Three days to go

Yesterday felt like a long day, so I slept in until 8:30am this morning. My timing was perfect, though, as I was able to join a couple others walkers who were out putting in some laps around the Village. I started my 10km workout with Tim Berrett, 5-time Olympian from Canada. We've known each other for years, raced against each other at World Cups, Pan Am Games, Olympics.... We were joined after 15 minutes by Jared Tallent from Australia. Jared was the 23-year old who finished third in the 20km race last Saturday. And now he's preparing for the 50km on Friday. It will only be his third 50km race, but he's optimistic he can bounce back quickly. He's having quite the month because shortly after his 50km race, he returns to Australia to marry his fiance, Claire Woods, who is racing Thursday in the women's 20km.

The US team has a nice set-up for our medical staff here in the Village. After my morning walk, I got some help stretching out and then got some chiropractic adjustments from Portland, OR based Ted Forcum. Thanks Ted!

When I got back to my suite, the door was locked. Usually we leave it open, but I had my key handy and let myself in. Tyson Gay, my suitemate, was standing right there and looked so happy to see me. "I've been locked in for an hour," he said. "Thank you!" Housecleaning must have locked up after themselves and the latch on the inside of the door broke when Tyson tried to let himself out.

I spent the afternoon relaxing, lunching with Joanne Dow in the cafeteria, and catching up on my blogging.

One of my sponsors, PowerBar, invited me to come to an event at their hospitality house tonight with other athletes. They were kind enough to pick me up and my whole family and take us over to their house. They had a nice dinner prepared and gave us all some PowerBar gifts. There were several photographers and journalists who took photos. Not surprisingly, they took lots of pictures of Miles. It was a nice place to get together with my family and meet a few other PowerBar-sponsored athletes. The women's marathon bronze medalist from China, Zhou Chunxiu showed up (slight language barrier but she was very happy to be there) and US swimmer Peter Vanderkay told some good stories about post-competition celebrations. He was on his way to another exclusive party in downtown Beijing.

Two other vendor/sponsors showcased their events at the PowerBar house including Suunto, who makes high-end heart rate monitors, and an innovative vibration training company called Galileo. The Suunto rep set me up with a free watch – oh, it's nice to know the right people! Thanks John!

Everyone was pretty tired by the time I got dropped off at the west gate of the Olympic Village. Miles had fallen asleep in Liz's arms and the rest of us were ready to nod off, too. I'm up for a bit watching the last of the track meet and listening to my Team USA teammates cheer and yell at the TV.