Planning The Great European Adventure

What have I been doing for the last month you ask? Why haven't you told us more about Team USA? Well, planning a Great European Adventure is quite an undertaking. I have been overwhelmed with trying to book flights (both round trip and one-way), one-way car rentals, hotels in 6 different locations for varying lengths of stay, getting international drivers licenses, and in general spending tons and tons of money. Our current plan is to fly to Prague and stay there a couple of days, then go to Salzburg, then go to Vienna for a couple of days, and on to Gyor for the race. After the race we'll drive to Budapest for the day before catching a flight to London.

The second half of the trip will be in England staying with Steve's parents. Hopefully at a more relaxed pace! I did buy a new digital camera that's 7.1 megapixel so I can actually enter our company photo contest with all my fantastic pictures of Europe (3mp minimum for entry).

The hotel at the race in Gyor, Hungary is secured (Hotel Paar), and it will be full of Team USA members. It will be a lot of fun to be around a bunch of people that speak English. Steve and I bought a Hungarian phrase book and CD, and let me just say, Hungarian sounds nothing like how it's written. A's sound like O's, and O's sound like A's, G's and L's are silent most of the time, and oh my god, even if you do get through one phrase, they are actually going to say something back to you! Ummm...how do you say "I have no idea what you're saying, could you just point to what you're telling me in my little book here? Thanks.".

The Team USA race kits are ready, they actually look pretty cool. Oh and guess what?? My company has agreed to sponsor me! This isn't a huge deal, as they are only going to pay the entry fee of $300, but they want to do some sort of press release, and they want me to wear the company logo on the race uniform. Hopefully all of this can get done in the next 3 weeks!

I've done a couple of running races in the last month, but nothing spectacular. In fact the results have pretty much sucked. At first I was down about it, I reminded myself that I haven't been running for THAT long, and that I can't expect greatness to come at every step of the way. It's all about the journey!!

Well, it's off to do more intervals...cheers!