Today (Saturday, 21st of April) we embarked on our long (Brisbane –> Los Angeles –> Dallas –> La Loma), monotonous and somewhat claustrophobic trip to Mexico for three weeks at approximately 1900m above sea level for some pretty intense altitude training, followed by a week in Dallas, Texas to fit in some quality training in order to bypass the effects of jet lag before heading home. The part I’m most looking forward to is the week in Dallas, exclusively because I have wanted to go to the States for as long as I can remember.
The plane trip from Brisbane to Los Angeles went for a gruelling 12 hours, which wasn’t so bad because I was able to watch one of my favourite movies of all time (Shawshank Redemption) along with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Sitter and New Year’s Eve. The time zones hit me quicker than a ton of bricks after that and from then on I was drifting in and out of sleep on the planes to Dallas and Mexico, so nothing really happened on those flights apart from the occasional twitch in my sleep. Except for the sunset in Mexico, which was amazing to see!
While at LAX airport, I purchased breakfast at a random little restaurant inside the terminal where I destroyed some French toast with crispy bacon, maple syrup and a 750mL pomegranate green tea all for less than $10. I couldn’t believe that something as big as the meal I ate was less than $10! In Australia I would expect to be forking over at least nothing short of $15-$20 or more! The same thing happened in Dallas, where Chris Wright and I tried what was so called the “greatest burger in the world” at Fudruckers. We ordered an original burger (not as great as its propaganda claims to be, but still tasty) along with a side of wedges and a “medium” (The US medium is equivalent to our large) Dr.Pepper (also one of my favourite drinks ever) all for under $10! If only Australia was like that.
The apartment where we are staying actually surprised me. It’s a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment with plenty of room for everything, along with a kitchen and a living room. Chris Wright and Brenton Rickard are in one room, Dave McKeon and Jarrod Poort are in another, and Andy Macmillan and I are in the last one. The training pool is great and the change rooms are decked out in hot and cold spas, steam rooms and saunas, basically meaning that more time will be spent in the saunas and spas than in the pool itself haha (I wish)! I’m not entirely sure about how many times a week training will occur, whether it is gym, swim or circuit training, the only thing I know is that it’s going to be incredibly hard due to the altitude. Just sitting here writing this is making me short of breath, which probably isn’t a good sign of what is too come later one.
The Mexican Sunset
The pool we are training in, which i named Gaspy because that's all you do at this altitude
100 Days of Motivation
Today marks a very important milestone in the lead up to the London 2012 Olympic Games. Today is exactly 100 days before the start of what is tipped to be one of the greatest Olympiads in modern history. So I thought, there must be no better day than today to initiate my immersion into the blogging world. Let me do a little bit of math to show you the monumental amounts of training that will go into the next 100 days.
100 days = 140 swim sessions = 800km of swimming = 42 dry land circuits = 28 gym sessions.
To celebrate this milestone, athletes of the games, along with a large contingency of media congregated at the Gold Coast aquatics center, which is the home training facility for not only myself, but four other Australian Olympic swimmers and one New Zealand Olympic swimmer for the games this year. Some school kids joined in on the festivities and we had a 3x33m relay race with each team consisting of 1 Olympic swimmer and 2 local school kids, giving us all a chance to get to know each other. In total, the day managed to change my mindset of the games as previously, I just felt like an average 17-year-old boy living on the Gold Coast. The fact that I will be flying off to the biggest sporting event in history later this year had not really taken effect on my mentality, until today that is. The way this milestone was celebrated really opened my eyes to how close the games really are and how exciting it is to not only myself, but the general community and the entire world.
I also leave for Mexico on the 21st of April (3 days from the date of this post) for altitude training at the La Loma Altitude training facility where it will be the first time I will experience the full effects of altitude. Those 3 weeks are going to be the toughest sessions I have ever done and I am actually looking forward to not only the crazy pressure it will put on my body both physically and mentally, but also for the change of scenery and culture. I am hoping to update this website throughout my stay over in Mexico to show everyone how I train over there with the influences of altitude, along with what it’s like in that particular part of Mexico.
In my parting input to this post, i leave everyone with a photo of myself with the British High Commissioner to Australia Paul Madden, the Gold Coast city acting mayor Daphne McDonald and fellow Southport squad partner and Olympic team-mate, Leiston Pickett!
Cameron McEvoy 