Rio 07 Journal: Sleeping Innnnnnnnnnnn!!! Day 7

“;”2007-07-18 11:41:40″;”Rhian Wilkinson’s Journal
Pan American Games Rio 2007 – Day 7
July 17, 2007

Days off are always great, we got to sleep innnnnnnnnnnn!!!

After breakfast we had a workout with Andrew Clark, there wasn’t any soccer training. We were split into different groups depending on minutes played and injuries, I was in with Mel Booth, Brit (Brittany Timko) and D (Diana Matheson). We had a dynamic warm-up followed by a 20 minute run, a balance set in the gym, a weight complex, some abs and then a cool down. It wasn’t all that tough a session but we were sweating like mad, the humidity here is a killer. We all jumped into the pool as soon as we got back to our building.

After lunch at one we had free time until 6:45pm when we were scheduled for a pool workout, we all sort of split up to do our own thing. A few people headed to a nearby beach while Diana, Mel, Robyn Gayle, Amy Walsh, a few members of the staff and I went to watch some other events in the games. I wanted to get out to see the water polo as I have a friend from home competing but the drive out was going to be more than hour.

We opted instead to head to tae kwon do, handball, and fencing. On our way to the venue we shared a bus with a male Chilean team really intent on chanting. Even though we understood nary a word, it became quite infectious and soon most of our Canada crew found ourselves clapping along. Who knows what kinds of foreign swear words and lewd phrases we were encouraging, but gosh darn it, it’s awfully hard to resist a good chant. The Chilean boys soon noticed they had the attention of quite a few Canadian gals, so the chants turned into, “We love Canada!” and “Party time! Party time!”

Even though we didn’t have that long we still managed to pack quite a bit in. The Tae Kwon Do was not a favorite seeing as we never did figure out the rules but we did enjoy the handball and the fencing… although we were a little dicey on those rules also. We watched a Canadian, Julie Leprohon, in the semis. She was up against a Brazilian so we had to be extra loud in order to drown them out; I think we did all right. She won the semis but lost narrowly in the finals 15-14.

We had a meeting in the evening to watch game footage from the last match as well as some tape from the Jamaica/Uruguay game. Tonight will be another quiet one as we have an early game tomorrow morning at 11:15 against Jamaica.

Night.