Thursday, October 25, 2018

Changan Ford 100K preview: I've been containerized!

While most of you are working your first job, this week is all about my second job for me. Well, not spending the whole week running as a matter of fact, because it already took me 2 days to get here in Xianning, and I'll spend Sunday flying back to California.

Tomorrow, Friday, is the big race, the 100K for me (there is also a 50K, and a 5K). We start at 9 am, 15 hours ahead of Pacific time. Weather forecast has some cloudy skies, potential rain showers and temperatures between 15 and 22C. I went to run 10K on the course today and it is quite humid, good sweat ahead!

Now, to address the enigma of the title, this isn't about the Kubernetes or Docker of my first job, but look at the shell of my bedroom, that's a real container!!

And it's really comfortable inside, the full comfort and equipment of a hotel room!

It's so cool, the whole resort concept is called SweetBox!
Even more interesting and playful at night!

An aerial view of the Honeymoon Bay Resort (not from me, but a picture in the lobby).
Now, we are here to race (work, right?! ;-), and that's quite an international and competitive crowd the organizers have assembled (serious 1.5-hour briefing during which we went through all the rules of this IAU Bronze-certified competition, both in English and Chinese).

I'm actually the only one from the US. In addition to 36 men and 6 women from China, the rest of the field is composed of 39 men and 20 women from 19  other countries: Japan, Italy, Latvia, the UK, Netherlands, Australia, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Ukraine, Canada, Korea, Mongolia, New Zealand, Hungry, Lithuania, Argentina, Australia, Sweden and the US.
Here I am with a legend Veteran, Jan Albert Lantink, from the Netherlands. After setting a world record for M55 2 years ago with a blazing 7:07, he set the new world best for M60 at 7:29 earlier this year and is here to improve that, wow!
Check Jan's own website.

I wasn't sure which food I'd find at the resort so brought way too much (and that got me a full check of my luggage, not by TSA but the Chinese security personnel during my connection in Beijing). Not the perfect buffet for someone on OFM/Keto, but still a few reasonable options to avoid carbs.




It was great that my flight landed 25 minutes ahead of schedule as that allowed me to catch the last shuttle at 10 pm last night, for the 1hr40 trip between Wuhan international airport and Xianning.

While waiting for the shuttle, a group of volunteers bombarded me with questions to practice their english; teenagers are really into learning english now, what a change!
More news tomorrow, time to go to bed and see what some jet lag let me to sleep tonight... I think I'm all set!
Thanks for reading, and have a good rest of your week, work hard too! :-)

PS: bonus track, the 10K I ran this morning to get the legs moving on tomorrow's course (a super wide and smooth asphalt, which many workers were washing today to make sure it's immaculate tomorrow!). And, yes, Relive.cc works even in China! (Click on picture, or this link.)

2 comments:

Pierre Haren said...

Jean you are an inspiration to all of us. Good luck tomorrow.

Jean Pommier said...

Thank you, Pierre!