Ben Collins

The last month my training volume was quite a bit lower than before my leg bone decided it no longer wanted to be quite so attached to the hip bone. Now that I’m back on my feet and getting back into the swing of things, it’s becoming obvious that my fun level will have to decrease in order to make time for the life consuming training regimen that I have chosen as a lifestyle.

For instance, tonight after dinner I decided the wind was perfect for an evening sail with Courtenay. The wind was steady and strong enough to blow us around the lake a few times. Now, however, it’s 9:15 and I still need to stretch, self-massage, and do the rest of my pre-bed routine.

The road to health is sort of like a vacation, only with more productivity. I had a birthday party last Saturday (I turned twenty-something), built a bike for my mom out of the frame that I broke in a Thursday night crit last year (which in the meantime I had a friend “repair”), cleaned two boats, coached a 6 week long triathlon clinic (put on by Seafair and Raise The Bar) and swam in a swim meet. The real time drain is all the physical therapy appointments. I’m going to this guy, Neal O’Neal, who beats the crap out of me in a good way, but he has very few appointment times at his main office in Redmond (fairly close) which forces me to drive to Kent (not close at all). I’m thinking I need to find a PT that can torture me so methodically in a nearby place. Or maybe I need to hire a personal PT to live here with me (wait, isn’t Aaron a PT? Why did I let him move out?)

All in all, I don’t think I lost that much fitness. It will take a couple long rides to get back some of my endurance, but the water running has kept my leg strength up, and I seem to be adjusting quickly to a regular training routine.

Last Thursday and Friday I worked at the Garmin booth in the Rock N Roll Seattle Marathon expo. We sold a lot of the new Garmin Forerunner 310XT watches, which are (in short) a replacement for the Forerunner 305 only way cooler. The new watch is  more comfortable, with a slimmer design, and less hard plastic against your wrist. Courtenay bought one, but it’s not delivered yet. Also:

• ant+ wireless technology lets workouts transfer wirelessly to Garmin Connect when you get close to your computer.
• The battery life is rated for 20 hours (the 305 was only ten)
• It supports wireless power meters, like the Quarq Cinqo.
• Is waterproof and actually swimable (unfortunately the distances have 50-100% error when swimming, and digital signals like HR don’t transmit under water)
• Will ship with a new soft, waterproof chest strap for HR (also works with the old Garmin straps)

There’s also a new non-GPS watch called the Garmin FR60, which is ant+ enabled, waterproof, and has the smallest foot pod on the market. I’ll probably start using this watch for races and track workouts because it’s really light weight and comfortable.

At the expo I got a bunch of questions about the Forerunner 405 (still my favorite running computer). Here’s a few of the FAQs:

Q: My battery doesn’t last very long, even though I turn off the GPS antenna. How can I make it last longer?

A: you don’t need to turn off the GPS between workouts. Rather, make sure you stop the workout (hit the stop button, and make sure it’s stopped by resetting the workout), then switch to the clock mode and lock the bezel. When the watch is in standby it shows the time, and will last for a long time without a charge. If, however, the bezel is unlocked, the light can come on by accident (a wet towel will make the light turn on and off continuously until the battery dies). If the watch is in standby and the bezel is locked, the battery will last a while.

Q: How can I keep the watch from going crazy when I get sweaty?

A: the bezel doesn’t like being touched by wet clothes, and wet fingers make it hard to control the bezel. unfortunately, the bezel is what allows the 405 to be smaller than the other watches. The best option is to lock the bezel on the screen you look at most, or set your displays to autoscroll if you want to see multiple display screens.

Q: Can I swim with the 405? The product specs say that it can be in water for up to 30 minutes, so does that mean I can swim for 30 minutes with it?

A: Short answer is no, but I’m not good at being short. I swam with my 405 at races all last year and this year. I coated it with silicone lubricant (spray bottle for electronics), and would put Vaseline around all the places that water was likely to get into the case. It worked really well until the warm-up for Oaklahoma City last month when it filled with water and stopped working. Garmin’s 1-year warrantee is really good about replacing products, but they weren’t too happy when I told them I had ignored their warnings not to swim with the forerunner 405. The watch is meant for running, and it will work in the rain, and if you accidentally wear it in the shower, it’s not a big deal. But save the swimming for the 310xt and FR60.

Q: My wrist is really small, and sometimes the 405 can slip around and hurt, can you fix that?

A: yup. The new Forerunner 405cx comes with a velcro wrist strap that is a lot more comfortable. For people who already have a 405, the strap is available as an accessory from Garmin.com.

Q: I’m from Florida and…

A: Lock the bezel. it won’t fix the fact that you live in hell, but it will keep the watch from flipping out. (It’s only trying to suggest that you move someplace nicer…No offense to my family and friends that live in the humidity capitol of the world - I’m sure your part of Florida is great!).

Today I lost my phone, which coincidentally, was seven days after I told a friend that I “feel way too dependent on my cell phone, especially now that I get email and Facebook on it.” This whole situation is just like that movie The Ring. Only instead of some crazy lady coming out of a TV and killing me.

Also, I cleaned two boats, planned a party, postponed the party because of bad weather, and I started swimming out-doors as often as in-.

Oh, and aqua jogging is far more equipment intensive than one might imagine.

Today is two weeks since my doc told me to be on crutches for two weeks, so I started walking. No pain! So I’m getting back on the horse, and in a few weeks I should be rockin’ out with the big boys again.

It’s also two weeks since I brewed some tea and started it fermenting with the kombucha mother I bought off Craigslist. I bottled about three quarts this morning, and added another gallon of tea to the mother and her new baby (which, due to the large diameter of my tea crock, is about four times the size of its mother).

If you haven’t tried kombucha, it’s available at most health stores for about 4 bucks a pint. Brewing it myself it costs about $2 a gallon (for organic tea). Basically, a symbiotic colony of yeast and bacteria grows a giant mushroom on top of brewed sweet tea, and it feeds off the caffeine and sugar to make a product that’s almost free of sugar and caffeine. My first batch I used an old bag of Chinese black tea, thinking that it wouldn’t matter if the tea was a little stale; I was wrong. This time I’m using fresh Trader Joe’s Organic Green Tea. The next batch I’m going to start experimenting with adding some herbal flavors, like ginger or raspberry.

Needless rules deeply disturb me on an intellectual level. I believe that rules and laws should serve a clear purpose. Our laws should protect the greater good of society, and not be in place to micromanage the ethics and behavior of individuals. For instance, I don’t believe that driving without a seat belt endangers anyone besides the driver, so why do we spend millions on “click it or ticket” campaigns?

Here’s another example I just came across, which is the real focus of this post. According to their website, “The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is the international independent organization created in 1999 to promote, coordinate, and monitor the fight against doping in sport in all its forms.” To clarify, “doping” is defined by Webster’s English Dictionary as, “the use of a substance (as an anabolic steroid or erythropoietin) or technique (as blood doping) to illegally improve athletic performance”. WADA’s mission is a good thing. We want everyone in sport to have an equal opportunity to compete, and setting rules for what methods and substances are allowed is vital to the goal of fair competition. Please take note of the word “improve” in the above definition, and let’s move on.

I was just placed in the random testing pool for out-of-competition testing, and in order to register I needed to complete a tutorial focusing on the methods and procedures of the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA, which is the US organization created to enforce the rules of WADA). The tutorial consisted of about 45 slides, each with an accompanying video featuring real athletes talking about the topic at hand.

In those 45 slides there is only ONE substance that is given a slide and video of its own. That substance is Marijuana. This information (which you can see here) basically says Marijuana is bad for you and can stay in your system for a long time. What I find offensive is the final point: “There are a number of negative health and performance consequences associated with using marijuana.” NEGATIVE? Then why is it banned, and why are we (the International and US Olympic committees who fund WADA and USADA) spending money testing for it? How does this fall under the mission of the World Anti-Doping Agency? I don’t use any drugs, so I never have to worry about a positive test, but I absolutely do worry that Olympic sports are wasting money testing for a substance which is described (by the testing agency itself) as having negative performance consequences. That rule is not promoting the greater good, but simply pushing morals. I’m not condoning the use of marijuana, it is illegal in the US after all, but it is the job of the police to regulate its use, not WADA or USADA. By placing substances on the banned list which are not doping agents (performance enhancing) our sports must deal with the possibility of unnecessary positive tests from athletes who are not actually doping, and that harms the reputation of Olympic sports through negative publicity.

Furthermore, why don’t the real threats to fair play have more focus in the tutorial? Why don’t EPO, Steroids or blood doping have slides? Honestly, this makes me question the ethics, reliability and intelligence of the people we are depending on to maintain the integrity of our sports.

Crutches are the devil. Well, maybe they’re better than the alternative of hopping my way around town, but they’re certainly no substitute for the use of my left leg. With crutches, you can’t carry anything. For instance, if I make a sandwich for lunch, I either eat it standing like a flamingo, or else I lay the plate on the counter, take a step on the crutches, move the plate three feet, take a step, etc. all the way to kitchen table. My dog, who is mostly deaf and mostly blind, finds this process extremely entertaining. She positions herself in the middle of my path in hopes that I will trip or lose balance – sending my freshly prepared meal to the floor. What amazes me is that in the event of a spill, she can somehow get my sandwich into her mouth before I can set aside my crutches and bend over. The only conclusion to be made here is that dog have a sixth sense for culinary detection, and that sense has more longevity than her eyes and ears.

The last couple weeks have been pretty quiet on my blog. I didn’t even write a full race report for Austin. Partly that’s because I read Ethan Brown’s race report and thought it was well written and pretty much covered my race as well.

What Ethan didn’t talk about in his race report is how I wasn’t able to keep up in the first part of the run because my hip was really hurting. The MRI last week showed that I have what the doctors are calling a “Stress Reaction” in the neck of my femur. It’s not a stress fracture, which is really good, but I still have to keep weight off my leg for two weeks.

Upon hearing this news, Bob Havrilak, who I stayed with in Hawaii for 8 weeks, hopped a plain to Seattle and threw me in a car with him headed for Canada. Bob knew that an athlete without an exercise fix will go nuts (depression, moodiness, and all the other signs of withdrawal from a drug), and he figured he could distract me through the first few days of it.

Wednesday morning, after a swim in Lake Washington, we headed for British Columbia, straight up I-5. About 4 hours later we arrived in Squamish, a small town near Whistler, where we were scheduled to test fly a small amphibian aircraft. Since I don’t have a pilot’s license, I just got to sit in the passenger seat, but it was my first time flying in a tiny plane like that.

After the test flights we drove back to Vancouver. On the way we picked up a hitchhiker, though he only needed to go a few miles up the road. The temporary travel companion was an Aussie who was in his final week of a six month journey all over the west coast of the US and Canada. He had spent the winter snow boarding at Whistler, then surfed down the coast to San Diego, hiked through the mountains on the way back, and was heading for Europe in the morning for another six month journey. I have to admit, the  unplanned and uninhibited life really does sound appealing at times. No structure, no limits to what the day can bring, no morning workout, or afternoon recovery… Sometimes I think that must be the ideal life – I just wouldn’t enjoy it without a purpose.

In Vancouver, Bob and I checked into a hotel and walked around searching for dinner (I was crutching around, and not really walking, but I’m not sure if that’s really a word.). I love Vancouver. The city is fairly clean, the people are beautiful and nice, and it’s different enough from the US that the people watching is more fun. Bob, on the other hand, is the type of guy who will hand a buck to anyone that asks for it. We made it a block from the hotel before he realized that we wouldn’t have enough for dinner if he kept handing dollar bills to all the pan handlers. Having grown up going to school in downtown Seattle, and living in New York City, I’ve long since learned to say, “no, sorry” without interrupting my conversation or stride. I also know that Vancouver has a decent assistance program for people living on the street, and I feel that supporting those programs is probably a better way to feed the needy (and more assuredly not going to buy drugs). Regardless, the pan-handlers ruined the experience for Bob. You can tell that it hurts him to see people suffering, and not be able to help.

In the morning we headed up to Horse Shoe Bay, just north of Vancouver, and hopped a ferry over to Vancouver Island. I stood on the bow of the boat looking for orca whales for the entire 90 minute voyage, but saw none. The purpose in going to Vancouver Island was to visit Scott Mihalchan and his wife Leah. I met Scott briefly at Adam’s memorial service in Hawaii, and once saw him hand cycling around Diamond Head. Until last week, however, we had never spent any time getting to know each other. Scott really deserves more than a mention at the bottom of a catch-up blog post, so I’m going to keep it short and write a few stories as their own blog posts.

Scott and Leah are really wonderful people. They live in Mill Bay, on Vancouver Island, which is where Scott chose to live based on the mild climate. Scott is a respirator dependent quadriplegic, with a partial fracture in his neck. He’s taught himself to use his arms and even stand. He’s also an athlete (he only uses the respirator at night), a cook, a sports car enthusiast (or maybe he just likes his own sports cars), and a hilarious person.

Up until this point on our trip I had been pretty down on having to take time off training. Scott really changed that around. And it wasn’t just because he let me ride his hand cycle up a monstrous hill (they seem bigger on hand cycles). Long story short: by the time we caught the ferry back to Washington, I was in a much better mood than when we’d left.

White Necks are the most dangerous people in the world. Everyone who has tried cycling knows the dangers of red necks on the road with their jacked up pickup trucks and tires that tower over you head. They try their best to scare the poop out of you when they come by on the highway, and will honk and yell things (i.e. “get off the road”, “nice ass”, or “WOOOOWEEEE”) out their open window. Luckily, those giant tires warn us from 5 kilometers away that they’re coming, and the drivers are actually paying such close attention to us that, while obnoxious, they’re far safer in their actions than the citified, wannabe civilized, overstressed, under-slept, all-organic idiots you find in any urban area of America. I’m referring to what I call “White Necks”. It includes the lawyers, doctors, soccer mom’s, and all types of business people who seem to think that their hurry gives them rights over the highway, and permission to risk the lives of everyone around them so they can get to their next appointment. The White Necks pose a significant threat to my life, and are the reason I feel very uneasy riding through places like Bellevue, Washington and  Miami, Florida.

These rolling threats to my life truly seem to believe that the road belongs to them. To the white neck “Share the Road” signs are in place to warn cyclists to stay away from Range Rovers.  They worry that their kid will be the last one waiting at the baseball field if they don’t break a few laws to go faster, or that the 10 seconds it might take to slow down and pass safely will cascade into a day so bad that, by calculated risk, my life is a fair gamble.

As a cyclist, the threat of the white neck is far greater than their rural counterparts. Sure, if they notice you they may honk as they go by, or give a dirty look, but most of the time these overbooked suburbanites don’t even know you’re there. Plus, you can’t hear a BMW until it’s close enough to kill you, and the text-messaging trophy wife may never even know she hit you. She’ll arrive home and think the scratch on her passenger door is from that suspicious Honda Civic with a bike rack on top that parked next to her at Whole Foods.

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In an effort to guide my posts into a more rhythmic pattern of literary excellence, I’ve decided to commit myself to writing a weekly post within each of certain themes. I’m shooting for three weekly columns (so I still have room for my random thoughts in case something particularly random and thoughtful occurs). My first category: Pet Peeves. I have plenty of them, and it opens the door to a satirical look at my surrounding and things I find particularly annoying.

This week I scored a 7 day trial pass to the South Austin Life Time Fitness center. It’s working out really well. They have two 25 meter pools (or at least I hope they’re 25 meters, ‘cause otherwise I’m swimming really slow), and some other stuff I don’t use. Actually, I was all prepared for a negative rant and rave due to a bad experience with the massage studio, Life Spa, but I held off a day, and LTF made it all better.

I got a massage on Wednesday when they had a $60 for an hour special. It was advertized as a “sports massage” and I asked for someone who would know how to work out really tight muscles (post-race soreness can be debilitating). I spent the hour asking the therapist to go harder and receiving a glorified back rub. They had a fancy bed and smelly oils and a bunch of stuff that I don’t care about, and a therapist that wouldn’t respond to my needs, even when asked. Afterwards she asked me how it was and I grunted that it was “relaxing”, then wasn’t quite sure what to say to the front desk when asked to pay. I went home and tried to find a massage studio, but Courtenay told me I was being a bad patron by not telling the management that I was unsatisfied. She told me I should have just walked out, but that since I didn’t I should at least write an email to Life Spa. I did, and this morning they told me I could come back in for another massage on them.

My second massage at the Life Spa was with a girl named Nicole, who is in school learning to be a Physical Therapy Assistant. She’s a small girl, but she packs a punch. It was exactly what I needed. She got in deep and broke up plenty of knots. I didn’t moan, or grab the table, like I do with Jenny (my therapist in Seattle), but I was definitely at my pain threshold – which is what a “sports massage” should be – a little pain for an hour, and then days of improved training.

Thanks Life Time Fitness!

A few weeks ago I was thinking out loud at the dinner table, “Maybe I should drive to Austin from Oklahoma.” My sister unintentionally quoted Tom Green from the movie Road Trip, “Massachusetts is probably a 20 or 30 our drive from Oklahoma, why not just fly?” I did what any bratty little brother would do and enunciated my correction that AUSTIN is in TEXAS. At the time I had no idea the depth of that statement.

I’ve always heard that Austin is different from the rest of the GIANT state of Texas. People are in excellent physical condition, there are lots of young people, the music scene is awesome, there’s plenty of outdoor activities and groups and it’s easy to meet people. So far, I can’t contradict any of these notions. What has surprise me is the SUPERSIZED aspect of Austin, which I had noticed in Dallas and San Antonio (the only other towns in Texas I’ve been to) as well. The roads here are big, the cars are big, the freeways are HUGE, the stores are big, and the restaurant serving sizes are big too (with the exception of the servings at the Whole Foods flagship store, which had moderate servings – too big for the ladies at the table, but not big enough for the triathlete).

Most notably, however, is the Texas attitude. I wasn’t thinking too much about fashion when I packed for this trip, and when I threw in my Splish training suit I didn’t think about the fact that I would be wearing a baby blue and pink swim brief, which is about two sizes too small at a Life Time Fitness gym with the type of people who find no humor in unicorns. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed that my ASS (anti-social suit) can be a barrier to conversation with other people in the pool, but here I feel a whole new level of ostracizing energy. At least in Hawaii people would talk to me if I initiated. And last week in Oklahoma the lifeguards actually stopped to ask me about me suit, and said they thought it was hilarious (it is). Here, when I try to make eye contact or say “hello” people turn their heads as if to pretend they weren’t just staring at my crotch to find out if there was really a horn on the top of that pink horse’s head.

My home stay is comfortable. I’m with a single guy, who obviously doesn’t spend much time at home. He says he owns an internet marketing company, as well as a regular day job. Aside from the ride from the airport, I’ve actually only seen him for a 60 minute spin we did around the neighborhood. (This is actually my fault, my good friends Trish and Rory who I met through the Volcano Triathlon Team when I first moved to Hawaii are both in town, so I’ve had dinner with them the past two nights.)