The team made it to Istanbul without any problems. We left our hotel in Komotini this morning a little after 8 a.m. and we arrived to our hotel in Istanbul around 2:30 p.m. Fortunately for me I was able to sleep a little bit on the long bus ride. I don’t think that the drive would have taken as long if it weren’t for the need to stop at customs leaving Greece and entering Turkey. To be honest with you I have definitely had worse bus rides. Near the end of the trip we figured out that the bus was equipped with a dvd player, and someone threw in a movie. Too bad we hadn’t realized that we had dvd capability sooner.

We are staying at the Wow hotel in Istanbul. You might be thinking “Really the name of the hotel is Wow?” Yes the name of the hotel is Wow. I must admit I am impressed with this place. The rooms are clean and pretty modern. We have internet access in our room, but we have only one ethernet port and no wifi. I am sure glad that I remembered to pack an ethernet cable before I left home. Otherwise these next few days could be pretty long ones. They have a nice workout facility and sauna right here in the hotel, and as far as I can tell the food is good. They have a couple of palm trees planted right in the middle of the lobby, which is something that is new to me, but I can dig it.

There are just a couple more days until I get to weigh in, and then one more after that until I can wrestle. Waiting is the one part of wrestling that nobody really teaches you about. You go to practice every day, and you work on technique, strength, conditioning, mental toughness, etc.. But, there really is no way that you prepare for waiting other than waiting. Then it all comes down to how you can control your thoughts leading up to the competition or being able to put your thoughts on hold and focus on other things so you don’t wear yourself out before the competition. My personal strategy is to try to stay as loose as possible leading up into a competition. One of the benefits of having my family travel with me when I am in the U.S. is that it gives me a chance to relax and play with my kids. In fact at the 2010 world team trials in Council Bluffs, my family and I went to the zoo in Omaha on the day of weigh ins to do something fun. It was hot enough out that I was able to lose some weight walking around, and I had a good time. Hopefully they have something here in the city that would be interesting to see tomorrow.

When I walked into the lobby downstairs I saw a booth set up with information on the tournament. Wrestling is pretty popular here is Turkey so I am expecting a great turnout to the competition. On one of the banners that they had set up advertising the tournament, they had written “The lions of the wrestling mat.” I had never heard of that before, but I like the sound of it. Have you ever seen lions fight on nature shows on tv or youtube? They are pretty intense. One year when the U.S. nationals were in Las Vegas, my wife and I went and saw a movie about lions at an Imax theater. The movie was pretty good, and I had a new found respect for the “king of the jungle” (even though they live on open plains). With this being the world championships and everyone looking to qualify for the Olympic Games, I am sure there will be some epic battles between all of these “lions of the wrestling mat”.