Greetings from Vancouver, Wash.!

After a long bus ride, the teams arrived late Thursday evening, ate a good meal at the Olive Garden, and stocked up on snacks and breakfast food at the grocery store.

This morning the teams had a chance to preview and do some strides on the Nationals course. It is a grass course, and won’t be too fast, especially since it’s been raining on and off since we got here, and more rain is expected overnight. But at the coaches’ meeting today, they said the course is faster than the past two years it’s been run here. So who knows?

The men will run four two-kilometre loops, a total of eight-kilometres, and the women, one short loop and two larger loops, totalling five-kilometres. This year, the men have the advantage of running first on the course; each year it switches between the men and women who will race first.

In the afternoon, the teams had some free time to relax and unwind. Some of us went to the pool. Later, we attended the Championships’ Opening Ceremonies, and were treated to a special talk by American 10,000-metres record holder, Galen Rupp, and his coach, Alberto Salazar. That was followed by a Q & A session, where the athletes heard some interesting comments on training and such. Theo Hunt, and Zanny Venner also received NAIA ‘Champions of Character’ awards for displaying the values of integrity, respect, responsibility, sportsmanship and servant leadership throughout the season.

For dinner the teams headed into downtown Portland – to famed The Macaroni Grill – to fuel up for the big races at tomorrow.

Tomorrow, the men’s race starts at 10:30 am, and the women’s at 11:45 am. Awards and a pasta feed will be held afterwards.

You can receive updates at @ubctrack and by searching #NAIAxc on Twitter.

Full results will be posted here.