14 Degree Water!

Monday
Dirk and I arrived, 2pm Canadian Time.. while we had left Amsterdam 2 pm as well… we were prepared for a bit of a jetlag. Mia was there to pick us up, which made everything easy. As it was middle in the night for us… we didn’t do very much. We visited the local shop and were amazed with the number of choices, much more and varied than back in the Netherlands.

Tuesday
We had no plan, and took the bus down to Stanley Park, where the event is, around 10 km from Mia’s house. A bit of a shame that it was raining, and cut our visit short, to a couple of hours, after which we went home, and had a nap… which ended up in 2 hours!
That evening, we went to a local Sushi bar and had great sushi, which were spoiled with in Australia, but isn’t yet around in Europe.

Wednesday
This was going to be a busy day… and it was. There was a swim familiarization at 7: 30 am, where I saw all my Australian friends, which was great. But back to the swim… it was so cold! I got in and my feet almost fell off, I submerged myself and realized that this was impossible and got back out.. I thought to myself.. how do I do this on Saturday?! I stood on the beach for a while and said to Dirk. This is too cold. Jo had advised me to let everything get really cold and go on. So I tried and it worked, I had a decent swim in the end… and got my confidence up for Saturday. After that Dirk and I walked across Stanley Park; to the Women Breakfast! The b’fast was great… but a bit overpriced… After that I had to register myself! Mia got into action here! ☺ the best volunteer so far. After that we upgraded Dirk to my Team Manager.. giving him access to everything! We went home and had a quick lunch and rest, to get back at 3pm for a bike ride familiarization. It is a very exciting course, lots of up and down for the first 5 km, than a decent climb of around 900 meters, after that a nice down section. And this 4 times! There are going to be some fast time. ☺ looking forward to it.

After that I found Dirk and Mia and Mia took us on a mad chase home!

Tomorrow, the morning will be easy and after that we have the country presentations and we will have the opening dinner.

So far so good.. now we just hope that the weather picks up and we have a dry race day.

Anneke and Dirk.