ITU World Triathlon Championships – Beijing Day 1

Hello All,

I am Tim, Rachel’s boyfriend. I am writing these blog entries on behalf of Rachel who focussing on her preparation for the fast approaching ITU World Triathlon age-group Championships here in Beijing. These blog entries will hopefully allow people to follow Rachel’s progress towards a great result in the World Champions race in one weeks time.

Its about 1400hrs over here but coming up to 0700hrs back home so I’ve now gone through my first 24 hours awake but we’re going to have an early night, well, Rach is already in bed and isn’t actually getting up again until tomorrow! I may feed her a cookie shortly and see if that has any effect, I’m not hopeful.

The flight was long, muggy and of course there was no chance I’d get another passenger of Rach’s size on my left, oh no, I had to get a travelling statesman type with a very wide wingspan and no real awareness
of arm rest sharing; he did give me his unwanted food though so ‘every cloud…’. Rach was quickly asleep as expected however she did wake to, ‘Oh my god I need to take my clothes off, I’m too hot!’ about 4 hrs in and then proceeded to strip down to her pants, vest and obligatory compression tights before quickly returning to the land of nod…and there she remained until each meal arrived.

We landed here to 22 degree heat at 0930hrs local time but very bleak looking, its pushing 30 outside at the mo but there’s no blue skies in Beijing. It’s also perfectly acceptable to ‘clear your throat’ of any non permanent bodies here in full public view, into a spare cup if you wish, and then just carry on talking as if nothing’s happened; I have to admit, we weren’t quite expecting that one but can see the functionality of it all the same and ‘better out than in’ of course!

It’s quite odd really as it actually looks pretty bleak out of the window but is really cooking. The best way I can describe Beijing is ‘not quite finished’, it’s clear it started as a complete blank canvas not too many decades ago as there is nothing natural here, everythings man made, angular, commercially orientated with the focus on squeezing as much into a small space as possible – pretty it ain’t, functional it is!

The Chinese are easily the friendliest people I’ve come across whilst ‘in their country’ as nothing is too much trouble and they genuinelly want to help you and most speak basic english so they make you feel very welcome. They are clearly a very regimented race and are all about standing to attention when waiting to help you and they are ‘on it’ when it comes to customer service.

I had a problem connecting to the internet when we arrived but they immediately sent an IT specialist up (he had glasses and really bad dog breath so defo IT specialist) and sent someone else to meet me in the wifi area to talk me through that. Bizarrely when he wasn’t helping me, he stood ‘at ease’ behind the desk in the room as if waiting for his next orders. Rach of course was asleep on the bed whilst he was there standing on ceremony so the situation was very odd but I suppose that’s the first real representation of the cultural differences.

Anyway, I’m boring myself now so I shall be in touch but all is well, oh, one more thing, they don’t have walls in their bathrooms, they have windows with blinds. Rach and I have decided we need to keep the ‘allure’ alive still and looking at each other whilst sat on the toilet from the bedroom perhaps isn’t the best way of doing that…it’s a work in progress!

Speak again soon,

Tim (on behalf of Rachel)