Sean Down Unda - Sydney Day 9 - Women's Pentathlon

My alarm was set for the wrong date, so I ended up missing the shooting portion of the women's event. But I arrived to find out one our US athletes, Emily, was in the lead after the shooting.

I did get to watch Emily and Mary Beth fence each other, once again the fencing starts by fencing your own teammate. Mary Beth one, she was pretty psyched. The men yelled a lot when they one, the women did to, but about two octaves higher. Yikes. And the women were just as intense as the men, maybe moreso.

Emily came was in first after the first two events, Mary Beth in 3rd. So now it was off to the pool. Both did pretty well, so remained in their places.

Both did well in the jumping as well so the run started with Emily in front and Mary Beth in 4th. But...Stephanie Cook of Great Britain was well known to be the best runner and was only staring off 27 seconds behind Emily, in 7th place. It turned out to be an incredible run with Stephanie slowly picking off the other runners. She finally caught Emily at about 400m from the finish line so Emily came in 2nd with another Brit coming in 3rd.

It was an incredible finish with Emily coming in 2nd. This was the first time the women's pentathlon has been in the Olympics and for a non-European to place was a pretty big deal. Also, Emily had introduced Stephanie, the winner, to the sport while attending Oxford...what a great story.

In the evening I hung out in Darling Harbour on my own to watch the closing ceremony fireworks. I bought a little dinner at a cafe just at the end of the pedestrian bridge at Darling Harbour and watched the closing ceremonies from there on a 13" TV. The fireworks after the ceremonies were synchronized in three locations thorghout the city and lasted for a half an hour. There were also fireworks going from building downtown buildings all over the place. Impressive and a great way to finish things off.

Back on the track and a fast fence

After over a week of lounging in steamy Nebraska, I got back in to training today. I went to the Greenlake running group and made my first steps towards working out with the group...I did a warm up quarter mile with them. After, their planned workout was still a little above me so I did my interval run around Greenlake again. My legs didn't fatigue like they had previous Greenlake run, but I didn't feel my best either. The last 10 minutes or so felt pretty good, but it will take a few runs to get back into things. Mike Jones, a former pentathlete and current Greenlake runner, pointed out that Mary Beth Larsen was on the cover of Esquire this month as one of the "Women of Summer". Pentathlon goes mainstream...I love it.