Sydney or bust, free pistols and late lake run

I finally confirmed my trip to Australia! I'm pretty excited and relieved to get this all taken care of. I'll spend a few days in Melbourne catching up with some friends I met in Ladakh several years ago. Then off to Sydney. I'm hoping that I'll get to watch and help out the team prepare for their events during the week before the competition. I'll be staying in a hotel with other pentathlon support staff and fans, so it should be a great time to meet a lot of people and learn a lot more about the sport. I'll be rooming with a guy named Eli, a pentathlete from Colorado, and his brother. Eli's already given me lots of good information and pointers regarding pentathlon stuff just in our efforts to set our stay up so should be a great time once we're there.

Dropped by the range tonight to watch the free pistol practice. I just dropped in to watch since 1. I'll be shooting air pistol and 2. I don't have an air pistol yet. Vic, my future shooting coach, was there and gave me a few more pointers. The shooters were all really neat people, very experienced. Tonight was a great exposure to pistol shooting...there were men and women, a wide range of skill levels and many different pistols being used. I was most surprised by the preparation involved in pistol shooting. I remember some of this from my rifle days, but nothing like what I observed here. Its all about psychology and getting into the zone.

Went for my run when I got home from shooting, around 9:00am. The run felt really good and at the fast pace that I started out at...I almost felt like I should/could be running faster during my on intervals. Well, I did...and ended up paying for it by the end. Since I was housesitting I ran along Lake Washington so it was a there and back run rather than an around Portage Bay sort of run. I ran for 15 minutes out and 15 back doing my intervals and ended up about 100 yards short of getting back to where I started. I just put too much into the first few interval sets. Lesson learned.