Ignominious Start to Paris Olympics

(Credit: Los Angeles Times)

Several weeks/months in advance of the Olympics, there were the beginnings of problems looming. First, stories about the unhealthy quality of the water in the Seine. Even as of now, it is questionable whether water quality will be sufficient. Interestingly enough, the rain makes the water quality worse -- so the downpours yesterday very much hurt things.

Seine water quality

Then there were stories about the Olympic Village being built without any air conditioning, because they wanted to be more environmentally friendly. Great. August in Paris is typically brutally hot. Apparently there was enough backlash from the various delegations that they have since decided to make 2,500 portable air conditioning units available for renting. Oh, so not only is that certainly more wasteful of both materials and energy, but the poorer countries are less likely to be able to afford the units. Brilliant.

And then there's the further attempt to be "eco-friendly" by reducing the amount of meat products at the Olympic Village. Apparently about 50% of the meals were intended to be vegetarian (I thought I had heard elsewhere 60% vegan), even though that is forcibly changing the eating habits of the competitors -- thoroughly inappropriate for them to do. Athletes, especially at such a high caliber as Olympians, have a very regimented diet. Sure, some of them are vegan, but plenty are not. Given the Olympic Village is intended to provide for all of the athletes' needs, so should keep THEM in mind with the catering, not their own environmentalist agenda. To boot, apparently there's a general shortage of food and what there is, is low quality, including raw meat. (In fact, it's even being reported as a complete outage of food.) You know it's really bad when the Brits bring in their own chef!

Transportation for the athletes is also especially trying. Despite the Olympic Village being less than 10 miles outside the city proper (7.5 miles to the swimming venue, anyway), it's taking 1-2 hours on the bus for the athletes to arrive. Some South Koreans moved from the village to make the travel better and more comfortable -- given how hot and crowded the buses are, too. Some athletes are also complaining about not being picked up by the scheduled bus.

Then there is the attack on the Paris high speed rail system that occurred early on the day of the Opening Ceremonies. I sure hope they not only get the various perpetrators, but are capable of preventing any further such disruptions.

Heck, even the Olympic Flag being raised at the beginning was done incorrectly -- it was hoisted upside down!

The Opening Ceremonies were so boring when I turned them on, I wound up turning them off after about 30-45 minutes. But, thankfully, I was advised the last half hour were truly special. I turned them back on right as the light show on the Eiffel Tower was starting. That was a brilliant spectacle to behold. And though the lighting of the Olympic cauldron was hailed by many of my friends as fabulous, I thought it underwhelming. And even more so upon discovering that, effectively, the Olympic Flame is already extinguished (unless they've kept it going on the torches). The not-quite-hot-air-balloon that has the cauldron at its base and will be floating (tethered) every evening during the Games... the effect of a flame is being mimicked by misting water and LED lights. There IS NO FLAME because they didn't want to use the amount of carbon-based fuel needed to keep the flame going for the duration.

(Credit: Boston Globe)

(Credit: Francois-Xavier Marit/Reuters)

Yet more brilliant photos of the ceremony.

I sure as heck hope things improve from here. It's pretty hard for them to get much worse. Maybe it's a good thing that I will be doing precious little related to the Olympics during my upcoming travels. Watching the men's marathon in a couple of spots and then running in the Marathon Pour Tous that evening are the only two Olympics activities I plan on participating in; so maybe I won't be overly affected. We'll see!

Positive movement

Last night's post notwithstanding, there is definitely some very positive news. 

After fluctuating in the vicinity of 170 - 175 for a very long time, and spiking around 178 during my vacation about 3 weeks ago, I have steadily lost nearly 20 pounds. By and large, this is mostly the water that I'm shedding during these runs. A little bit of it is muscle mass, but not too much. This has been my goal weight for quite a while -- last thing I need is to have excessive baggage around my midsection while running a marathon.

Have I changed my routine diet? No.

The biggest changes? 1) Changing my schedule so that I get up a little later (generally not even needing the alarm clock, now), 2) Avoid doing any OT, and 3) Get to work earlier than I had been previously so I can get out of work early afternoon to exercise after work. And that has also reduced my level of stress considerably. (After all, most of the time, I'm not worried about getting through everything timely to get on the road and to the office on time.)

If things aren't working for you, try to identify some of the negative factors and see which ones you can adjust. You'll be amazed at what some simple changes can do.

Indoor puddles - yuck!

So far, this summer has been rather dreadful. Sure, it's supposed to be hot -- it's summer after all. But this excessively high heat and humidity combined is really doing a number on training. And, as you may already know, most of my training is done indoors on the treadmill.

For weeks, now, I have been a virtual puddle after nearly all of my training runs, even at somewhat lower paces and only 6 miles long.

But my long runs are certainly suffering from it. A couple of photos from two of my last three evidence just how much water I'm shedding:

While it, in itself, isn't problematic (I'm taking in a reasonable amount of water and electrolytes - no cramping going on), it certainly seems to be coinciding with my runs that have me taking unplanned stretches of walking, either because my legs are exceedingly tired (I think that's just the volume of training) or because my HR is spiking. 

Rather frustrating. And certainly has me wondering how Erie is going to go, given how frequently that race is pretty warm. I have my contingencies for what to do if the temp is too high to reasonably pursue my BQ-10 (3:15), especially since I am committed to pacing the 3:55 group at Air Force Marathon two weeks later.

Guilt about not posting

Summer is the hardest time of year for me to come up with regular items to post on this blog. It's outside of the height of the racing season, and I tend to think that no one really wants to see daily updates on how my workout for the day went -- pretty boring fodder. Especially since I do most of my training indoors on the treadmill, so I don't even have the possibility of photos of the great outdoors. (Not that there would be all that many good photos to be taken on the W&OD trail.)

It's one month until the Marathon Pour Tous kicks off. Slowly but surely, we're getting additional information from the organizers, and I'm in the process of truly finalizing all of my travel plans on either side of the race. Should be great!