Rhian Wilkinson's Official Website

RHIAN'S SOCCER JOURNALS:

BIKING & BARBEQUE: Diana Matheson's Guest Journal

Photos by Amy Walsh

28th July 2008

I have now amended my journal for the Singapore game - I should have made a special point of congratulating Steph Labbe on her first cap last night. My apologies to her. She has worked her butt off for the past few months and thoroughly deserves her introduction to the National team.

Diana Matheson is writing a guest journal for me today.

Hello all! It has been a while since I wrote a journal, so bear with me. I was prompted to write this guest journal by the glare Rhian gave me as she mentioned the fact that she couldn’t go to bed until she had a journal entry submitted today. So, here goes.

Today, Monday, was a busy day, as most days are when we are on tour, but this particular day offered a change in the regular routine. For our recovery session in the morning our walk down to the beach did not lead us to the long run we were expecting. Instead it led to a bike rental place, near the waterfront. Here, we paired ourselves up and were given tandem bikes to take for an hour-long ride.

I paired up with Robyn, but I insisted that I get the front seat ( the one that steers), as from our days living in Ottawa I know that she has a history of hitting pedestrians. At first, everyone found it rather tricky to get on the bike and pedal together - great teamwork. This difficulty was best demonstrated by Sophie and Jar, who ran into a garbage can shortly after getting started. Robyn and I came close to disaster ourselves, when we came within centimetres of knocking over a bucket of fish while trying to get back on our bike on a pier.

All in all though, I have to say that we all got the hang of riding a tandem eventually, and Robyn and I entertained ourselves, if not others. We all joined in singing the "Wicked Witch of the West" song from the Wizard of Oz as we passed other bikes along our route. The only down side to the trip was that Amy and I had not had the foresight to bring our "gnomes away from homes" hats and glasses!

The next major event of the day was our practice in the afternoon. It was another hot and humid session here today, maybe the hottest one yet. Our doctor has told us that our bodies should be undergoing an adaptation soon that will cause our bodies to sweat more efficiently. When this happens, we should begin to sweat sooner, but not as heavily. This change has apparently not quite occurred yet, as our jerseys can be wrung out by the end of practice. I am not usually one of the heavier sweaters on the team, but today it was just pouring off me. Other than this, it was an intense practice with some smaller sized games that, as always, became very competitive.

After practice we got ourselves all cleaned up and headed to a barbeque with the Canadian swimming team. They are also here in Singapore doing their staging. It was a great opportunity to get to know some of these other athletes who are going to be in Beijing. It will be especially fun if we get the chance to cheer the swimmers on in the Olympic pool, as we can feel like we know them now.

It was interesting to learn about each other’s sports, as we have such different perspectives coming from a team sport versus an individual sport, and a timed event versus our set period matches. I find it surprising how much you know about your own sport, while being totally ignorant of another person's sporting specialty. However, it’s getting late and the only half interesting thing I can think to add right now is that soccer players tend to be older than swimmers.

I should also mention that the bbq dinner was put on by the COC (Canadian Olympic Committee, and of course Marnie McBean was with us before she heads off to work with other teams: The Games are fast approaching. Marnie has been with our team on and off for a while now, and she has added so much to our team with her wealth of experience and entertaining stories. We owe a lot to her in helping us to prepare for the Games...which are now (for us at least), only ten days away!