Day 1!!

Yesterday morning started out like any other travel day for our team. We had a 4:30 wake-up, followed by a 5 AM departure for the airport. We returned our rentals cars, checked in, and made our way through security. We all sat in silence, waking up at 4:30 is one of our least favorite activities, followed a close second by sitting in the airport. Our flight itinerary was Salt Lake City to Vancouver with a stopover in San Francisco, CA. The moment we landed in Vancouver I quickly came to the realization that this was going to be anything but an ordinary travel day. To clear customs in Canada, they had a special line designate for Olympic participants followed by immediately being greeted by members of the USOC that had our credentials for the games, and were there to make sure our travel went as smooth as possible. We picked up our bags loaded a shuttle bus and were on our way to team processing.
Team processing consists of picking up all your clothing/gear for the games, as well as having pictures taken, talking with the media. It was such a great afternoon, In addition to hopefully being the most successful team; we are undoubtedly going to be the best-dressed team at the Olympics. Ralph Lauren and Nike did a great job designing our outfits. As I Walked through the line picking up my clothes I kept thinking this is my favorite piece, only to be outdone by the next piece of apparel I received. It took about three hours to complete team processing.
We are now sitting on a bus heading up to Whistler village, once we get there we will quickly change and head out the track for our track walk. We walk the track to look at the ice conditions and shape of the track. You can tell a lot by the shape of curves and how much/ how little ice in on the curves. It helps to set a “game plan” for the first run of training. With only 6 runs of training it will be very important to have the track dialed from run 1. As much as I enjoyed yesterday and the excitement surrounding it, I am happy to be getting back to our normal routine and start focusing on my competition.