Olympic Games update #2

I am loving it here. I've been here for 12 days now and it seems like everyone else thinks it's a long time. They say "When do you compete?" Like I should have competed already.  When I tell them I compete on the 5th, they say "Oh you still have a ways then?" I am always surprised when they say that. It's a week away people! Haha I guess a week is a long time for Olympic athletes.

There have been some complaints about the beds not being comfortable. Some athletes even brought their own mattresses! I was asked if I was doing ok on mine and said, "Yeah. I'm not a diva." with a chuckle. I've slept on better and I've slept on worse. When you're rooming thousands of athletes, it's pretty impossible to have super luxury memory foam mattresses for every athlete. And that 's ok.

The food is good here. I am doing a great job of kicking each meal's butt and I am eating a good quality amount of food and I'm managing to maintain my body weight. Sometimes when you get to competitions, the food is really sketchy and you don't eat. Not the case here. They have this really fun outdoor bbq and street food place.

Outside of housekeeping (which always seems to come when I'm sleeping or napping), it's pretty quiet here. My room mates are nice and we all get to bed at reasonable times. The village itself is both quiet and busy.

I enjoy watching weightlifting at the venue. I saw Jang Mi Ran of Korea snatching 140+ and Lulu Zhou from china power clean and push pressing l20+. Benji from France was clean and jerking 200-210. He made it look pretty good. I saw some guy next to me clean and jerk 150 pretty easily. I think it was because of his zebra tights. I think I need to get some of those... It was nice to see some my British lifter friend, Natasha. She is glowing with excitement about competing at the Games. They had some male lifters who definitely have their work cut out for them but, their excitement for training with the best in the training hall and representing their country is unmatched.

Unfortunately, our own team dynamic isn't as great at it could be. We are all on different training schedules and because of credential difficulties, we are all training in different facilities. I am training at the excel center where as they are training at the docklands. I don't think we have even eaten a single meal together. We all had team picture yesterday which was good. After that, Joe and I headed to the P&G House to go see my mom and aunt.

We rode the train all the way to the station and then had some confusion as to where to go. We were almost on the right track when I saw a woman that looked like my aunt. I turned around and said, "Linda?" It was her! Huge hugs and excitement all around. She thought she knew where she was going but, she didn't. We almost go more lost. Haha. We found a P&G representative, got registered, and went in. We at lunch and took a tour. The Panasonic part was the coolest for me because people sent me messages and recorded videos and took pictures to wish me luck in London. One of them cracked me up so hard, I was kneeling on the floor in hysterics. It was awesome.

My mom won tickets to go see synchronized diving so we decided to go watch that. I didn't want to wait in line so we didn't leave to get to the venue until 20-30 minutes after the hour. We went to the train station to get on the tube. The train was about to leave so we were skuttling as fast as possible to get on the train only to see that my mom was left outside. I was pressing the "door open" button to no avail. The look on her face as she realized she missed the train and it was leaving without her was priceless. And in true Sarah Robles fashion, all I could do was laugh. She ended up getting on the next train and met us there in 5-10 minutes later. 

The aquatics center is pretty inconvenient to get into. You have to walk clear around the whole place. By the time we get there (we were told we had good seats), we found out we were pretty close to the top of the stadium. It was like 8 flights of stairs. By the time we got up there, we were tired, sweaty, and missed everything but like 6 dives and the awards ceremony. Joe left before we did so he could go visit his sister leaving the Robles girls all to themselves. Of course we went to the mall and shortly after, I went back into the village for rest, therapy, and food.

Oh yeah!
Opening Ceremonies!

I wasn't too much of a fan of the hat or the socks and shoes but, I have to admit, the outfit looked better on than I anticipated. I relaxed and tried to have fun and not think about it. I did my make up, had a snack and met my coach by the elevator. I told him he looked good, and then later on, I said, "Dude! You look so good!" and he said, "Stop telling me that." So I said, "Fine. You look stupid." Had a good laugh, then joined the rest of Team USA. I took pictures with all of my water polo, track, and wrestling then other people I started to get to know.

It was a lot longer and shorter than anticipated. We were on our feet for a good while. I sat down every chance I got. Reese Hoffa was the smartest guy bringing his own little stool to sit on. Joe and I were so excited in the tunnel. I almost felt like an NFL player waiting to get out into the game. We entered the stadium and there were thousands of people cheering for us and it was spectacular. Confetti, bubbles, fireworks, music, and so many smiles! The best part was seeing the cauldron get lit. We were close enough to feel the heat. Afterwards, we walked back. Went to the cafeteria and exhaustedly ate copious amounts of food and hobbled to bed.

The shoes we got were the worst ever. The next day, I felt like I twisted both of my ankles. It's taken me about 2-3 days for them to recover.  from that.


The day after that was a smaller recovery day in training and the next day, I worked up to my openers. For the first time since I've been here, I feel ready to compete. Physically anyway. Now, I'm just working on relaxing, visualization, quality repetitions on the platform, therapy, and eating.