Tereza Macel's Blog

Our apartment here in Subic is awesome. The three of us, Lucie Z., Abi B. and I are all getting along great, and managing some laughs between our training and our endless bowls of cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Abi chef’s it up once in a while, and cooks up a great smelling dinner or lunch, but Lucie and I have barely used the microwave oven.

Abi and I did engineer a highly technical, very intricate clothing drying system, known as the clothes line. On our balcony, we rigged up two chairs, and wire of sorts, and now have a place for the sweaty workout clothes! Yipeee. If you have ever had to stay with a triathlete in a hotel room for a race, you know how a small space can quickly fill with bike clothes, dirty shoes, and sweaty shirts.

Now, it has been getting hotter and hotter, more and more humid, and thus we are sweating more and more. So it seems we spend more time showering. One of the boys (lets call him Mr M. ) has a knack for coming to visit whenever one of us is wearing a towel (usually me). He must think that we are running a nudist colony up in our place, but instead, it is just that our clothing is always drying out on the balcony.

First you take a taxi into town. Then you flag down a “tuk-tuk” or motorbike with a passenger side cart, which whisks you off through narrow streets, and near collisions with other three wheeled speedsters.

You then end up at the market. You navigate your way through stalls of golden mangoes, mystery meat and fish still flopping around trying to swim their way back to the ocean, carrots and coconuts. Little kids running around trying to sell you plastic bags. After filling your bag as full of fruit and veggies as you can you then head back “home”, and cut up some sweet pineapple, that will hopefully give your legs an extra little zing that next workout.

A normal Monday to Friday workweek and weekends off does not exist in sport. I already have no clue what day of the week it is, and even less so what day of the month it is. It could be any-day of the week. And when I am trying to figure out what time and day it is somewhere else I always seem to do the math incorrectly. Hence the phone-calls I sometimes make to people at 3 am their time, when I think it will be the middle of the day. I should apologize ahead of time for calling home at the wrong time.

I am sure people at home wish to know how hot it is, what it’s like here, how crazy the training is. Yup, its hot, but compared to -20 degrees Celcius almost anything will feel warm. I keep hearing how it will just get hotter and hotter from here on out, which is fine by me, not much I can do about that. I just think of piling on the layers at clothing at home, and am happy to be wearing shorts and t-shirt at 6 am here. The training has not been crazy yet, but am I tired already? I sure am, but as Doc says, just being in the heat is a workout. I was lucky that just as I was getting a bit of a cold there were a few recovery workouts. Actually four workouts in one day, so not the kind of recovery I am used to, but I was happy for it none the less.

Tomorrow there is a half marathon right here in town, sponsored by Milo. I looooveee Milo. Most of us will be participating in some shape or form, and I hear that there might be a Milo T-shirt in the mix. I am pretty excited about that, just when I thought that race T-shirts were boring, I am lusting after the green Milo logo. I don’t even know where Milo is from. First time I saw it was in Australia, then Canada, now here. I wonder where else there will be Milo sightings around the world. It could be a good race selection strategy, go where the Milo is…. kind of like where is Waldo?

The past couple of days have been spent recovering from the Toronto-Manila trip. It was a long one, no doubt, and a movie marathon helped to pass the 15 hour flight from Toronto to Hong Kong. I lost count of the movies I watched, and just remember crying watching “Weekends in Rhodante”, whether it was from being jammed in the middle seat, or the actual movie is hard to remember.But it was a chic flick none the less, so I am sure any guy will want to miss this one.

The team has been slowly arriving, each day someone new shows up, and so far it has been quite leisurely just trying to get on the right time zone sleeping pattern, and find our way around to the pool, the bike routes and of course the grocery store. This morning the first group workout will take place at the pool, kind of feels like the first day at school again, I sure hope I make some friends and the teacher doesn’t give too much homework.

Some new friends that hang out at the balcony are the wild monkeys. I tried to ask someone what kind of monkeys they were, and “wild” was the answer. They are a little rambuncious, but they did pose for a picture or two this morning.