This is the second post in Where Team USA Handball Took Me, a series about what a place looks like when you’re there to compete. The first covered Morocco; this one is a national team training camp in Paris, 6–14 December 2025. These are field notes: where I actually was, in the order it happened.
Arriving: 6 December
I landed at Charles de Gaulle on the morning of Saturday 6 December and spent the first night at Hôtel Hor Europe in Paris before the team schedule took over.
The camp: 7–13 December
A training camp runs on a different rhythm than a competition trip: no travel days between venues, no match clock, just the same building morning to night for the length of the camp. It’s denser, not lighter. Each day looks survivable on its own, and then you look up and four days have passed and you’ve seen the inside of one building and the same few blocks between the hotel and the court.
Paris makes that constraint feel sharper than it might elsewhere, because everyone at home assumes you’re out seeing the Eiffel Tower every night. You’re not. You’re doing recovery stretches in a hotel room and asleep by ten.
Thursday: the rest day
Thursday was the one scheduled recovery and rest day of the week — the only day the city came first.
Getting home: 13–14 December
The last night was at a hotel at Charles de Gaulle on Saturday 13 December, ahead of the flight home on Sunday the 14th.
More from this series
This is the second entry in Where Team USA Handball Took Me, after Morocco, November 2025 and before San Juan, June 2026.
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