Can I sleep now?

The past three weeks have absolutely flown by, in that weird Olympic way where it feels like you've been in the bubble for years but actually it's no time at all. Yesterday, along with three of my colleagues, I witnessed the last bit of PyeongChang 2018 history as Norway's Marit Bjoergen picked up the last gold medal of the games in the 30km cross-country. In doing so she equalled the record for the most gold medals won by a Winter Olympian.

Bjoergen crossing the line

 It seemed fitting to finish the games at the venue I started at, and indeed spent the most time at, getting the bus up the hill to the media centre which doubled up as the hub for ski jumping and cross-country. But by the time the games finished I'd covered 10 sports, been to all the mountain venues and two of the coastal venues, and spoken to an awful lot of athletes.

As ever with these things there are highlights and a few lowlights. The lowlights first: the cold, which got slightly better over the course of the last fortnight as the weather improved and I acclimatised. But my toes were still mostly chilly by the end of a stint in the mixed zone. And the long hours seemed tougher in the cold. Meanwhile the less said about instant noodles and the other venue food options the better, although I did manage to have some meals in normal restaurants.

The highlights, luckily, substantially outnumber the lowlights!

One of the joys of working for events news service teams is the camaraderie among the group. We're all from slightly different backgrounds - some people focus almost exclusively on sport, others like me do a mixture of different sorts of journalism, some have moved away from full-time journalism. But what everyone shares is a willingness to get stuck in, do the job as well as possible, and have some fun while doing it. Zipping between my sports and venues this time meant I was lucky enough to work with a lot of the rest of the team, some people I'd worked with before and some I hadn't. They were all wonderful.

Then there was the sport. PyeongChang had some incredible sporting moments and it was, to quote the snowboarders, super-cool that many of them involved women. Bjoergen capped it off. Her achievements are quite extraordinary and she should rank alongside the Bolts and Phelpses of this world, yet I imagine unless you're either Norwegian or a cross-country skiing fan you've probably never heard of her. I hadn't. PyeongChang was her last Olympics, as a 37-year-old mum. She won two golds, a silver and two bronzes at this games alone, to add to six golds, three silvers and a bronze from four previous Winter Olympics. Obviously she's in a sport where multiple events are possible, but nevertheless to win a medal in both the sprint event and the marathon event is ridiculous.

One of the female snowboarders sending it at big air

Apart from Bjoergen, I was at the first-ever women's big air competition in the Olympics, where Anna Gasser did some ridiculous jumps to take gold and I really loved talking to Jamie Anderson (who'd earlier won slopestyle gold). She was just very sweet and said some very quotable things about the need for girls to get out there and take part in sport. At the freestyle aerials competition we watched more women do ridiculous jumps, except on skis, and if only for the missed punning opportunities it was a shame that defending champion and six-time Olympian Alla Tsuper missed out on a medal.

At Alpine skiing we saw Mikaela Shiffrin win giant slalom gold, her second Olympic title although she's not yet 23. And I managed to grab Ester Ledecka for a quick interview in between the first two runs of the giant slalom, before she went on to stun the world (and herself) by winning the Super-G and then snowboard parallel giant slalom. She was so matter of fact about doing both skiing and snowboard in one games, although nobody's ever tried it before. "I don't know how to do just one," she told me.

At the sliding centre everyone was charmed by the bubbly British bobsleigh duo (Mica and Mica) who were thrilled with eighth place. Meanwhile we boggled a bit at the men's double luge, which is an odd sport.

At biathlon I saw Martin Fourcade become France's most-decorated Olympian in either summer or winter games, but struggled to understand his French as he speaks very quickly and with a bit of an accent. Over at ski jumping we saw eight-time Winter Olympian (another record) Noriaki Kasai throw himself off a massive hill, aged 45.

I came away very glad to have been asked to play my little part in the PyeongChang games. It was hard, and tiring, and I am planning on sleeping in tomorrow, but I shall remember the past three weeks for a long time. And I might just try a cross-country holiday at some point in the future.