The last little leads are the heaviest

The last little leads are the heaviest

This is a Dutch saying that cannot be translated into English, but this is my site so I am doing it anyway;) This saying is, concerning my 3-month stay here in the US, also far from true. I am still having a good time here and even tough I am looking forward to seeing everybody, I would not mind staying here for another few months. But nonetheless, this is it! My final message from the United States. Saturday at 7 PM I will be flying back home. However, before I do, I would like to tell you about my last week, because it was a week that consisted of good and less good events.

The Millrose Games is one of the biggest indoor Track & Field events in the US. They were being held last Friday, again in Madison Square Garden. The days before the meet, the real stars, Bernard Lagat (PB 1500= 3.26) and Yelena Isinbayeva (world champion pole vault, first woman to jump over 5 meters!) were warming up at our track. So on Tuesday I had a little chat with Bernard Lagat and on Thursday I did my first lap of the warm-up with Yelena. I had to make a little joke and since she had dyed her hair brown, I told her that I liked the blond better. She smiled, said ‘nice meeting you’ and continued in Russian against her teammate, I blew it ;)
The only bad thing was that I was punished immediately, because about 5 minutes later, when I did a little acceleration, I felt my hamstring. Luckily, it did not snap but it felt stiff for a few days… I already saw myself missing the Dutch National Championships again!! But I am taking good care of it, I can run again and my coach has a lot of experience in this area and he thinks think that I will be OK to run! I am still not quite sure of this but that will be determined when I am back in the Netherlands.

Then on Friday, a colleague whom I have been working with a lot, took me out for lunch. We went to this great American diner and she told me to get the biggest Roast Beef Sandwich that was served. Therefore, I ended up with a 20-ounce sandwich that contained half a cow worth of beef. But it was a very special meal and we had a lot of fun.
That night, I went to the Millrose Games. Finally, a sport of which I knew the rules and actually knew the contesters! It was a night filled with great athletes, Yelena, Lagat, Maurice Greene, Shawn Crawford and Gail Devers are a few of the names that competed that night. Gail Devers (woman, 40 years old) won the 60 meters hurdles in an impressive 7.86. Maurice Greene fell after about 30 meters after he touched arms with Shawn Crawford!! So this was a bit disappointing. But Lagat and Yelena did what they were supposed to do. They both won and with impressive time/height, no world records though.

On Saturday, I was supposed to run a match in New York but because my hamstring was giving me a bad time a decided no to do it. Instead, I went to go training and watch the match. Fortunately, the fastest time was 49.67 so I did not miss any real challenges. Nice detail, the slowest ran 72.89, I do not think I know anybody who would run slower.

Then on Sunday evening, it was time for the sporting event of the year: The Superbowl! A colleague had invited me to come and watch the game with him and his neighbors in a bar under the house of one of his neighbors. In the three months that I have been here, I really started to appreciate American Football, so I was excited over this game between the Philadelphia Colts and the Chicago Bears. What made this game a bit special was that for the first time in history, two African American Coaches made it to the Superbowl Final.
We were watching the game on a TV, the biggest I have ever seen! The game was great but the commercials in the breaks were so much better. All the big companies save their marketing efforts to really deliver their best commercials during the Superbowl (30 seconds of advertising time will cost you millions!!). You can see them at http://www.superbowl-ads.com/2007/index.html, a site definitely worth paying a visit! Eventually after an exciting game in the rain, the Colts won and I drove the 1,5 hours back to my place.

In these past three months that I have been living here, I have learned a lot about the USA, New York, its culture and the people. I have learned how it feels to be a New Yorker and walk in this city as one of them, I celebrated New Years Eve on Times Square with very good friends, I practiced at a track as a white Dutch guy among mainly black people and still got to tell my jokes, I drove on the highways passing cars on the left and the right as if I have been doing this for years, I ate pizza’s so big and drank Coke’s so large you cannot imagine, I worked in an office and learned the American office cup-a-soup humor, I flew throughout the US and met interesting people, but most of all: I enjoyed everything!!
I would like to end with three sayings that I accidentally used as a naïve Dutch guy and that can also mean something else in English:

To explain how someone saved Holland with one finger:
- Quick, put your finger in the dike!

When you want a beautiful girl to start taking pictures:
- Start flashing!

If you want to tell people that you are very tall:
- I am very large.

@ Everybody, thank you for the posted messages; it was fun getting and reading them. Hopefully this coming Sunday www.stevenzwerink.nl will be launched and for those of you who are interested, you can follow my 400-meter achievements on that site.