Coming to America

Well the journey has started properly now.
After much last minute running around and general stress, I'm here in sunny USA. In case there's someone I haven't managed to recommend it to, check out www.orbitz.com. Bloody brilliant, got flights from Dublin - Boston - Munich - Dublin for $632. But there is something I love more than Orbitz. Something that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy when I think about it. It's cruise-control. The single greatest automobile invention since the wheel. Forget wankel-rotary engines, forget turbos, forget ABS, just get cruise-control.

Let me explain.
The drive from Boston to Lake Placid is something like 300 miles. The average speed limit on the roads covered is around 55mph.
300/55 ~ 5.5hrs of driving. Try tapping your foot for 15 mins and you'll get an idea of what it's like to have to adjust the throttle on a manual car for 300 miles. Cruise-control takes all that away and replaces it with a smooth, fuel efficient, foot saving alternative.

That's a lot of driving. I'm sure you could cut the trip shorter by the simple expedient of driving faster but there seem to be lots of highway troopers arounds. And not the sort that try to insert the word "miaow" into the conversation to mess with your head then let you go with a warning.

Anyway, we're here now in the Olympic Training Centre. It's a great facility that serves as a reminder as to why America tends to dominate every sport it looks at, except for rugby and football (or soccer as they call it here), and hurling, now that I think of. Okay, there are probably lots of sports it's crap at as a nation but that's cos it's not interested in them.

The OTC has got pretty much everything an athlete could need to excel. There is a canteen which is open from 7am - 9pm. It serves you as much food as you want and ensures that it is all healthy and good for you. There is a complete weights room with enough equipment to keep 30 athletes happy pumping iron. There's a physio there to analyse your techniques, injuries etc. It's got a gymnasium to run around in, do sprint training and all that.
It even has a giant treadmill with a skeleton sled attached to it so you can practise your push-starts. When I'm in Ireland, the best push-start training I can do is sprint with a short stick held to the ground to simulate running low with a sled. That's so pathetic I don't even do it, I just mentioned it as the only Irish alternative.

Most importantly (to me) it's got a really technical skeleton track about 15mins drive away. We start training on that track tomorrow. It's not an ideal track to start the season on but I'm told it's running a bit slow at the moment. We'll see ...