Moscow 2013 – Day 0: Team Canada arrives

Greetings from Mother Russia!

Before I get started on this little blogging from Moscow adventure I gotta admit something; I am an idiot. No doubt, straight up I am a dumb man. Why? Because at some point I considered not coming on this trip to represent Canada at the World Championships. I don’t wanna talk about it too much because it is kinda embarrassing, but basically I was using money as an excuse. That was lame man, so damn lame.

I have been on this trip for less than a week and I’ve already met some amazing people, I’ve already seen some incredible things and I’ve just been having a good time. It’s trips like these that make me appreciate this sport and make me truly understand how happy I am. This makes riding the grind worth it. This shit is priceless!

So enough jibber jabber, lets chat World Championships shall we? This trip started for myself on Aug. 2 when I boarded a big ole’ plane and flew half way across this planet of ours. My first destination was Kamen, Germany to meet up with the rest of team Canada for pre-competition camp. The travel was quite long, and also fairly uneventful. The highlight was probably seeing a local German celebrity of some sort in the Frankfurt Airport. I actually have no idea who this guy was, but the German folk seemed pretty stoked on this dude, there was quite a bit of hoopla over him.

I arrived in Kamen at some random hour and managed to sneak in a run before passing out for some much needed sleep. Camp was pretty rad. It was great to catch up with a bunch of my old buddies and also meet my new teammates. Such a solid group of athletes we have assembled here folks! The staff is top notch also, one hell of a fine support crew we have to keep us all fit and rolling.

After a few days of putting in some good work in Kamen we packed up our gear and continued our move East. The trip was supposed to be fairly simple, but things don’t always work out as planned. First we lost a few good folk due to VISA issues and then only about half of team Canada’s luggage made it into Russia. Our first few hours in Russia were spent filling out a whole lotta tedious paperwork and being sent all over the airport to have awesomely confusing and frustrating conversations with the locals.

Luckily though now all us Canucks and our bags have successfully gathered here in Moscow. Everyone is keen and eager to get to work. Competition starts tomorrow with some sweet women’s marathon action, the men’s 10,000m final, the 800m heats and Super Stud Damian Warner in the decathalon. Can’t wait to watch me some track and field. I’ll do my best to keep y’all up to date, but sadly despite being a very strong country, the internet here in Russia is weak!

Alright folks, be good.