9 Days Until Opening Cermonies!

So Much To Do Before We Leave!

With 3 days to go until I leave I thought I had my apartment situation figured out, but today I found out that I might need to move before I go!  I had been waiting for weeks to hear back from the managing company about transferring my name to the lease on the apartment I share with my roommates. Today, I finally heard back and they wanted to increase my rent and charge me a huge “transfer fee” to just change the name on the lease.   The fact that they waited until our lease almost expired and I might have no other options to break this news was pretty incredible.  My back up plan is to move everything into storage if they try to charge this fee.  This all makes wrapping things up before I go very hectic!

 

I was very distracted today at practice thinking about the fact that I might have to pack up all my stuff in a hurry!

 

Funny Radio Interview

I have been doing a bunch of radio interviews to promote the show on treasurehd.com called “How the Best Is Done: Elite Athletes” and this morning I went on The KOMP morning radio show with Stu & Steve on 92.3 in Las Vegas. Needless to say I should have done my research, but the hosts managed to hit on almost every sexual innuendo you could possibly have with regards to fencing.  It was pretty funny and I’ll try to post it when I get a chance. When the interview started with, “So I hear you’ll be crossing swords in Beijing” I knew that this was not going to be a typical interview!  Definitely not for children!  But hey, I’m sure I reached a ton of people who have maybe never heard of fencing!

I also was on The Rude Awakening Show, an international morning show that currently airs from 6am until 10am weekdays on WOCM, a radio station based out of Ocean City, MD and worldwide at www.Irieradio.com. It’s hosted by Chicago-bred, but world traveled, radio personality David “Bulldog” Rothner.   That was a more “typical” interview but also pretty fun. 

My one wish would be to figure out how much all of this publicity is impacting the audience and how many people who have never heard of fencing have now heard about it and might tune in!   I’ll try to get those clips out when I get them.

More Blogging From me!
Now that we are so close to departure I will be trying to post an entry each day so definitely check back in frequently for more updates! I will be sending back videos, pictures and my thoughts from Beijing!

10 Days Until The Opening Cermonies!

Woke up this morning and realized that a week from today I will be in Beijing, China living in the Olympic Village! I’ve waited so long for this moment to come and now it’s almost here! The last few weeks have been such a roller coaster of emotions and a flurry of preparations. Our team has been practicing hard and our Olympic training camp which has included a lot of the top younger fencers in our country is concluding on Wednesday. The amount of media attention has also been tremendous. Last week we were in a New York newspaper or publication everyday of the week! Pretty unprecedented for fencing even in an Olympic year! Hopefully this will translate into a ton of new people watching and trying out the sport. I keep watching Olympic commercials on television and each time I’m ready to jump off my couch and start fencing!

So, what other stuff do we think about? I don’t know if this is just me, but I keep having vivid dreams every night many of them centered on the Olympics. In one of them, I am running late to get to the airport to fly to the Olympics and then when I arrive at the airport I don’t know what airline I’m on! Scary! On the real scary front, I have had a bit of a pulled hamstring so I have been doing rehab and practicing lightly. I should be 100% by the time I need to compete, but the thought of injury at this point is always a scary one! I read a couple of stories about injured athletes who aren’t able to compete and I can’t imagine anything more devastating after working so hard for so long.

This past Saturday, many of my friends through me a great Birthday Party/Olympic send-off and I wanted to thank them for such a great night! I hope I can do you all proud! I’ll be taking lots of pictures and will try my best to provide you with the “Insiders View” of things. We will be leaving on a 7am flight on Friday and we’ll first be heading to San Jose State University in California for Team Processing. Every Olympian goes there first and it’s where we get our official team apparel, Olympic ring, the all important Olympic credential and more. 10 MORE DAYS!!! AMAZING AWAITS!

Recent Print and Video:
www.treasurehd.com (Television Show titled, “How the Best is Done: Elite Athletes,” gives viewers an inside look at the training regimes of world-class athletes. It aired last Friday, July 25^th on treasurhd and you can catch it on the internet now. I have a 3 minute segment on the show that runs from 9:43 to 12:54

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/sports/olympics/23fencing.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin. (Good Story and GREAT Video)

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/bronx/2008/07/21/2008-07-21_olympic_fencer_tim_morehouse_takes_his_s.html

http://www.amny.com/news/local/am-fencing0725,0,4147091.story (Good story and video)

http://www.riverdalepress.com/full.php?sid=5317&current_edition=2008-07-24 (Nice article in a local newspaper)

http://www.nysun.com/arts/elite-athl…he-rest/82610/ (Good Article)

Coming Up: Aug 9 on NBC at 7pm “My First Time: Competing at the Olympics” I will have a large segment following my preparations for Beijing as well as my life outside of training at Teach For America.

My "Dark Knight" Picture (Courtesy of Riverdale Press)