One Week Away

This past week has been a roller-coaster of sorts.  First the team started to look pretty good and we were preparing to start easing down on the workouts.  Our group of 6 male sprinters came up from Vientiane and they look like the biggest, strongest, and fastest Lao guys I have ever seen.  They have a swagger which I have only seen in big time college or pro athletes.  This obviously was a high point.  Then the low points started to come.  First off one of my girls got sick and has spent 3 days in bed.  Ok not good.  3 other girls on the team got cut.  Next I met a film maker who made a good movie about a Lao soccer team going to Sweden. He goes out of his way to set up a showing for the team and then at the last moment the team ditches and I look/feel like a complete jerk.  Last off yesterday my only female hurdler lands awkwardly on her ankle and rolls it really bad.  Within 4 minutes its the size of an orange and it only seemed to get worse.  She later gets taken to the hospital to check it out.  With all likelihood she will not be competing in the games at all.  This leaves our already thin team very thin.  Meaning we are using a back up runner for both the 4x100 and 4x400 with no female hurdlers.  I guess I just am not that good of a coach if people are now getting down to race time and everyone is injured.  All the other teams have shown up and the police are out in full force.  Vientiane looks like the only legitimate team.  Somlath told me that Vientiane expects to take 21 of 40 possible gold medals.  They are obviously going to be the team to beat, which is not all that surprising considering they get to run year round and half my team never ran before 3 months ago.  On the other hand Bokeo only brought 3 runners who started working out 12 days ago.  By the end of the workout today the Bokeo coach had his crew doing drills with us.  We should beat teams like Bokeo, the only question is how many teams will there be like Bokeo.

The Police presence is so heavy now that there are cops on almost every large street and many more at the stadium.  They have just installed a metal detector which is almost more sophisticated than what they have at the Luang Prabang Airport.  Luckily Tom and I received our badges so that should help keep us from being stopped every 2 minutes. 

All that being said I am excited and nervous for our team.  We have one week, as the title would suggest, from the opening ceremonies and another week until we leave the country.  It seems crazy that the end is so near.  We finally did our most touristy thing by going out to the Kuang Si waterfall.  It was beautiful and if you make it out to Luang Prabang its a must see.  Hopefully like most roller-coasters there will be a turning up point soon with the most recent events being rather negative.