UK Eagles 4: Officially at the Women's Rugby World Cup

I have a little time this morning because I opted to skip walking over to breakfast and ate here at our flat.  It was nice and leisurely sitting in my PJs enjoying some coffee and chatting with Kim and Ashley.  With that extra time, I am going to start working on this post before our morning session.  We'll see how much I get done before heading out to practice.  If I don't finish it, I'll just come back to it later.

We moved over to the official Women's Rugby World Cup flats on Monday morning.  It was pretty comical watching all the bags pile up, as well as the plethora of food that had accumulated... though I benefited from that food this morning.  It was pretty exciting to get to the new facility.  We are the first athletes staying in these dorms and they the ones that are going to be used for the 2012 Olympics.  We have our own bathroom (shower and all) in our rooms, which is exciting.  All the other teams were also  arriving, so it started to feel very real.  We have Ireland across the walk from us, Canada next door, and Australia diagonal from us.  So we get to see all the other athletes on a regular basis (whether for good or bad).

.... ran out of time before practice, so now I am returning after a practice, pool session, lunch, and getting 2 loads of laundry through the washer.  I figure what better way to kill 60 minutes while the clothes dry than to catch up here.

After arriving on Monday, we unpacked and got a little settled in before heading over to the dining area for lunch.  That first meal was our first chance to see some of the other teams and get a feel for the environment.  It was a little chaotic at first, as I don't think the Surrey Sports Park were prepared for female athletes that were as big as we are and who eat as much as we do :)  But after a couple of meals, they seem to have gotten into a groove.  We were supposed to have a gym session in the afternoon, but there was a little miscommunication, so instead we did a little bodyweight session at the field with partners, which involved some wheelbarrow races, fireman squats, etc.  It gave us a chance to model our new tech tees, which show off our massive guns.

The rest of the afternoon was spent unpacking and finishing the settling in process.  We had a brief meeting after dinner to just get the general lay of the land and understand what we were doing schedule-wise.  We got to have quite the adventure getting to the meeting room since it entailed hiking to the top of what seemed like the empire state building.

After the meeting we came back to the dorms and got into position for the latest episode of Trueblood.  It aired last night in the States, but we had to wait a day.  It was the best episode of this season, in my opinion.  So now, I don't know how we are going to cope with waiting an entire week before getting a new episode.  I guess we'll have to come up with something.  Maybe our rookies can use that time to really perfect their skit.

After Trueblood, I came back to my room and did some PhD work that I had been putting off and then started The Poisonwood Bible.  I am not too far into yet, so I don't quite know how I feel about it.  It hasn't sucked my in like Push did yet.

Yesterday (Tuesday) was a jam-packed day.  We had breakfast in the morning and then were out for a core session before doing set-piece work.  We had a small break and then went to lunch, and next thing you know we were back out on the field again.  After practice, we had ice baths, which were our first ones since we've been here... I don't know that I've missed them, but I did feel good at practice today, so I guess they're essential.  While we were ice-bathing, Ashley English went over at the official tournament launch with all the other team captains.  She got to hold the actual Cup... exciting!

 Amy, Bridges, Kmimi, and I walked to the TESCOs after the ice-bath.  It's a lot closer to us now, so should make it easier to get last minute food cravings taken care of.  We walked back from the store just in time to head over to dinner.  After dinner, the forwards had a brief players meeting.  I think I found the key to people being invested and interested in meetings - Ben & Jerry's on top of cookies.  It's amazing how much more energy there was in the room after I got that stuff out and started passing it around...

After the meeting everyone adjourned to various movies and card games and such.  I watched Prescious with Blair and Phaidra.  Everyone had said that it was a sad movie and hard to handle, but I think having just read the book made it more bearable.  For any who have read the book, it is really graphic, so the movie was relatively mild in that regard and made it less intense than it would have been if I hadn't read the book first.

I decided last night that I wasn't going to go get breakfast, so got to sleep in for a bit, but I already wrote about that.  From breakfast it was out onto the field for core and then over to the private field for our last true practice before our first match of the 2010 Women's Rugby World Cup.  We were pretty fired up at practice and you could feel it in the pace.  Now the key is keep all that energy reigned in for another day before we play.  After practice, we did some recovery work at the pool and then had the afternoon off besides a meeting... So now it's time for me to go get the clothes from the drier and get ready for our meeting.  I don't think I'll be writing again before the game (maybe I will if I need something to keep me calm).  So hopefully the next post will be all about the thrill of the match!