The team's first days in Beijng

Benno, Claire and I arrived early Monday morning with Ryan a little later in the day. So far life is good and we are enjoying the entire cultural experience. Thanks to the accommodating hotel manager Michael in our fantastic hotel we have managed to get Susi in with us. Lene & Liam had to stay in the village with their federations, but Susi wanting perfection opted to stay with the team. To be honest, this has been a positive move. The village can be noisy given that many athletes have finished and are in party mode, while also being over 40 minutes by car from the MTB venue, whereas our hotel is just a 5 minute walk.

Getting Susi into the hotel was a one day mission, with yours truly not backing down .... the government are really serious about athlete security, especially athlete health i.e. watching food they intake etc. Anyway our hotel is top notch so we have no worries there, but it did not stop the police trying to get me to put Susi back in the village!!!

The other mission, which we are so far failing on, is entry into the race site. Of course we have tickets for both Friday and Saturday's races, but given that we are not part of a national team, we are denied access to the course on the training days this week - we have no accredation. Therefore, we are to be found at the entrance area and if I have to be honest, adding a little humour to the proceedings, while also being pains in the backsides of security people!!! Ah well it makes their days interesting and keeps us from boredom.

Ryan and Benno have adapted perfectly. While Susi, Lene and Liam are adapting to the climate, they are adopting a work methodology never seen before!! They have a work stand at the race site entrance and their hotel rooms have been converted into mechanical work zones and their showers, the bike wash. It gets very intimitate in there and I don't think a bike will ever get closer attention to detail.

I will report closer to the big day (s), but for now it's great to report that as always the atmosphere within the team is tremendous with everybody buzzing and positive. Until later in the week it's over and out!