Valencia, Spain

One would never appreciate good things if they never experienced the bad ones. Friday, one hour before noon as I was getting closer to Pittsburgh International Airport, a major snow storm hit the city and the whole PA, implicitly. This was going to be by far the worse snow storm we’ve had this winter, where up to 15in of snow were indeed predicted to accumulate at higher altitudes, which is the case of SFU, Loretto-Ebensburg area.

My flight was scheduled to leave PIT and go to JFK at 1:25pm. As I was checking in with my carrier I asked the ticketing agent if my flight was gonna be delayed due to severe weather conditions, mainly snow. A very confident statement was given saying that, “right now all flights are on time and shouldn’t be a problem to get out”. The answer only satisfied me partially because I honestly didn’t believe it. Part of my reluctance has strong reasons, which I am not too happy disclosing, that go back a year while I was in El Paso. At that time I was trying to get to Birmingham for the European Indoors Champs and instead of getting to Birmingham 4 days before the race, I only got there two days prior, and the whole experience from start to the end went awful. However, this time I was much luckier, at least as far as getting to Valencia, and I will talk about it next.

Finally I was out of PIT and on my way to JFK following a 30 min delay, which is not that big of a deal if you think about. As many people may know, JFK is a totally different airport than most others. Two things that best describe the atmosphere at JFK are lots of people, and not too organized. However, my flight to Paris left at approximately the time it was supposed to, so no problems with that. We touched ground in Paris at around 5:00am local time, following a seven hour flight, which indeed wasn’t too bad. During the flight I had not slept a minute, which worried me because I knew that is going to be tough on me for the rest of the Saturday.

A lay over of more than five hours was the time I had to endure in Charles du Gaulle Airport until getting up on my next flight to Valencia. Terrible and hard-to-explain feelings of sleepiness had hit me in Paris, where most of the time I spent was waiting for my carrier to open the checking-in counter (2h prior flight). Airports in Europe have separate checking counters for every single flight, unlike U.S. Airports where you can check in at any time if you fly with American for instance, whether is one or 6 hours prior flight.
I finally checked in and got up to the gate where there was so much chaos and so many confused people. My flight to Valencia was delayed for about 30 minutes, but interesting the Airliner didn’t inform us that, so people like me were waiting there helplessly. Once we embarked in the aircraft I crashed into a dip 60 min sleep, since it was impossible to stay awake any further.
Before landing in Valencia I could almost feel the warmness of the sun and beautiful weather. In a way I expected to find such nice climate because I checked the weather before leaving my house. Despite being exhausted, weather in Spain made me feel the happiest guy alive. Just imagine how anyone would feel leaving snow and 10-14F behind and 24 hours later enjoy 70s, no wind, and clear sky.
From the airport I was taken straight to the Hotel by one of the competition officials, who told me that there was another athlete from the U.S. team that was supposed to come at the same time with me, but seemed he might’ve missed the flight. After getting my room and settle down for a bit I went to eat something and enjoy the weather. Few hours later I went for a jog, even though I felt like I was going to pass out any moment due to not sleeping. The rule of thumb when trying to make up a deficit of 5-7 hours is to stay awake as much as possible until 9-10pm. Many say that is easier to adapt and deal with jet lag when going from Europe to U.S. than vice-versa. Why? Two reasons I see: 1. Most of the times flights leaving Europe to U.S. get there in the afternoon, whereas morning when they reach Europe, which means less hours to endure until going to sleep; 2. It’s easier to sleep longer while for instance is 10pm in the U.S. because it means one goes to sleep while in Europe is 4-5am. On the other hand, going to sleep at 10pm in Europe means 2-3pm in the U.S.
I have to admit that after three nights I’m very thankful to have slept quite more than I expected and hope to continue doing that. It seems that the efforts of staying awake throughout the whole Saturday so far paid off well. In addition, to aid my night sleep I bought from Dollar General some medicine called Melatonin, which has the purpose to put you to sleep and better cope with jet lag.

Training for the past three days has been going good enough. All of my training sessions have been done in a small park right next to Hilton. Saturday, the day I got in Valencia, I went for a 30 min jog followed by six strides w/jogging in between followed by stretching. On Sunday I went a 40 min run together with 6 consecutive strides with jog in between all. Monday, March 4th 2008 I ran for 50 minutes and did plyomterics and stretching after. Today, I will be going for another run and strides in the park.

So far I haven’t met any athletes competing at this world indoors, but also haven’t been to the track yet either. Most of the European teams don’t come until one or two days before the competition starts. My team is scheduled to come in Valencia tomorrow (Wed), and I am pretty excited to meet them. Until then, I am enjoying the pretty weather here in Valencia and relax as much as possible. Being here reminds me of being home, because the lifestyle here is similar with what we have in Romania. In fact, there’s a big community of Romanians that live throughout Spain, and just by walking outside I could recognize and hear people talking in Romanian.

One of the things that surprised me here in Valencia, besides the fact that the Banks close at 2pm, are fire works, common for new years, which here are blasted by teenagers at all corners, especially in the evenings. First night I thought that there’s a special day to celebrate or so, but three days later I figured that’s not the case. In the mean time, kids are having fun with it and I am still confused of why they let them fire such things since are so dangerous.

Next post, with more details about the race on Friday, coming soon!