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.

Almost halfway

As usual, the Olympic Games fly by and suddenly we're on day six of 16.

I'm writing this in the main press centre, killing time between a morning at alpine skiing and an evening at luge. I was aiming to get back to the apartment but the bus hadn't turned up and I was craving a bibimbap (bowl of rice with vegetables and an egg) from one of the restaurants near the MPC, so I gave up waiting in the cold and went for food instead.

Despite writing in the last blog that the winter Olympics were quite like the summer Olympics, I'm slightly revising that belief. Yes, the Olympic bubble is identical and it's great to see and work with old friends and colleagues again - I rocked up at the men's Alpine combined event earlier in the week to discover the Olympic Broadcasting Service team covering it were the same reporter-cameraman duo as covered rowing and canoe sprints in Rio. "Oh, it's you!" exclaimed Graham, once I'd taken my sunglasses off.

With colleagues on men's slopestyle finals day

But the sports themselves are quite different. Many of us, watching most summer sports, have a realistic expectation that we'd be able to have a go at them and be competent if far from Olympic standard. Most people know how to swim, or run, or played football or hockey or volleyball at school. We might look at the athletes at the pinnacle of their game and marvel at their speed, strength and agility, but we know that mild competency would not be too far away.

Winter sports are a whole different thing. My first day of competition was the day before the opening ceremony, at the qualification for the men's 'normal hill' ski jumping. A 'normal' ski jumping hill is terrifying (the big hill next to it is even worse!) I have no idea how anyone can edge out on to the starting gate, which is basically just a plank laid across the track, sit on it and then let go to whizz down the hill at 80+kph.

And then there's the stuff like snowboard and freestyle skiing, where they're not only zooming down a steep slope (and really, the slopestyle and moguls slopes were steep) but have to launch themselves off a hill and turn four times in the air. Alpine skiing slopes are also much steeper in reality than they seem on TV.

Yongpyong Alpine centre - giant slalom venue

I've spent the last couple of nights at luge, which is another sport I never want to try. One of the US lugers crashed horribly on Tuesday - she got up and walked away - and I don't understand how more people aren't thrown off their sleds. (Yeah, yeah, G force ...)

I could, potentially, see myself having a bash at cross-country skiing, but the sheer effort the Olympic athletes put in is astounding. The biathletes finish close to the mixed zone and many of them fell on to the snow in exhaustion; the cross-country athletes, finishing further away, appeared to be the same.

The secret to many winter Olympians' success is starting early. Huge numbers of them began skiing as tiny children. The exceptions are often from countries without a winter Olympic legacy, such as the Tongan cross-country athlete Pita Taufatofua, who took up the sport after competing (admittedly not very successfully) at Rio in taekwondo. Still, he's here, and he's dedicated and wants to do his best, and that is an element of the Olympic Games which is common to both the summer and winter editions.

But the main difference between summer and winter is the cold, at least here in PyeongChang. We're acclimatised enough now that freezing or just below seems almost warm (although gloves are still necessary). My feet have been numb with cold several evenings, especially at ski jump, despite experimentation with two different pairs of boots, varying combinations of socks and a couple of attempts at sticking heat packs inside my shoes. I have vowed never to complain about the heat in the summer again.

The layers of the Olympic Games

I'm discovering that the Olympic Games - summer and winter - are all about layers.

In the summer, you put on layers of clothes when you go inside to what is invariably a freezing cold air-conditioned room. In the winter, you put on layers of clothes when you go outside, and extra layers when you head out to a venue.

It's also a world of tribes, divided by brightly-coloured jackets. The Dutch in vibrant orange, the Aussies in yellow and green, the Brits in blue. Then there's the organising committee staff and volunteers, this time in grey with lots of orange and pink highlights. Those of us who are working for the International Olympic Committee are in red and navy. The Olympic Broadcast Service are, as ever, looking classy in dark green and grey. Some of the big press agencies have matching jackets too; it's a veritable rainbow of colours out there.

As I found in Rio, and to a lesser extent in London, the Olympic bubble is fairly all-encompassing. Even though here in PyeongChang we are mostly eating in the restaurants which normally form part of the ski resorts where the Games are being held, instead of in workforce canteens, I spend my days surrounded by people wearing Olympic uniforms and Olympic accreditation, and going from venue to press centre to accommodation on the official media transport buses.

I've been here four days now, arriving on Sunday from Seoul on the very efficient fast KTX train, being shuttled to my accommodation on a bus on which I was the only passenger. I then visited the IOC uniform centre to be kitted out in several layers of uniform, packed in a suitcase, all designed to keep us toasty warm throughout the Games. So far the toastiness level has been sufficient, although the gear hasn't yet been tested properly and I'm worried my toes will get cold! I'm told that the ski jump venue is the coldest place here and we're there this evening (Thursday) as the qualification rounds get underway so I guess I'll find out how many layers I really need to wear.

It's interesting comparing the winter games to the summer ones. Of course from the British perspective there's less awareness of the winter Olympics, mainly because we're just better at the summer sports - although Team GB has a good chance in several sports.

The snowboard and freestyle skiing venue

From my own personal point of view I know far less about winter sports. I attribute this a) to growing up as a swimmer, and then becoming a rower; b) to the aforementioned lack of coverage of winter sport in the UK apart from that great BBC programme Ski Sunday; c) to never going skiing as a kid (thanks Mum and Dad). So everything is a learning curve as I find out how various sports are judged, the jargon used and so on. Despite this, I'm not too worried about my ability to do the job as the basics of being a journalist and asking decent questions are the same as ever.

From a practical angle, so far PyeongChang isn't that different from Rio or London. Same signs and Olympic and sponsor logos everywhere, same buzz as people greet old friends, same rules on security, same helpful volunteers everywhere. The major difference here is that much of the infrastructure is existing, with extensive use of hotels and conference centres which normally welcome the Korean skiing public at this time of year. Obviously that's a really good thing from a legacy and cost perspective.

Anyway, it's time to head off to the ski jump venue again (after a recce this morning to watch the men training). My Games are about to properly begin!