I have found the most beautiful city in the World!
If you like snow capped glaciers, huge mountains, fast flowing rivers, amazing architecture and cafes/pubs on every corner... Lucern in Switzerland is the place to go!!! I was lucky enough to travel to Tahiti in 2006 and I never thought I would ever be able to top that, but Lucern has certainly given it a run for its money!!!
Everything was perfect, well except for the fact that my luggage went to a completely different country but I got it back the day of the comp... I was preparing myself to throw in jeans that I wore on the plane if it didn't come in time, would have been a rather funny sight!!!
The morning of the competition I spent running around the city with a camera looking like a total tourist! I did it all... Daggy poses with statues, asking random people to take my photo with something in the background, I even took photos of myself holding the camera at arms length but my limbs weren't long enough to fit anything else apart from my big head in the shot... I must have looked really stupid to the locals!!!
5pm and it was time to head to the track. Once again, I was blown away by the scenery that surrounded the stadium... The track was small but a big crowd formed and filled up every single viewing point around the stadium which made it extremely loud and energetic. I also had my coach back (he was at the World Uni Games as a Manager for 12 days) which made a huge difference! I now had someone to jibber my nervous babble to to pass time and distract me from getting over excited.
I even had my partner Hank, who is travelling around Europe for a holiday come to cheer me on. It was a total coincidence of being at the same place at the same time without organising it. What a small world!!!
My warm-up felt great! I couldn't do hard throws though because I was in a horse paddock next to the main ‘runners' warm-up area (too dangerous to throw around all of the sprinters) so smelly and rather massive land mines posed a bit of a problem. Once I was out in the stadium I got my comp nerves happening and I knew I was in for a good throw!
I started with a shocker though... 56m which was rather strange because I felt so good. Second throw was 58m, third was 59m and fourth was 59m which was still hugely down on what I felt I was going to throw. I was sitting in second place at this stage with a Polish girl winning with a high 59m throw.
Luckily Grant was there and gave me some instructions and a nice old “wink” that meant ‘you've got this'. This made me feel pumped and confident that this next throw was going to be big... And it was!!! 62.09m and now in first place! I was wrapped with that but still thought I had more in the tank (a great feeling to have when I just threw a 62m+ throw!!) I had my last throw, may have tried a little too hard and didn't get the ‘connection' but my 62.09m was enough to win! To now have eight competitions in a row over the big 60 mark just blows me away!!!
That night we got back to the hotel rather late and my poor roommate (Jody Henry from WAIS) had to get up at 5am to get a flight home (mine was 8am) so sleep was an important thing to do... European hotels are strange, the beds (singles) are actually attached so it makes a double, so basically we are sleeping in the same bed.
I usually have about four pillows at home with one used to ‘cuddle'... Luckily Jody and I are really close mates because in the middle of the night, I must have thought I was back home and, in my deep sleep, decided to ‘cuddle' this pillow... Yep, totally spooned Jody hahaha! Poor thing, she didn't see that one coming J We had a good old laugh about it that night and then the next morning and then at dinner that night...
I'm sitting in Zurich airport waiting for my flight back to Germany to have another week of training before The London Super Grand Prix which is in 8 days time. I can't wait to compete again, I feel a big one in my waters.... Or maybe I just need to go to the toilet :) |
