So here I am, in Kazan finally, after a long flight from London Heathrow where I was asked by security what I class myself, a man or a woman 🙂 I’m just laughing at it now, but thank you for all those messages and comments you guys sent me regarding that.

The flight itself is not too long though, London – Moscow is only under 4 hours, but I had a 4 hours layover in Moscow, that made this journey even longer, and then another 1 hour 10 mins from Moscow to Kazan. At the airport in Moscow not many people speak English therefore I was actually glad that I didn’t have to rush to catch the other flight to Kazan and I could just take my time finding out where to check in etc.

I didn’t get any sleep on the flight and strangely enough I didn’t feel very tired when I arrived either. At the airport in Kazan I was greeted by the main organizer of the NAC World Championships, he picked me up from the airport and took me to the hotel. I thought it was very impressive. I definitely look forward to meeting the judges on Saturday because all the people within this federation seem to be so friendly and approachable.

I’m staying at Hotel Ibis, which I thought a good sign, although the rooms don’t have a fridge or coffee making facilities which is a bit annoying because my vegetables already started going off today, but no worries, I have no veggies for tomorrow, yay! 🙂

When I arrived at the hotel I tried to rest a bit, but after about 2 hours I just got up and got ready to go out and find a shop where I could buy water and a gym – although I thought the hotel has a gym, I checked it on their website, but it doesn’t. However the receptionist pointed me to a gym just around the corner from the hotel, and I gotta say I was very impressed. It’s an expensive gym, the daily rates are from £8 – £12 depending on what time of the day you want to visit the gym, but when I went in I understood why. It is a huge gym with so many machines that some of them I have never even seen in my life. 3 big rooms, 1 for legs and abs and cv, then another for upper body: arms, shoulders and chest and then a 3rd room with some other machines as well and more cardio and stretching area.

I had a great whole body pump up training session, I really enjoyed it, especially because they let me train for free because I’m competing on Saturday 🙂

Here you can see the posters for this competition everywhere on the streets, radio adverts, it is presented very well. Apparently the venue can hold about 1200 people, 600 have already purchased their tickets but apparently most people buy their tickets on the day and the organizers reckon it’s gonna be full house.

At the Dynamite Gym in Kazan

After the very last workout I came back to the hotel and finally felt knackered so went to bed to get some rest, legs up, just relaxing. When I got up it was around 9 pm here but felt a bit better although still not fully rested. I have started putting the tan on, one coat is on now, thought if I could stay up for another 2 hours until midnight then I might put another coat on tonight.

Tomorrow is the registration and the weigh-ins for the classes. Apparently there are 18 nations representing themselves at this event – for some reason not too many, said the organizer, because most of the athletes prepare for the autumn, for the universe. Probably the fact that the athletes had to obtain a visa to come to Russia didn’t really help the case.

Well that’s all for today in a nutshell. I’ll be back tomorrow again. I will take some pictures of the sights as well, it is an interesting country, feels like time stands still here – but not in a bad way but almost like as if I was time travelling 🙂

Check back tomorrow for more news!

xx