There has been a lot happening since my last entry. Moving into the athletes village
from our holding camp, opening ceremony, and of course lots of running.

Moving into the village we moved in last Tuesday march 14th. This went surprisingly
hassle free. We all piled into 3 coaches with our bangs and went on a 20-minute
journey into Melbourne town. Once we got to the village all the athletes got off and
went through a security check while our bags were taken else where to get scanned.
We then met up with our bags once we got to our rooms in the village. The village is
really nice here, we have everything we need and its all free. The food court is
open 24/7 there is a free hair dresser, arcades, shops (obviously not free), casual
dining, tv rooms, internet cafes, transport, as well as some other stuff. Rooms are
small but clean and has everything we need for a good nights sleep.

Opening Cermony was on Wednesday march 15th this was a real good experience. We
arrived at the Rod Lever Arena at 5pm we had to wait for all the countries to arrive
and then we had someone tell us what was going to happening. We waited in the Arena
until 8 pm and then it was time for us to go into the stadium. We were first to
enter the stadium as we were the hosts of last time. The stadium was close to its
90,000 capacity full walking out to the whole stadium cheering was an amazing
experience the fireworks where very impressive and the fact that I got to see the
Queen live made the whole experience unforgettable.

My running is going well did my last hard session last weekend which went better
than expected so that was good…starting to taper down now doing easy distance runs
but starting to shorten them. I am doing a lot of my runs with a friend of mine on
the Canadian team who lives near me in Michigan (Nate Brennan, 1500m). Everything
else seems to be going well everyone seems to be quietly confident in the village.
My room mate Dan Robinson took 3rd in the Marathon as well as Liz Yelling which was
a great start to the track competition. The crowd in the stadium was amazing very
loud and very supportive. Very much looking forward to see the 5000m tonight and of
course my race on Saturday.

Thanks

Gavin

Thanks for the update Gavin, the 5,000 metres should be a good race today. Its on BBC1 about 10:45 if anyone wants to watch it.

Good luck tomorrow Gavin!

good luck, we wil be cheering you on. i'll see if i can get a couple of kangaroos to run across the path of the kenyan athletes in a similar way to the mountain bike race.

__________________
it's not how fast, it's how often

Good luck tomorrow Gavin!!!!

All the best of luck for you tomorrow Gavin!

Thank you all for your support....its going to be a tough race but one I think I can run well in!

Hi there Gavin,

I am sure you will put today's result behind you, and it was good to see that someone was prepared to step up to represent the country against the Africans who, quite frankly, are out of this world.

It has been interesting reading your diary, and I will definitely keep an eye on athletics events to watch your progress in the future.

Well done.

When I get sometime I will give another diary entry...glad you have been enjoying it. Thank you for your support.
I will explain my race in my next entry! I have learned a lot from this experience and I know that this will be valuable to my future as a distance runner.

Look forward to reading your next entry Gavin, and congratulations on your performance yesterday. It took real guts to keep going at that pace, I'm sure it will benifit you in future events.

Well done Gavin. That looked like it was seriously hard work!
Good effort for going out at PB pace. Big Bren mentioned Crawley AC on the TV!
Are you doing any BAL races this year? Or are you back off to the states?
Good luck at the world xc!

Thanks mate. Yea the race was tough for many reasons...but I have learnt alot from it. As far as the BAL, I havent looked too much into what I am going to do this summer as I have been focusing on Commonwealths and World Cross. I am going to look at getting my 5k, 10k, and 1500m time down...I would really like to help Crawley out as much as I can but can't say for sure if I will be avaliable for the BAL or not until I have a clear idea of what I am going to target this summer. As for Brendan Foster mentioning Crawley I am glad cause Crawley got me into athletics and have helped me out so much they the deserve some recognition.

Crawley are a great club.
I ran the steeple for them and still turn out as a slow git over the country!
I could recite the Crawley song........

LOL...the good old Crawley song!