The Land of Good and Plenty

Ok so we are here in Götberg, Sweden, and I think it's time for an update. Dustin and I flew into Stockholm a week ago, struggled to get our poles from the plane to the terminal, left the airport (with 4 other runners that hated our guts for taking so long), and hit the road for Karlstad, which is about 4 hours away. We got in around 230am, checked into our hotel, had to switch rooms, rock-paper-scissored for who had to sleep on a mattress pad on the floor, and went to bed.

The next day was the meet and we both felt incredible warming up, and had to move our marks way back. I was coming from about 41.45m, which is about 40cm further than i usually do, and was still hitting some under mids and getting picked off of the ground. Unfortunately, the pits and box were not cooperating with the bending poles, and neither Dustin or I could get even our small poles to roll into the pit. I was on my 13.3 in the meet, with a bit of a tailwind, unable to catch up to the pole and going straight up in the air. I managed a measely 5.08 (hard one to post), but fortunately Dustin got it wired a tiny bit better and ripped around his 17.6 to blow over 5.25m for second place. Luckily I learned a valuable lesson in pit slapping, and next time i know it's happening I have a few tricks on how to deal with it.

Two days after the meet, after some hanging out by the river and riding bikes around karlstad, we headed to Götberg by train, took a cab to Friidrottens Hus where we would be training, and found the place where were staying, G.A.K, a wrestling facility not 50m from the track that features some nice bunk beds, wrestling mats, a weight room, a locker room and a kitchen/cafeteria. Sanitation is questionable but were immuned to that now.

The next day we went to the train station to pick up Greg, who never showed up, so we left. About an hour later he strolled into the near-impossible-to-find facility, and we were psyched to be re-adjoined. We have already seen lots of the town thanks to our new friends Oscar Janson and Alhaji Jeng, and we've gotten in two really good sessions of training, which is the reason we came here in the first place.

Tomorrow we are planning on having a jump session here, even though our poles are already in Copenhagen waiting for us at our next meet. I'm sure we will be able to find a few poles at the facility to jump on, and maybe we will post a few vids.

Until next time,

The thrash will go on here in Sweden!