In Japan, Pre-Olympic Camp

We have arrived in japan for our Pre-Olympic camp. The flight wasn't too bad actually...a casual 9 hrs. A few in flight movies, a full read of the Globe & Mail, couple meals and we got there! From Victoria it is a 16hr time difference for us....not a small feat!

The drive from the airport was still another 1.5 hrs to our hotel but it was good to see the lay of the land again, brining back memories of 2005 when I was here for the World Rowing Championships. I immediately noticed all the rice patty fields all over the place. They are very structured pieces of rectangular land that seem to be literally everywhere. They don't seem to have "yards" like we do here. If they do have a yard it always seems to be used for planting food or growing plants.

Our hotel is fairly westernized and the beds are thankfully long enough for all the guys. There is a shopping centre down the street and a bowling alley right in our hotel. We eat all of our meals in the hotel as per usual and so far they have been very good. Really big on making sure we have enough meat in the diet. Lots of food too.

The training venue is about 30 mins away and we all load into the hotel shuttle bus to get there. We were on the course yesterday for a short row which we call "rig 'n row". This is when we arrive at a new venue, get the boats all rigged up and take them out just to make sure everything is tight and adjusted to our liking, that way we can get on with training the next outing. The buoys lines were still getting sorted out as they weren't very straight yesterday but there were guys out there in boats working on them so hopefully they will be better today. It makes my job tough when there are 3-4 doglegs in a 2000m course!

All in all things are going well and the coach has given us the plan leading up to the Games. We will train twice a day while we are here working on developing our race plan, strategy and our precision to row together over the next 2 weeks. It is only 17 days till the opening ceromonies now.....every row, every stroke is ratcheting up the intensity and nerves!