future and maybe within a week. Hopefully I will have some quality community service news to report on in the upcoming weeks...as the saying goes, its been way too long!

M++

Happy New Year.....US Airways, Your Fired!!!

Happy new year, bet you have heard that a few times. Most people would like to start their new year off in a favorable fashion...you know, great New Years Eve party, starting all the New Years resolutions on the 1st and looking forward to all the promising things that the start of a new year brings...almost a clean slate so to speak. Mine was more of a "humbug new year" than a "happy new year".

Christmas was great, minus the usual drama that comes along when families get together over the holidays...I was all set to travel back to SD on the 31st, when my travel luck struck again!

It started with my US Airways flight from Austin-Phoenix-SD was delayed over 1 hour. I only had a 45 min connection in Phoenix if we where on time, so I knew that the possibility of making that connection was zero. Then the gate attendant came on the PA system and said that all passengers that had connecting flights in PHX could either stay in Austin and get re-booked for the morning flight, or fly to PHX and if they missed their connection, stay the night in PHX and get re-booked for the morning. Then she said, "except all passengers traveling to SD, there are 15 of you so they are going to hold the plane in PHX for you." lucky me, so I thought.

As I landed in PHX and made my way to gate 22, all 15 of us realized that there was no flight to SD..they did not hold it, nor even attempt to, it left right on time. The entire PHX airport basically shut down at 9:30PM, which left a few hundred stranded passengers on New Years Eve, all of which had big plans that night for sure. For the next 4.5 hours I waited in line at customer service to be re-booked, baggage claim, shuttle to the hotel, and then the 40 people long line to get checked in with 1 lady working the front desk. So yes, I watched the New Years celebrations while standing in line in a hotel lobby, tons of fun!

The next day the travel woes continued. As I went to the counter to check in, I was redirected to a waiting line that strangely enough had all 15 of us from the previous night. This was around 1pm. I stood in the exact same spot for over an hour and didn't budge. Come to find out, they canceled our re-booked flight to SD because of "crew rest" and couldn't get us even out of PHX until after 7pm, connecting in Ontario, getting into SD after 10pm! It wasn't even 2;15PM at this time, so I just walked over to Hertz, payed $288 !!!! picked up a car and drove the 5 hrs from PHX-SD. I got home around 9pm (which wasn't too much earlier than if I would have taken the later flight). Which in hindsight makes that $288 hurt even more. So 24hrs later than originally planned, I was home. Thanks US Airways! Happy New Year!

Im hoping that the rest of the year gets off to a much better start!
M++