Day 11 – Today the alarm goes off at 5.45am, neither of us
can quite cope with this early again, so we snooze until the cut off time we
have said is 6.15am, we struggle to get our weary bodies out of bed and into
the shower. Out and on the tube by 6.50am. We are now tending to use the
central line as there are no changes to make and although a much hotter and
stuffier tube than the newer jubilee line we find it less full and today we get
a seat for the duration of the journey.

We arrive to the usual merry array of volunteers with large
pink pointy fingers (one saying “I bet you can’t guess which way to go”), we breeze
through security which we are now used to in our daily routine.

We are in the park early enough to get into the big McDonalds
with not too much of a queue. Our friend Ellen said the other day that the
manager there had said she hadn’t realised how busy it was going to be
(really????The Olympics are on and there are 250,000 people or more in the Park
everyday!!!). I have a bagel with cream cheese and smoothie and Miss O an egg
and sausage mc-muffin, orange juice and tea. We then head for the mega store
and breeze in as there is really no queue, we look round and decide to be
sensible and buy just a tee shirt each, a fridge magnet (we get one everywhere
we go) and a set of Olympic wristbands.

Jane whizzes through what seemed a huge queue in zero time
and we rendezvous outside. We are now sorted and ready to head into the stadium.
We are now experienced in the arena as well and have seats a few rows further
forward than we have had previously, meaning not quite such a steep hike to get
to them, Lara has arrived and her seats are abit further round the final bend
so we wave at each other and will meet after the mornings heats.

The action today is one of carnage in the 110m hurdles for
men and awe at the Jamaican sprinters, Bolt, Blake and Weir. The 110m hurdles
saw many fallers and injuries. Bolt was greeted as if he was a team GB athlete.
He stormed around the bend and then jogged home to go into the next round. The
little boy next to us had made a homemade flag for the day which was fabulous.

A griping morning of heats completed. Team GB did better in
some events than expected, the woman’s 5000m heats but not so good in the woman’s
javelin and men’s triple jump we head
off to meet Lara, have a quick catch up. They go off to explore the park as
they are back at the end of the week for some hockey. We head off to the other
side of London for a massage and facial, grabbing a healthy smoothie on route.

Relaxed and refreshed we head back to Bayswater which has become
our home while we are here in London. We pop back to the apartment drop our
stuff off and head down the road to try the other local pub near us. They have
3 screens showing different events and we catch up with the action and the
ongoing medal accumulation, led today by two gold’s and silver in the cycling. Our friend Ellen was lucky enough to see these
as she is volunteering there (what a lucky gig to get,) we saw her yesterday to
catch up and there are some snippets from her on the main page and Trudy’s
volunteer page. Another friendly atmosphere
and we have a couple of drinks, chat to some Brazilians watching the men’s
football semi and then head back to watch some more athletics and highlights at
the apartment. An early night is on the cards, with a nice lay in to look
forward to as we have no more very early starts for the duration of our stay.

Tomorrow is hockey day (Jane’s sport, we think
we may join a club when we get home as we feel inspired to now get fit), we
have both woman’s semi-finals, with GB in the later game.

Tuesday 7th August 2012

Lara just uploading a few photos for you!  Will do the blog bit tomorrow!