Two days before leaving for Beijing

I think/hope my concern from yesterday has been taken care of. I may actually end up with two respiratory masks paying close to $70 for the next day shipping, but oh well. It looks like a good product (click here for details) and since my main mission is to do as well as I can, I have to accept the health-related expenses. (A side-joke that only my Slovak friends are likely to get: Maybe the Slovak Track and Field Federation will reinburse me :)))).

I have done some breathing tests at Aleksandar's lab today to have baseline data and to see just how badly the pollution will affect me. It will be interesting to see. It's kind of funny how my training in linguistics springs ideas for research in other areas-I was thinking of all sorts of interesting research questions revolving around elite athletes at the Olympics. Perhaps I could do my next doctorate in exercise physiology, but then again, I'd have to learn all those latin words for ten million body parts...

Well, it's off home to do some packing and organizing. Tomorrow I have a small 5k road race that I am planning to use as tune-up. My hope is to actually run the race and then do another 5k at the treshold pace, and another 5k at the marathon race pace. It would be one of the hardest workouts of my career, but hopefully I am ready for it.

The biggest remaining concern: airtickets. Just found out today that our return flight from Shanghai got cancelled! Why must there always be a problem?