Off to Portugal....

So, the 29^th March was the day we set off to Portugal for our 3 and a half week warm weather training stint. A large Loughborough contingency is descending on Loughborough this Easter, with the main group of us travelling from Gatwick. Andrew Mariani, James Griffiths and myself took a train from Loughborough, however upon arriving at Gatwick we were greeted with huge queues for EasyJet check in.... The rest of the group travelling on our flight had already checked in and gone through the usual security checks, and after just over 2 hours of queuing we finally joined them. Surprise, surprise our flight was also delayed, and after sitting around in a bar for a couple of hours we finally boarded the plane and departed for Faro. The flight went by quite quickly with numerous games of Chinese Poker, mostly won by Stephen Emery, who used all his wisdom that comes with old age! The other highlight of the plane journey (apart from screaming babies) was the drawing of our rooms in the villa. This was a very tense ordeal that we managed to draw out over an unnecessarily long period of time. With the room partnerships already sorted, Mariani drew the highest card, a measly 10, but that was enough to secure us the en-suite room! This turned out to be far and away the best room, with a walk in wardrobe and balcony to go with the beauty of not having to share a bathroom with 4 others.

When we finally arrived at the airport, we found that James Fairbourn had waited for us. His BA flight was 20 minutes before our flight, but then with our huge delay, we thought he might have just set off to the villa without us. So at this point, the 8 of us got 2 taxis to the Old Village in Vilamoura, where we are staying.

Now seems an appropriate time to introduce everyone:

Andrew Mariani               Woodford Green 1500m runner, who is my housemate in L’boro.
Seb Foy                           Another of my housemates, who is a XC specialist from Cheltenham.
James Fairbourn               Belgrave 5k man, who has prolonged his stay in L’boro by doing a Masters.
Stephen Emery                 Technically a fresher at 22, the Cov Godiva transferee has a great range.
James Griffiths                  800m runner from Vale Royal who is in his 3^rd year at L’boro.
Blue Haywood                   Steeplechaser, Mountain and XC runner, and Lufbra fresher.
Jess Burns                           Another fresher, who is an 8/15 runner from Plymouth.
*Shane Kerr                       Ex Lufbra student who has been working in Paris.

* Shane actually joined us a day late, after flying in from Belfast! He turned up at the airport on Monday, but then realised his flight was actually for Tuesday, so went home again!!!!

The rest of the Lufbra group consists of (in no particular order): Stevie Stockton, Jordan Kinney, Charlotte Best, Danni Christmas, Charlotte Wickham, Ben Green, Chris Parr, Rob Hodges, Ed Womersley, Luke Sebit-Berridge, David McQuarie, James Dean, Chris Warburton, Gary Bradbury, Matt Sullivan, Tom Gayle, Ryan McLeod, Lewis Moses and Pete Street, Nathan Bibby and Stephen Bennett who have travelled out here with Preston Harriers.

Back to the journey, we finally arrived in the Old Village at 1am, but had one other problem, we had no key and didn’t know which villa we were staying in!!! We finally got in touch with Alistair Donaldson (UKA assistant coach), who got out of bed and brought us our key and between us we finally found out which villa the key was actually for. Great organisation! After some quick un-packing we finally got to bed at quarter to two!

Right that’s enough for now, I will try and get daily blogs up as frequently as possible.

Hope you enjoy the read,

Pete