As we arrive in Australia, I feel fully rested. I had a bed on the plane. I was worried I would have gotten some evil looks from my teammates but all they said was, “that flight wasn’t so bad.” I stayed quiet, not exposing my blessing.

We met up with the team finally in Australia. Most of us are together. The only people we are missing are those that swam at the NCAAs. It was great seeing some of the same faces that I had a blast with in Victoria, Canada, for PanPacs and yet missing some that didn’t make this team.

Melbourne is beautiful. But we left Melbourne to go to Geelong for our taper training. That is by far my favorite word, taper … sometimes I’m sure it is better than Christmas.

When we got to Geelong, we checked into the hotel, and I’m rooming with none other than Ryan Lochte. Ryan and I are the same year and swam in the NCAAs together, so it was good to have a friend as a roommate.

Unfortuately for Ryan, they lost his luggage and he has now resorted to having to buy clothing. This is a position that I am not foreign to considering that the airline lost my luggage on my trip to China for the short course worlds. So, my heart goes out to Ryan.

A few days have passed, and we are finally all able to say that we feel a little better. The time change has been quite the ordeal, and overcoming the fatigue has been even harder but most of us are starting to stay up later and show more signs of taper and rest.

Much of the day during the taper week consists of sleep, eating and tapered practices — what more can a sprinter ask for? We will see by the end of the week how we feel.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 24th, 2007 at 9:27 am and is filed under cullenjones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.