Smile and Wave

People love visiting the Olympic Training Center. I guess I kind of get it…but not totally. It’s still just a bunch of training fields grouped together for different sports and they slap the Olympic rings on it and all of the sudden it seems really big time. It’s only every once in a blue moon that you’d probably recognize anybody. The big timers come in for camps every once in a while and we all get happy because the food in the dining hall gets a little bit better. But most folks don’t know any of the kayak team or who represents the USA in archery. The other day someone asked me if I’ve ever been told I look like Allyson Felix. I figured it was just the only track person they knew by name.

I’ve only actually viewed the whole property twice; Once when I was dumb enough to go on a jog on a trail that circled the whole place (never again), and once when I gave a tour and saw a handful of things for the first time myself in the process. People come every day though to take a tour of the place and a lot of times it reminds me of people visiting the Wild Animal Park. And we’re the giraffes. They ride by in groups on golf carts and they have a tour guide that is probably telling them how amazing all of us are. They’ll usually stop by the track and snap a few pictures from inside the golf cart and wave. Most of the time I feel like it’s probably a bit of a letdown. A track practice might be interesting if you stayed for a good length of time or if you were really interested in track. But a lot of times these folks roll by and I’m just stretching. Or doing A skips. Or taking a break until my next interval. You know how lazy us sprinter types are.

Above is a picture of a lovely group of people on their tour. I decided to flip the script and take a picture of them doing not much of anything. It was kind of silly but the rest of my workout group got a kick out of it. We waved to them. They waved back. I snapped a few pictures. They snapped a few back. And then they moved on. Hopefully they saw something a little more interesting down by the archery field.