Sophie Williams Blog

The week in Hungary

Recently I travelled to Hungary for a training week. It was incredibly busy (and hot) but very worth while overall.

We travelled up to Luton on the Sunday morning, which is a long way when coming from Truro! We then flew to Budapest and when we arrived the first thing we noticed was the extreme heat – over 30°C each day! We then discovered that we were fencing in a converted synagogue, which had been disused since World War 2. The building itself was incredible, but we then found out that it had no air conditioning, and so it often ended up hotter indoors than out!

The training itself was intense, with the first session each day starting at 9am, going on until 12:30 with lunch until 14:00, when training resumed again. The day finished 16:30 when we got the metro back to the hotel. On a couple of the days we went swimming at lunchtime, which was a great way to cool off and relax. We also did some fitness work outside on an athletics track, which was very, very hot, but also very good for our fitness.

In the evenings we went to different restaurants in town, sampling many Hungarian specialities – goulash in particular – and on the Thursday it was St Steven’s day, which was basically the anniversary of the birth of Hungary. There were a lot of celebrations going on in the evening, including a fantastic fireworks display over the Danube River.

My first competition of the season is next weekend and hopefully the week in Hungary will benefit my performance greatly.