Turkish Delight

Start of junior men's race. No extra pounds there!

I got up at 0430hrs UK time on Sunday morning to go with the junior ladies to the start of their race. We were at the races all morning, then I wrote a race report, went for an amazing 90 minute run in the mountains and then went to the party where we had great fun trading kit. I managed to get all of our junior ladies kitted out in the Bulgarian national team's kit - oh and one of the junior men who decided he would look good in a sprint suit/unitard/ all in one lycra suit! He didn't (look good) by the way! It's a shame I didn't get a photo of him!

We then got on the bus at 0100hrs for a five hour drive back to the airport, which included a ferry trip over the Marmaris sea. We arrived in Manchester around 1030hrs yesterday and I was home for 1130hrs. Time to do some work and put some of the race reports and articles that had come in over the weekend onto the website. After that I went off to a biomechanics seminar at Sportcity in Manchester and was home and tucked up in bed by 2300hrs! Talk about packing a lot into a day!

So how was Turkey? We didn't really know what to expect so many of the runners had brought their own food, incase the offering was poor. Well they didn't need it! We were accommodated in a the 5* Karinna Hotel with everything we could possibly need - free WiFi, comfortable rooms, safe places to run both on and off road, amazing views, swallows (or were they swifts? I don't know the difference) PS - just been told they were probably House Martins, nesting above every window and providing amazing entertainment as the parents were constantly flying in with food for open mouthed babies, and a smorgasbord pretty much on tap with the freshest and tastiest food (apart from the cakes that weren't a patch on mine!)

Apparently Turkey is one of the few countries that produces more food than it actually consumes because it has rich soil and a great climate for growing stuff. One of our team is vegetarian and, when we have been racing in Central Europe, we have sometimes struggled to find a vegetarian offering but this was not the case at the weekend. On the salad bar we had the biggest and most flavoursome beef tomatoes incorporated into cucumber, feta cheese and olive salads, spicy couscous with tomato and spinach, grilled aubergines to die for, stuffed peppers to die again for and plenty of other salads with a huge choice of dips. The choice of hot vegetables was just as diverse with everything we get over here and all the beans under the sun as well as okra and artichokes just to completely spoil us!

For those of us who are more omnivore there was plenty to go at in the meat department. Some of the most heavenly dishes were those that included minced meat. It all had a bit of a kick to it! The stuffed courgettes were beautiful then there was the moussaka and more stuffed peppers.

The catering department also made sure the runners got plenty of choice in how they got their essential carbs. There was rice of the sticky kind, the pilau kind and the boiled kind; there was bulgar wheat, couscous, pasta and exquisite Turkish breads.

I have to mention the tea too! I am pretty much tea total in that I totally over dose on tea every day! I normally wince at the sight and taste of tea when I'm abroad so when I got my first cup of tea out of the urn on the first day I nervously took a sip expecting it to be as weak and pathetic as is the norm in Europe but, wow, did I get a kick! I actually had to water it down and this must be the norm as each urn had two taps. One for tea and one for hot water. The hotel served tea and cakes in the lobby every day at 1700hrs too. They're more English than the English in that respect! My only complaint there was that we could only get our hands on this tea at breakfast and at tea time. It wasn't served at lunch or dinner, which was a little strange because the food was pretty much the same for every meal. Most of that mentioned above was on offer at every meal time.

It was easy to over-eat. We did tell the runners to be careful not to go too wild at trying to taste everything before the race. In that sort of situation it's so easy to put on a couple of extra pounds and when you're running up a 1245 metre mountain strength to weight ratio is crucial and no one wants to carry extra weight when they're trying to get to the top as fast as possible!

We had some pretty good performances though and one disastrous one but all in all the trip was a success in terms of running and experience and it was probably only the team management who came back slightly more podgy! All in all a Turkish delight (even though I never tasted any!)