Track and Field Blogs - Jenny Barringer

Good morning everyone! (for me anyway)

It's 6:20am Aug. 2nd I'm just beginning the 5th day of my adventure and it feels like I've been traveling for a month but at the same time I almost remember having left just yesterday. The excitement helps warp the time but for this trip no help was needed. I've changed so many time zones and traveled through too many nights to know what day it is sometimes, much less what time it is! But now I'm finally settled in Dalian along with many other teammates. We'll stay here for a week before Opening Ceremonies. It's such a relief to finally be in one place for a while.

So, as you can imagine, there is so much to tell already but I'll try to keep this concise so I can hit some of the highpoints.

San Jose processing was exhausting. I had my first Olympic prelim sprinting through the Denver airport then enduring the long process of check-in at San Jose. Apparel was the last room I went to and you can't imagine what kind of Christmas I had in there. I'm not sponsored as an individual athlete so I have nothing to compare this to other than World Champ teams but the amount of uniform and gear was out of control. Then, no time to pack. I had to seperate and shove clothes in China-bound suitcases versus boxes to be shipped home. I grabbed just a few hours of sleep and then it was off to China on a 12 hour flight.

We landed in China and had a laborious entry into the country and onto the Olympic Village. The Village is amazing. I'll go on more at another time. Billy Nelson (my teammate and friend) along with several other members of the team and I joined up to run for an hour around the complex before another briefing and dinner. Then, sleep and onto yet another flight to Dalian in the morning. We arrived at the beautiful coastal city midday and quickly embarked on a rainy run before settling into our rooms before dinner. Whew! I feel like that was a lot of boring travel info but I know my family wanted to know all of that.

I'll leave it at that for now. Now that I'm more-or-less caught up on my time and location I'll try to actually write some fun and interesting entries from here on out. For now, I've got to find something else to distract my stomach before I can head down to breakfast at 7!