Jay didn't sleep super well last night - overall I think he got a good amount of sleep but it was broken up. 9pm to midnight, 2am to 6am, 7am to 8:45am so 8+ hours but he's not feeling rested this morning. Maybe try no nap mid-day today, he's used to being active and working so likely just not expending enough energy to be tired.
I was up until a little after midnight reading, took a little while to get to sleep and woke up at 9am when I hear Jay go out to get breakfast so I'm feeling fresh as a daisy.
While he's getting ready to head out at 10:15am I do a little work, upload some mortgage docs to the portal, answer some emails and get ready to meet Jim and Maria at their hotel at 11:30am to take an Uber over to the Aspire Dome. Getting into the events is free so we'll go over and watch a little bit before Jay's event starts at 12:30pm he figures his age group heats will be somewhere in the middle so around 1:10pm or so. I didn't want to go down and eat by myself (because I HATE it) and figured if he swims at 1:10 we'll go out and grab something afterwards..big mistage. HUGE.
Jim, Maria and I got in an Uber at their hotel and got dropped in exactly the wrong spot, the furthest distance and closest distance to our destination possible. Furthest because they wouldn't let us walk the 150 meters through a restricted area to the entrance so we had to walk all the way around the complex to and find our way to the entrance that we were allowed to use. Good thing we gave ourselves extra time!
As soon as we walked in look who I found!?
Well, really the first thing we found was when we went in was a bathroom, but if I put that picture first it shows as the intro picture on the blog when I post it on FB or IG and I didn't want the bathroom pic first...there is no toilet. I wasn't prepared for a leg workout today in order to use the facilities but I did fine.
When we went in I looked for Bob who said that he would be sitting at the end near the smaller Board where there were fewer people. I found Jay first and he had seen his Dad so pointed him out so I left Jay and Grey (in case he had some pre-swim ritual to perform or just had to get 'in the zone') and sat with Bob and called Jim and Maria over from where they had sat down. Jay came over a little while later and sat with us too - he was complaining about how tight his race suit is and sitting in it for so long - I said "It is after 1pm and you were supposed to start at 12:30pm and it's still the Women's 100M so you're going to be a while longer". He had no idea what time it was and was a little anxious about the race and super not happy he had to keep wearing the race suit for longer than was necessary! He was still complaining about the suit and how he was going to come last in his heat so we did a little incentivizing to not come last and pretty soon it was time for them to take off to the staging area for the Men's event.
During the 65-69 year old Women's Freestyle someone was doing Backstroke..so then I looked up "Does Freestyle mean you can do any stroke you want" and it does..don't know why I didn't realize that - apparently because Front Crawl is the fastest stroke 99% of people choose to compete using it so Freestyle has become synonymous with Front Crawl.
Finally it's time for Men's 100M - there are 38 heats and Grey is in 23 and Jay is in 25. As you go on it goes from Oldest to Youngest and Slowest to Fastest. So Jay was in the Fastest Heat for the 45-49 year olds. Grey just turned 45 recently and he was in the 3rd fastest heat for the 45-49 year olds.
Grey swam an amazing 100M, 57.79m which was a Personal Best by 2 seconds off a time he did last year in Australia at the World Transplant Games. He's a liver transplant survivor and a teammate of Jay's who swims in Aurora. At the last Transplant Games he won 5 Gold Metals and got 5 World Transplant Games Records - today he finished 13th overall in the Mens 100M (but a huge 1st in his own Heat!)
Jay was up next, he was motivated to not come last in his Heat even though that's where his time put him in the outside lane number 0. 1 person no showed for the event so only 9 swam and he came 7th with a time of 56.63 - since this was the fastest heat he came 7th overall as well. There were multiple Heats for Jay's age group, a total of 43 swimmers.
Jay and I had agreed that I'd take his bag after and meet him out by the Spectator Entrance..which meant something different to me than to him because his bag had his clothes in it and he thought I would meet him just outside the Athlete entrance where the Spectator and Athlete areas converge and I thought he would come out to the actual facility entrance (I didn't realize he didn't have a towel and that was in the bag as well). While I was waiting in the wrong spot I bought him a World Aquatics T-Shirt and we tried to figure out where we would go for dinner/lunch since now it was after 3pm (and circling back to the fact that I hadn't had breakfast like a chump).
Jay spent the next 20 mins or so analyzing his swim. He was 2nd at the turn but had gone about 80% on his first 50M because he's really using this as a warm up for his 50M event on Thursday. He said he "died" on the last 15M but also didn't train for the 100M event. Tomorrow is 50M Breaststroke and Thurs is his big event he wants to do well at the 50M Freestyle.
We decided on a place that Chrissy had recommended in Katara up at the top of a hill, a Lebanese place with a great view - Jim, Maria, Jay, Bob and I. So we walked until we found a place to order an Uber and got to The Torch Hotel.
Maria ordered the Uber, Jay and his Dad sat on the fountain edge in the middle of the roundabout and we waited. We ordered an Uber XL to fit 6 people and a little Toyota pulled up with 2 seats in the back that can pop up - not the XL we were thinking. Not XL at all. Total size misrepresentation.
Almost to the restaurant, literally 3 minutes, and Jay asked Jim to pull his bag out of the back and look for his phone, he thought he put it in his pocket but it's not there and it's not in his bag. I'm like "we are literally 3 mins from our destination so let's just do a thorough look through the bag when we get there" - well we stop, we look, the phone is no where to be found. We just had a talk yesterday about how safe Dubai and Doha are and figure we'll call The Torch because it might have been turned in. It has been and so Jay and I hop back in the not XL Uber that is totally acceptable for 2 people (except you're paying for an XL now when we don't need it) and go back and pick it up.
The person I spoke to failed to mention that the screen was all smashed up when it was returned (maybe she thought it was like that when we lost it but it wasn't). But, a new screen is WAY less expensive than a new phone so it's still a win. And, Jay figured out he still has AppleCare protection on it so is going to wait until we get home to get the screen replaced so it doesn't void his warranty.
Did I mention that it's now 5pm and I still haven't eaten today? It is 5pm and I still haven't eaten today so I'm actually at this point beyond hungry and just have a little headache. I text Maria to see what they ended up doing because dinner at our Hotel doesn't start until 6pm and I can wait the hour but should probably get something to drink, maybe a smoothie - they were considering coming to one of the restaurants in our hotel - Cucina, it's Italian so we just decide to join them. We drop our stuff off at our room, use the facilities and head down to Cucina to meet them.
Dinner is delish. I had a glass of Rose that I could have done without. Jay and I shared a Burrata and Arancini (with no sauce which I found odd but it was still cheese and rice deep fried so how can you go wrong) and then we each got a pizza (we could have shared, I only had 2 pc of mine).
Everything that you would normally have as pork is beef here. So this is pizza with burrata and parmesan and a cured beef instead of proscuitto which was beautiful, the pepperoni on Jay's pizza was a beef pepperoni and the other day at breakfast I had turkey bacon, which I actually like anyway and prefer when it's at a buffet.
The Hostess explained that wine is hard to come by and recommended a white to Jim and Maria - turns out it was $100 for the bottle (I had to google it...Maria if you don't want to know skip reading the next line).
$14.95 at the LCBO!
She said that it hit the spot though so it was worth it when I did the math after we left on the cost of the bottle at 260QAT to CAD.
When we got back to the room we had a notice that our laundry hadn't been delivered because I had the Do Not Disturb on the room so we requested the laundry and a new laundry bag (because of course I spilled oil on my boob..every. time.) for our 6 items of the day.
Now we're just chilling, it's 8pm and we'll probably try to go to bed a little early. Tomorrow Jay will chill at the hotel with Grey and Ashley in the morning and I'm going with Jim and Maria to breakfast and the Souq with Chrissy - can't wait!
Race at 3:13pm tomorrow (if it's running on time).
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