EDITOR’S NOTE:
Welcome to the Athlete Journal of Olympic weightlifter Holley Mangold. Holley is part of Team USA headed to London this summer. Follow her journey here as she trains for the 2012 Olympics! Holley’s journal will be posted every Friday.
You can catch up by reading her previous journal entries!
Holley’s Athlete Journal 3:
This week has been one of the most active and exciting weeks to date. I started the week with a trip to Florida to teach a CrossFit course in Orlando. It’s so wonderful to see how CrossFit is expanding – when I started going to courses the facilities were usually a garage style and now they are state of the art gyms! As always, I loved the energy level of all of the participants! Thanks to CrossFit Country for having me!
While in Orlando, I had the opportunity to visit with my Florida family members. It’s always great to visit with them. I have twin cousins, Chris and Pat, who claim that they would have been my size but the egg split and they now weigh 150 pounds each. Poor guys didn’t get the “bulging muscle” gene. Pat did hold his own, however, at the CrossFit course! Proud of him! I’m very thankful for such a great visit and the awesome hospitality. My future cousin-in-law made me eggs and bacon in the morning – totally the key to my heart!
After my wonderful visit in Florida, I flew to Dallas for the Olympic media day. It was by far the most fantastic experience I’ve ever had. From the moment I landed in Dallas until the moment I flew home I was busy. I was picked up in a town car with another athlete and taken to the media convention. The best way I can describe the day is by saying that it was like Hunger Games minus the fear and imminent death. Similar to Katness, I was hurried around, priming and prepping for the events to come. We had stations set up with hundreds of different interviewers and a time limit for each one. It was so much fun chatting with them in a relaxed yet excited atmosphere. I’d have to say that the people from Fox Sports were some of my favorite people to chat with. After the interviews we moved to the green screen for photo shoots. That was a very cool experience. I might have goofed off a little more than the other athletes!
While in Dallas I got to see our Nike Olympic Apparel and was very excited to find out that I’ll now be sponsored by Nike. My wardrobe usually consists of hand-me-down Ohio State shirts so hopefully now I’m a tad more stylish. Beyond hanging with the press, I also had a wonderful time hanging with my teammate, Sarah Robles. Although we’re on the same team, she definitely pushes me and makes me even more competitive. It’s great to have someone fun going through this experience with me.
Most recently at home, I’ve been doing some interviews in Columbus, training, working at City Barbecue, trying to unpack and catch up on laundry. Laundry and chores kind of take a back seat with else going on – I need my sister to come organize my stuff!
Saturday, I will be helping to teach a coaches clinic. On Sunday, my mom and older sister will be running their second marathon this weekend then separately heading to Florida for work, which means I might head to Dayton to watch my twelve year old sister while they’re away. Although I only live ninety miles away from them, it’s hard to get away to visit. Especially since this week I’m hoping to regroup and re-energize from all of the traveling! Training should be back to usual this week. I’m excited to see how the next week goes!
