Pre-Race
"John running in the park on Thursday. The lake is in the background."
The next day we ran at the park, and lots of people were taking pictures. It was fun. The park had a new walking path that had a green track surface, signs which pointed which direction to go and volunteers with waters and towels. I warmed up with Eric, Paul Roberts, and John before doing 6 minutes and 50 seconds at tempo effort and 4X200s to get the legs stretched out. I didn't feel too great and the food didn't really agree with my stomach the whole time, but this run I especially felt bad. After we took taxis and explored an incredible mountain forest temple that had a Buddhist temple, monkeys, street vendors at the bottom, and lots of trees. It was called Quianling Hill park. The monkeys were cool to see but I'm pretty sure they didn't like me. Two attempted to punch me, and one grabbed my jacket. I was just trying to give them some peanuts! How rude! People were always trying to take pictures of us, but mostly Cerake after someone mentioned that he played for the NBA. We walked around the Buddhist temple and back down to a karaoke party where Katie and Lauren had volunteered to sing and dance.
The next day we were able to preview the course. It had 6 obstacles per loop (they were 2 kilometer loops) which were all short steep hills or groups of hills. It looked like a perfect course for me. The junior men ran it together and then I did my strides. People were stopping me (and all the other runners) for pictures. I felt like a celebrity. After we went back to the hotel and relaxed.
"Cerake having his photo taken with someone who thought he was in the NBA. The same guy later performed a Kung-Fu dance for us all."
