Hi everyone - Sunday : I arrived in Beijing in the morning. The flight over was good slept most of the 14hr. Nearly all the 50 or so team bags turned up bar one, which is a miracle. We all arrived at the hotel around two in the afternoon. We went straight to lunch, which was an interesting selection of foods. There was all the crazy stuff that you could imagine put in front of us. You could select anything from deep fried pork belly to chicken neck to cow’s stomach. Therefore, I just had rice.

Later that afternoon we headed down to the silk market, which was five stores of bargains. On the way there, we went past the forbidden garden, which is bigger than I could ever imagine. When you got inside the market was packed with hundreds of stores. Every level had different sorts of things so every store on that level had all the same things so if you couldn‘t get it cheap somewhere just go to the next store and try there. We then caught the subway (where we were packed like sardines ) back to the hotel .

Monday

It was our first chance to see the track. We weren’t able to ride because it was closed but we were still able to ride around the bottom on our road bikes. The track had some heating on but it was still cold riding around. We had to rug up with leg warmers and jackets. We then did a small session on the erg. It was also our first chance to brave the cold and ride the freezing 2km journey back to the hotel. We put on whatever clothes you bought down to the track. I had five layers of jackets and thermals shorts legging plus pants over top and it still was a little fresh on the way back.

Tuesday

It was out first time on the track today. The track is a little different from what I am used to. The corners are short and the straights are longer which is going to take some time to get used to when doing Team Pursuit changes. You get a fast run off the banking which gave me a fright a few times when I came up to the wheel a little bit to fast. But after a few TP efforts I soon got used to the angles of the track.

Lauren