Paul Roberts writes from China, March 26:
We arrived here in Guiyang, China, early Tuesday morning at around 1 AM. We came over with the Colorado team and had a lengthy, but good, trip. On Tuesday, everybody went running at different times of the day, and then we just hung out and tried not to fall asleep. I ran with Eric Hamer, my roommate, and we talked briefly with our families and hung out together. The food was traditional Chinese cuisine, very good, and eating it with chopsticks made it even more of an adventure. (I would probably starve before I figured them out if that was my only option.).
We also got to know the rest of the team, and everybody is really friendly.
Wednesday we ate breakfast and got our runs in on a 2-mile loop track surface around a lake. I ran with Connor Mantz, John Dressel, and Eric until everybody but Eric and I started their workouts. Then we ate lunch and went to see some monkeys and a temple.
The monkeys made the trip interesting. Only a couple people were (almost) attacked by the monkeys. Connor and Lauren were close to being scratched and punched a few times. However, I'm not sure the monkeys know it's track season because they were downing Jolly Ranchers like they were going out of style. After that we just hung out the rest of the day.
Today, Thursday, we woke up, ate breakfast, and then Eric and I went to exchange some money. We repeated our run with Connor and John at the same place as yesterday, but today there were a lot more teams training and journalists taking pictures. Following our run, we got some lunch before attempting to go visit a stadium and a mall. Unfortunately, we got faulty directions and so we had to stick with Walmart, just a 2-minute walk away, after driving in a taxi a mile down the road and back. After that we had a team interview and then ate dinner.
Tomorrow we get to go check out the course, and that should be pretty awesome. Saturday is the race, and we are all very excited to represent our country, our states and our communities. Good luck to all my teammates at the Longmont Invitational on Saturday. Go Lyons, Go Colorado, and Go USA!!
