Strange Sounds

Subic is growing on me in more ways than one. I'm learning to say hello to every guard before they say it to me. I'm learning to weave in and out of cars on my bike with ease. And I'm learning to just deal with the heat like I've lived here my entire life. One probelm though: my skin is turning brown and I'm afraid by the time I hit North American soil, I'll be charbroiled. I put the sunscreen on at least 4 times a days but it seems to do little. The humidity won't let it stick. I don't mind the tan, but I don't want the wrinkles!

So far I love the team environment. We push one another and there is never a shortage of motivation. There is also a lot of respect for one another.

I'm not used to having a TV at my disposal, to watch whenever I like. I live quite meagerly back home and TV, to me, has always been nothing but wasted time and money. But here I'm taking full advantage of it, watching the ESPN network and the Discovery Channel. You never know what will be on, but whatever it is, it provides the perfect opportunity to recover and go mindless. Going mindless is easy to do when you're completely wiped out after training each day.

Two things I've learned here:

• You don't need all the best training facilities in the world.
• Negatives are a good thing in life – they teach you to cope!

There are some truly weird sounds here. When we are in the wi-fi conference room each night there is this crazy sound that comes and goes. Caroline and Lucie went on a mission to find its origins. To describe it all I can say is that it sounds like someone's Skype message or beeper on the phone. But it's an animal…a nocturnal one, and so we never get to see it. Of course, that's not the only one. There's also some unusual and incredible bird chirps, twitters, songs. I managed to have the camera on the last part of my bike ride.