What an Incredible Facility!

I've never seen anything like this. The pool is amazing, the Qwest center is massive and the preparation is mind boggling. There is a lot I didn't know about going into this meet, some of this you may have already known, but this is what I've gathered from my experience today:

• The Quest Center is a convention center and a Basketball / Hockey / Wrestling Arena.
• The Arena can seat 15,000 people, the Olympic Trials will be the largest attended swim meet ever.
• The Competition pool is built 10 rows up in the arena, you literally walk up stairs to the water level
• The competition pool and the warmup pool feature runoff gutters.
• The sides of the pool feel solid
• The pads are "Omega" which is the FINA standard, I'm not used to these at all but I sort of like them.
• The starting blocks are very narrow and not very long.
• The bottom of the pool is a rubber composite with sand under it. You can form it with your feet when you push off the bottom.
• The Qwest Center is certainly ready for the Trials, they have done all their homework
• It's obvious everything was engineered for swimmers with bare feet, there is fuzzy astroturf everywhere, non-slip mats where it counts, and all metal pieces are covered with foam.
• The Qwest Center features the hottest showers on the planet Earth. I fully believe there is no limit to how hot they can get. The shower heads are 9 feet off the ground, to accommodate the basketball players I'm sure.
• The locker rooms have 32" flat screen TV's playing ESPN, just like every other swimming locker room I've ever been in.
• The security for the meet is far from rent-a-cops. The US Army is in charge of security and crowd control. Most aren't packin' heat though.
• Did I mention the Qwest Center is HUGE?!
• The pool water is good, although kinda smells like rubber, which makes sense.
• The flags are on mechanical hoists that raise and lower them for different events. (awesome)
• The entire arena is painted black, which makes the pool almost glow because it's so well lit.
• They've been delivering fast swimmers by the truckload all day

That's about it for now, I took some pictures I'll post later. I'm already having a blast!