Leaving Vancouver: First Stop: Bath, England; Commonwealth Lifesaving Championships

Where to begin? I’ve been here over a month and I guess now I’ve found some time… to procrastinate from finding a job (it’s just like being back at school, work I don’t want to do!) Here it is in chunks.

Commonwealth Lifesaving Championships – Bath, England. Sept 17-30
So I left Vancouver, all my life packed up and ready to never come back. (At least for a while!) I had mailed a 20kg box to my uncle’s house in Ireland, with winter clothes, cookbooks etc. which I figured would arrive around the end of October (the 31st actually as it turned out!) I had a second suitcase that my parents would bring to London for me when they were there in mid-October, more winter stuff and non-essentials. Then I was taking with me a ‘Bath Suitcase’ and an ‘Ireland Suitcase.’ The idea was that I wouldn’t have to open the Ireland one in Bath; well I did anyway. Whatever! It was organised, I’m a nerd.
We flew in to London, and rented vans. Not like the comfy ones at home, but ones with small upright seats, where there was no room for shoulders next to the window. Good Times. We had about 8 days to train twice a day and see the city. We did a boat tour around the river, on which there was about 5 minutes I was allowed to drive the boat myself. (If you ask me, I was awesome, if you ask my team mates, it might have been a bit swervey – but totally worth it!) We did a bus tour around the city and the guide was INSANE. We took buses one day to Stonehenge which was really cool. I’m not sure why I felt it so important to take about 50 pictures, from all angles and with every friend there, but when you’re there its pretty surreal. Big, huge stones. Half fallen, some missing, but so old and in so many textbooks, I’m sure it was the first foreign monument I ever heard of. So yeah, good times. We also had time to wander around the city as much as we liked outside of training times. I avoided shopping at all costs, I couldn’t afford to spend next month’s rent on clothes I would more than likely be able to buy in Dublin when I could afford it. But they have great, tall buildings, everything is made from the same stone, surrounded by very tiny streets and lots and lots of narrow, steep stairwells (Bath sits across a valley, everything is on a hill!) On the last day after the comp and before we left we went and had a guided tour of the Roman Baths, which reminded me a lot of Latin class in grade 7. Weird.
There was actually a conference related to the lifesaving society going on at the same time as the competition, and so every night we had these meet and great schmoozing sessions in different locations around the city. One that was memorable was actually at the Roman Baths in the dark. It was all lit up and looked absolutely fab. Not to mention that the whole area was blocked off just for people at the event. Made me feel just a little bit important.
More related to the training though, we were given the worst training times. Around 8-10 am, and around 12-2pm. So yay you’re thinking, you sleep in AAAND you still have the afternoon to chill. But no, not good because there was less than two hours between said workouts, it was tiring, and our coach tried to start early and go overtime for pretty much all the workouts. Needless to say, I got sick. I spent an entire day in bed, two days before the start of the competition. The next day wasn’t much better but I went swimming anyway. I woke up on the day of the meet and went with the ‘healthy day’ theme and pretended I felt like a million bucks from that point on. It proved successful.
I was entered in the 200m obstacle swim and the 100m tow with fins. I really wanted to race the 200m super lifesaver (or super guard, as I like to call it) But you can only enter two girls per event and I already had two races that day, so I let my team mates, who I think performed better than I could have do the race, no need to compete for the spot. I ended up doing really well that first day. I came 2nd in the 200m obs, getting crushed by the 1st place auzzie, but outtouching the 2nd Aussie. I also (due to some key DQ’s) came 1st in the 100m tow. But really, if they didn’t race properly when it counted, its their fault for not winning. The next day was a lot of relays. We had three and our team came 2nd in one, and 3rd (behind the auzzies and south Africans) in the other two relays. The final day of races were the line throw events and the SERC. Canada came 2nd in SERC and after time trials and my team mates and I fighting over who wouldn’t do line throw (none of us really specialized in that event), I championed and threw the best in practice. I sucks real bad in the heats, but made the consol anyway. And despite coming 8th/8 in the consol (16th) I made the throw on the first try, which was a first for me ever in a race. Woot. Overall Canada came 3rd in the National Team category and 2nd in the Development Team. We all pleased with ourselves and went out to the after party to get hammered.
The meet organisers really didn’t get a good grasp on the idea of running a meet, but they did get the taking us to Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales right. It was an hour bus ride away, everyone piled into big buses and drinking and partying began with the coaches and officials around us. We got the grand tour (at least I thought it was pretty grand) of the locker room area downstairs, the field and the box seating where the Queen had watched a match of what I can assume was a football game but a lot goes on there. We were taken to a banquet hall and given a nice meal, few awards and medals given out, and then we were trucked back to Bath at 10pm. Quick change/drink at the hostel where Canada, Wales, Scotland, South Africa were all staying and then off to the night club. Good times all around. Most of the English guys ended up shirtless, and I ended up running around with my Canadian friend Jean-Michel (jish-mish) drinking with the South African devo team and their coach. Jish-Mish was particularly fun because his English was not perfect and I often found myself using my hands and body to explain things, and he would for me as well. He’s the same age as me, but about to have a child sometime early November. If you could sum up our relationship that last night, it would be that we thought we were the best looking people alive. Hilar.