Wow…already Day 2! I quickly eat breakfast next door again: $4.50 for a bowl of broth with vegies and an egg, and a lot of Kimchee. After breakfast, I hail a cab and quickly realized the cab driver doesn’t understand where I am headed, and he drives off in a random direction! Wild gesticulating and gesturing on my part, and repeating over and over again (in English) “Athletes Village” while pretending to sleep…eventually he gets it, re-routes and we arrive at the Athletes Village.

Getting out of the cab, I walk straight into Robles, the great Cuban hurdler. He is adorned in his usual gold chains, but he is very friendly and accepts my congratulations (even though he got DQ’d for his race the night before). I wait for Mike, but because we had a miscommunication about the time, I missed him, so I headed to the Stadium to catch the morning session: Women’s 3K heats, Mens 1500 heats, Women’s Long jump and Triple jump qualifiers and one or two other events like the Heptathlon Javlin…seems like a long time ago.

I finally catch up with Mike at the medical center and we set about treating his foot. So far so good. His Plantar Fascia is holding up! We head to the drug testing center where they take his blood (they are testing all the athletes here) and then to the local mall to see what that is all about. I have to say this about Korea as a result…people here LIKE BRIGHT COLORS! It’s pretty much all western stuff, except the colors are almost cartoonish, they are so bright. This is true across the city, even in my hotel room (which is adorned with sconces that emit rotating pink, blue and purple accent lights). If I didn’t see the same commitment to garish colors all over the city, I would think you could rent my room by the hour!

We ate in a food court of the market, which was interesting. They have a cabinet of the plates on display, as an example, and they are all numbered. Essentially Korean, Chinese, and Japanese styles. So you select a number and then you pay for that number. Then you go and sit down and wait for your number to show up under the neon sign near the kitchens. Once your number shows up, you go and pick up your food. Compared to the Korean BBQ we ate at the night before, this was a step down, but worth doing once.

After dinner we head for the Stadium to watch the mens 800, the Womens Steeple Chase

and Pole vaulting, and Discus for the men. We go and sit down by the pole vaulters because one of the girls we met the day before in the medical room is jumping and has a good shot at a medal. We hang there for a while and watch that event plus a couple Heptathlon 800 heats, as well as the 1500 semis for the women before we try to reposition for the 800. We end up on the wrong side of the stadium, but still have great seats for the home stretch (opposite side, level with the finish) and the winner pretty much runs away with the field. We move again for the Steeple Chase and are at the first hurdle – a perfect position for the finish and an amazing performance. The Pole vault winner sets a personal best, a South American Record, and Meet Record and wins the gold, while the Steeple was won by a Russian woman who sets another Meet Record running the fastest time in the world this year.

After the steeple, we went back to the Athletes Village to avoid the crush as the athletes try to squeeze onto buses.

Tomorrow is the Shot Put. I hung out with the Shot Putters from the USA today while I was waiting for Mike in the medical rooms…really good guys, huge for sure, and FUNNY too. Also Bernard Legat runs and that will be a site to see!

This is really so exciting…I told Mike it is sort of like crack for track and field junkies. None of the distractions an Olympic Games offers (other sports, multiple venues and so on). It’s simply all track, all the time, with the entire center of the Track and Field universe right here.

For example, walking into the Stadium tonight, we found ourselves walking next to Mo Farrah, the great British 10,000 meter runner who just barely lost his race on day one. But we quickly discovered that he is an Arsenal fan and was actually more upset about Arsenal losing to Man U, 8-2, than he was at losing the race on Sunday! Love it.