Quote of the day: "Hey where did you get that sweatshirt?" Bob Larsen,coach of Nike sponsored athlete and silver medalist Meb to me. I had onthe plainest of navy blue sweatshirts with a small swoosh on it, whichI've had for years. He said he keeps asking Nike for one, but theynever send him just a plain sweatshirt.Athlete of the Day:Shaka Sola of Guam. I turned on Eurosport yesterday morning to [...]

Thismorning I went to the athlete's village ("willage" is how the Finns sayit). It was about 15 minute bus ride from downtown here, with the mainbus station just around the corner. The village is in Espoo, justoutside of Helsinki at a university. Turena met me at the gate and Iwas 'credentialed in'.It's a smaller university campus, set ona lake surrounded by some wood. A fence and guards sur [...]

I took in a coaching presentation sponsored by Suunto, a watch/heart rate monitorcompany. I went solely for one reason- The Training of Carolina Kluftpresentation. I had to sit through a demonstration of the watch and apresentation by an exercise physiologist on measuring EPOC. Kluft'scoaches presentation was good, nothing earth shattering other than goodsolid progression over 10 years.Random Com [...]

My bag finally arrived yesterday about an hour before the meet. So,today I got to go for a run with Turena around the marathon course,which is a 5km patch which hooks up with a 10km loop done 3.5 times.It's nice, because the sidewalks here have a designated bike sectionand designated pedestrian section. Another great day of track and field. Took in the evening sessionagain. The weather was much b [...]

What a day in itself at Day 1 of World Champs. I took in the eveningsession and look forward to the next nine days even more. My bagsarrived a date late, about 5:30. I quickly changed clothes, threwseveral jackets into my pack and walked the 15 minutes to the stadium.The Stadium:Intimate setting. It seats around 40,000, so notoverwhelming large. Unlike some stadiums (including Atlanta in 1996),the [...]

I just signed up for the webcast of the Track & Field World Championships in Helsinki and I am VERY impressed. The coverage is great and you can watch it live or if you missed the live broadcast you can view it as a rerun. If you're in the United States or a U.S. territory you'll be able watch an unprecendented 58 hours of webcast coverage of the IAAF World Championships.For $4.95, you'll be ab [...]