So... I have safely arrived in Portugal. I obviously wasn't watching the news back in October, as I totally missed the section explaining that the roof of Faro Airport has been blown off! In place of the normal 'arrivals' terminal, there is a tent – I wish I was joking. After chatting to my taxi man, he explained how they had been hit by 'a tornado' and that 'they didn't have enough money to re-build'. I am slightly concerned about the security for flying home, as I fear there may be none! Haha..
Being completely on my own for this first week has made me realise how much I rely on my boyfriend! I find myself going to chat away or messing around dancing but then realise it's extremely weird, as there is no-one else here and that i'm totally on my own! I am also incapable of making myself tea for one. Instead, it has been several vegetables and meat thrown together in a stir-fry (sort-of) and the remainder left over for lunch the next day. Mmmmm, appetising. Thankfully the rest of my training group all come out tomorrow, so I will be able to cut up some vegetables and pretend i'm cooking. Although I did find some Mackays jam in one of the supermarkets here! Jam sandwiches galore.
My first track session was on Saturday morning but as I walked along to the track, there was a group of athletes from Durham university whom informed me that the track had been shut 'for the football'. I looked over the bolted door only to be shouted at angrily by a portuguese lady, I them embarrassingly came out with a few spanish words hoping she would understand some of what I was stuttering out, but it only made her more angry. My first thought was – jump over the wall – however I realised this may result in me being arrested. With my lack of portuguese vocabulary, this was definitely not the best option. I then bumped into a group of guys from Loughborough and we decided to take the 4mile trek to the nearest track in Albufiera.
Eventually we made it to the track, only to be told it was 5 Euros! My sessions was only 8x 300m with a 3minute recovery – I was almost paying 1 euro a lap! But anyways, it went really well. Almost too well, I was running almost 3 seconds quicker on each rep than 2 weeks before, which made me question how accurate the track was- however I did measure it on my garmin and it was the same as my local track in Dundee. Phew... The loughborough guys were really nice though, and asked me to join them for their long run on Sunday. I ended up doing 9miles which is the longest iv'e ran since my injury, so really pleased i'm still alive and the foot is still intact.
The weather here has been really nice. Warm, crop top and shorts weather but there is still a bit of a strong breeze. This has not stopped me from getting burnt unfortunately. My pale scottish skin has almost had enough already. Praying that this lobster look slowly turns into a tan... Otherwise it will probably just all peel off and i'll return to being ghostly again.
The first two days I was able to use Wi-fi from the restaurant near-by my apartment to Skype my boyfriend and family. However they quickly cottoned on to what I was doing and have now turned their Wi-fi off! Disaster! I now have to take the mile trek to Mcdonalds to use their free wi-fi. This then means that I am surrounded by the lovely smell of fatty, greasy burgers whilst surfing the net. I am yet to cave in and buy something -although I still have another 3 days alone to give in. To make things worse, my electricity cut off whilst I was cooking my dinner tonight. Thankfully it was quickly restored after a few hours, no Mcdonalds for me.
To be honest, it has been pretty boring being in my own company all day long. It's the time in between training that I notice it the most, so I cant wait for everyone to come out on tomorrow. I have already scoped out a water park, mini golf and and a 'zoo marine'. I'm more excited than a little kid on christmas, cannot wait to do some thing other than training and lying about in the sun on my own!
Will try and take some pictures and videos of training next week. My camera has decided to die on me but hopefully I can resuscitate it over the next few days.
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