Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Stage 3 - EMO Court & EMO Estate, Ireland

The morning after the race, Sunday, I headed to the local pool in Athlone and got in a swim set. Although it was miserable at the time I am sure my body appreciates it now. I have been really sore and quite tight since Saturday, a sure sign that I raced quite hard.

Sunday afternoon I packed up and said goodbye to Athlone. I headed off to another part of Ireland with a good friend of Steve Kelley's. Steve is one of the people responsible for getting me into triathlon and for pushing me in the right direction. It was a coincidence that I ran into Bobby at the race, but he put 2 and 2 together when he saw my name on my suit and offered to take me in for the week until I head off to Austria. The last time I saw him was 4 years ago at World Championships in Madeira, Portugal. Boy am I a lucky girl!

He lives on the EMO estate which is this incredible area of land which is walled off. The focal point is this incredible estate home, now belonging to the government, that is surrounded by open fields, woods and more trails, perfect for running, than you know what to do with.
The real EMO Estate.

Bobby lives in an apartment attached to another beautiful home on the estate lands. I swear it is like something straight out of a movie. People just don't live in places like this in real life! There are pastures with cows and horses all around and hardly any traffic on the roads. Probably more tractors than cars around here! It's a shame I don't have more training to do as I would love to go out and explore the area even more.

Words can't really describe it...

My new residence in Ireland! (The apartment on the left side of the house)

A view down the driveway.

A view out the side yard - pastures, tractors and a lot of open space!

Bobby has been taking amazing care of me. Yesterday he took me out on a long ride, which was fantastic. The landscapes are just beautiful and on top of that having someone who knew where we were going was great. I would have been lost in no time! My Edge705 only has American maps on it, and with roads that have no names, I would have been lost quite quickly. The best part of the ride though were the "agro" dogs. I think we ran into about 20 dogs that didn't just bark but actually came out into the road and tried to attack us. I almost rode over a few of them due to a lack of reaction time. One of them, a great dane, actually bit Bobby in the bottom. Two great danes came running towards us and Bobby tried to make friends with them. I wasn't going to wait and see what happened so I picked up the pace and rode hard out of the area. Bobby ended up getting a little love bite! Lesson learned... forget courage, stick with intelligence.

Later in the evening he also arranged a massage for me which will probably end up saving me for the race on Sunday. This morning we went to the local pool and I got my session in. Bobby swam with me for a bit but once he left no one tried to come in the lane with me. Which I quite liked. I'm not sure if it was because I was swimming quite quickly or because I was swimming "backwards" circles (which are the normal way in America) and they couldn't sort out what I was doing!

Swimming pool or "Leisure Center" as it is called here.

Oh, and taking that photo of the pool almost got me in a lot of trouble. Apparently, due to a "child protection act", no photography is allowed... oh well, done in the name of blogging and showing everyone where I have been.... Sorry!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's pretty awesome and I'm quite jealous as I get to run through the ghetto's of Philly.

Anonymous said...

People should read this.