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Our Pre camp was held in a Sports complex in Tianjin. It was located on the Chinese countryside. From the Sports complex we could see the Chinese Great Wall.

Inside the Sports complex there were a hotel, an athletics track, a weight room, an indoor dome and a brand new gymnastic dome. For those sports that could train inside the sports complex the training facilities were good.

For the endurance athletes from Cycling, Marathon running and Race walking it was dangerous as soon as we went outside the gate. Which we had to do to be able to train. I didn't feel safe training on the road with the chinese countryside traffic! It was a two lane road going through the village, but it was not often that just two cars drove next to each other!! The chinese had their kind of driving system, but we didn't fit in the picture and therefore it got dangerous from time to time. Stephan and Erik were also not happy about the situation and Stephan decided that we had to find a better place to train for our hard sessions.

Together with Ketil Tømmernes Stephan found a place a 25 min drive away from Pre camp. There it was perfect, a big cycling path with perfect new asphalt. There we could focus on training and not on the traffic. It was perfect!

After only 4 days in Tianjin, I went to Beijing together with Erik and Stephan. For me it was perfect to continue my pre camp in the Athletes Village in Beijing. It was beautiful there! Nice apartments, good food, beautiful gardens between the houses and very good and safe places to train! There was a 2,6km asphalt course around the houses inside the Village and to get to the other course we used we only had to go out of the East gate of the Village, cross the road and there was a 1,5km long path with perfect asphalt and marked every 500m (by the Portuguese walkers :-) ).

The day after we arrived in Beijing we took the bus to an Olympic training site. We wanted to train there once before the race. There the LOC had put 100m of the green mondo carpet which would be used for the walking competitions. It was nice to be allowed to walk on it once before the race! We even put a lot of water on it to see how it would be if it got wet....!

I really enjoyed staying in the most beautiful Athletes Village ever!! There I had everything I needed and in walking distance. We had a perfect location in the Village. Everything within close walking distance. The longest walk was to the International sone where we met the Norwegian media and where we could do some shopping. It took us five minutes to get there. Our neighbor countries in the Village were Germany, Finland, Denmark and the USA.

 

2008-08-20