I was really worried about getting a good start to the swim in London yesterday. It seemed to me that the first 300m of the swim had the potential to make or break my race, and I was probably right. Unfortunately, I broke my race before the gun went off.

When the race officially started I was flying though the air. I have no idea what was going through my head, I just remember being so focused on getting out fast that when they said “take your marks” it didn’t occur to me that I should wait for a horn before diving whole heartedly into the Serpentine and sprinting for the first buoy. I clearly remember pushing off the dock and seeing everyone else holding back, thinking, “oh crap, that’s going to be a penalty”, then hearing the start horn just before I hit the water. It was only a fraction of a second, but it felt like I was suspended in time.

A false start is rewarded with a 15s penalty. There are times when it seems worthwhile to get the 1s advantage on the way to the first turn buoy, but 15 seconds is quite a while when you realize it only takes two seconds for a break to form out of the first transition

Knowing that I would have 15 extra seconds in transition I decided to push the swim extra hard. I lead for 500 meters, then realized I probably wouldn’t be able to hold that same pace for another 1000 meters. I hopped onto some feet in a tight front pack and relaxed. Swimming with the leaders is never hard once you’re there, and since we were swimming three or more across it was was like riding an escalator, the water just carried me.

In transition the official didn’t seem to expect me there so soon. I stopped and he didn’t start the watch. He looked flustered. I said, “go, c’mon, start the watch, I’m here.” He fumbled around for a moment then started the stop watch around his neck. It was probably four or five seconds after I had arrived and stopped moving, and he made sure to count all the way down to zero. The concentration of adrenaline running through my veins was so high that each second took an eternity. Between each number I felt like I could have swum an entire extra lap of the course, but I obediently stood there gaping at him, wondering if he was taunting me with the slow pace of my 15 second penalty.

The first lap of the bike I rode like Andy Schleck. I closed the nearly 20 seconds (due to the late start of the 15s penalty) in about 3 km. I was riding with Stuart Hayes, who is an excellent cyclist, but when I told him to pull through, he tried and failed. Looking back at my Garmin 705 / SRM power data, I can see that I was riding really really fast. It was four minutes until I caught the leaders. Stuart, who ended up in 8th at the end of the day, thanked me after the race, and complimented my bike strength, which is a small consolation after what happened right after I bridged up to the leaders.

At the end of the first 5km lap Alister Brownlee was riding like a chucklehead. He swerved onto someone’s wheel, took out Peter Croes front wheel, and knocked him to the ground. Peter was laying to the right of his bike. To the left were a bunch of cones and people. I knew I had nowhere to go, and had yet another slow motion moment as I tried to break, knowing that it wasn’t about preventing the crash so much as make it less painful when I hit the ground.

As far as crashes go, it was not bad. I have a few scrapes and bruised hip, but my frequent crashing has helped me learn to crash lightly. I got back up, fixed the chain, started riding hard again, then realized that I didn’t have another monster bridge in my legs. I had also lost my water bottle and was left with only strongly mixed Powerbar Endurance and gels. I waited for the chase pack and helped them to close the 40 seconds they had between them and the leaders. At that point I was in a pack of about 55 men, and things got sketchy on the narrow, poorly coned course. I stayed out of trouble and conserved energy. Every time I saw a familiar face I asked for some water, but all I got were more sugary drink mixes.

We came off the bike and I felt pretty good starting the run. I was sure this would be a good run for me, though with the quality of field I wasn’t sure what result that would provide. I ran right behind Matt Chrabot for the first mile, which is great for me since he normally goes out really fast, while I normally come back in the second 5 kilometers. After that I started feeling much worse. Over the second mile I slowed considerably and started dropping back. I was told by a spectator that I was in 48th place, just before two more people passed me. My stomach was cramping from all the sugar and the lack of fluids, and pretty soon I was struggling to breath. After a kilometer of shallow breathing and ascending pace I realized that my day was not going to get better. I saw Kevin Collington and one of the coaches at the turn around half way through the run and I stopped, explained that I couldn’t breath, then joined them on the other side of the fence.

The DNF never feels good. You have to question whether you could have continued, if it was worth finishing, what you could have done to avoid getting yourself to the point of dropping out. For me, it all goes back to my false start. Had I not done that I wouldn’t have been in a dangerous position when the crash happened (I don’t normally ride boxed in in the back of a pack), I wouldn’t have lost my bottle, I would have been helping the lead pack extend their lead, rather than the chase pack, and I probably would have had a decent run. That said, I didn’t have a lot of fight in me for this one. When my stomach and diaphragm tightened up and stopped me from breathing I felt happy to have an excuse. Perhaps it would have been different if I were running for 15th or 20th or even a 30th place finish, but making myself hurt that bad for a 50th place after everything else that had gone wrong… I just didn’t have the fight.

We had a photographer come to London to do a photo shoot with all the US athletes this week. Unfortunately, several weren’t here yet, but that was good for me. I capitalized some pro photo time and had some cool shots taken. I think anyway, I haven’t seen them yet, and all I have now are these pictures I took with Katie Baker’s Cannon point-n-shoot. It was my first trip to London, so I was thrilled to see Big Ben and parliament and red phone booths. Enjoy…

Me

Katie

Team USA Getting Ready

Jill’s instantaneous happy face. (She’s quick)

Yup, he’s an Olympian…

Hooray!!

Hopefully when I get some of the photos Peter took, they’ll look as pro as him.

Which is slightly less pro than I look.

Jenna Shoemaker and I have cool watches

Ben and Abe. I know President Lincoln is awesome, but I’m not sure why there’s a statue of him here in the UK.

Ben and Kevin. Collins and Collington. We’re awesome too.

Chris Foster. He’s soooo GQ!

Exiting the underground. Photographer in tow.

I let Jill borrow The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. She’s finding it difficult to put down.

Oh NOO!! Parlament is about to be attacked by a homeless robot!!! Somebody! HELP!!!

Look, it’s euro-trash, it’s an American Tourist… NO! It’s Super Ben!!
…
Super Ben and Big Ben. Together at last. The world is safe.

Here’s some pictures from Hamburg. Katie Baker took them. I have yet to ask the right people for pictures taken by the pros. Perhaps I’ll ask after London so I can get them all in one go around.

Tomorrow I’ll post some pictures from our London Photo Shoot. I forgot my camera, but I stole Katie’s and took a TON of pictures.
Also, tomorrow is the women’s race here in London. It starts at 1pm GMT, and will be live on Triathlon.org. Go there a bit early because you have to create a login to watch the live stream. For those of you in the US, 1pm is 5am PDT, 8am EDT.
Sunday will be my race. We start at 4pm, and will also be live on triathlon.org – 8am PDT, 11am EDT.

This is another video from the San Francisco Pan-America Cup. It shows the actual racing!

Not much else is going on here in London. We’re training in a 30.3m pool (33.3yards) which has made swim practice rather interesting: “Alright, 4×60.6 on a minute, followed by 4×90.9 on 1:15 right into a 363.6 on 5 minutes…” I’ve nearly died in training rides, and will likely stay on the trainer indoors the rest of the trip (except for the race of course), and the running here is littered with landmarks, statues, and plenty of other things to look at. It’s pretty fun.

Saturday was my second round of World Championship Series Triathlon. Bolstered with the confidence of someone able to swim ride and run alone for a draft-legal Pan-American Cup win a week earlier, I approached the start line with an undeniably brilliant race plan. I would swim to the front, drive the pace so as to string out the rest of the field, then ride away from the bunch in a small breakaway, and run to a finish that would make Slowtwitchers* raise their eyebrows in awe. Why would I even need a contingency plan for such a bold, and unbeatable strategy? I was so content and sure that my nerves before the race, normally quivering with anticipation, were calm as a sunflower in Kansas.

When reality sunk in I was three feet underwater near the first turn buoy. In an instant my thoughts had turned from the race to survival. I hadn’t had a dry breath in nearly 20 seconds and as 65 men swam over me I didn’t seem to have much of a chance at breathing again soon. I found myself near the back of the swim pack – a place I have very little experience with – and was quite unhappy about it. The clear water and non-combative attitudes I have experienced at the front of other big races seemed mythical in comparison to the brutal battering, blatant grabbing, and completely unnecessary aggression of the mid-pack swim.I would like very much to never be there again. A few days ago I was violently angry with the way people around me were swimming. It was unnecessary, it hurt, and it slowed down everyone involved. Now, I’ve just resolved that it’s worth swimming faster in the future. Easier said that done, but if I’m feeling off, I’ll have to remember Hamburg.

I exited the water with a small gap in front of me. I was with Mark Fretta from the USA, and Beavan Docherty of New Zealand, among others. We caught the group in front of us in a lap, then caught the leaders by the third lap. Yes, I was in the second chase group – without a contingency plan. Half way through the bike Mark Fretta was riding in front and slowing the pace. Nobody seemed to want to go around him and he looked as though he was expecting someone to break away. So I did. I got away and nobody followed. I was hoping someone would bridge up, but they just let me take the television cameras and go. I got lots of television time, but after a little more than a lap I was sucked back into a frenzy of counterattacks. A lap later Fretta took off on his own solo breakaway and I blocked for him as best I could. He quickly gained 30 seconds on us with a lap to go, then lost 10 seconds as the pack jockeyed for position.

I started the run a third of the way back in a pack of everyone. Within a lap I caught up to Mark, and lost contact with 45 men from my bike pack. Over the next lap I stopped being passed, and by the 5k I started bringing back some of the men who had blown a gasket in front of me. I finished in 41st place, and ran 32 minutes 42 seconds on the German Certified 10km run (they lengthened the course this year after being criticized for having a short run in previous years). I was 3 minutes slower than the winner, Javier Gomez.

Certainly I had hoped for a better finish. I had hoped for a career day, and I had hoped that I would run well below 32 minutes. I believe I’m capable of that, and I would love to prove it. Unfortunately, my day in Hamburg was not that day for me. If I use my swim as a barometer for my overall performance compared to my potential, then I was clearly having an off day. That said, I was bold on the bike, given my circumstances, and while it didn’t pay off, I’m glad I was willing to take the chance. It was fun to be in a solo break at a WCS race. Suicidal? Yes. But fun!

*Slowtwitchers, or STers are the community of people that follow and comment on, almost obsessively, the going-ons of the triathlon world through a community forum hosted at slowtwitch.com

I need a few hours to decompress and think about my race before I do a Hamburg Race Report. If I wrote it right now it would be laced with obscenities and insults that I probably don’t mean. Not that my 41st place is anyone else’s fault. It’s most certainly not, but right now I’m pretty pissed with myself.
In the meantime, take a look at this article in the New York Times! It’s about Aaron Scheidies and the new paratriathlon rule changes for Vision Impaired athletes. I wrote about it a couple months ago, but the NYT is a little more objective, and they included a sweet picture of Aaron and me from 2007. This is the second time I’ve been photographed in the NYT! Awesome!!

All I’ve done the past week is travel. I drove to Boulder, then I flew to San Francisco, raced, Flew to Denver, hung out in Boulder another night, drove to Colorado Springs, packed, then flew to Germany. This is not my ideal weekend, but it’s made for a few eye-rolling experiences. I’m of the opinion that if nothing goes wrong during travel, then you weren’t paying close enough attention. So with that in mind, I just had to roll my eyes after paying United Airlines $200 to abuse my bike the same way they would any other piece of luggage. Then I rolled my eyes again when the bike didn’t show up in Hamburg yesterday morning. That’s twice in less than a week that my bike has been lost. Since bad things happen in threes, I’m not expecting to have a bike in London next week either.

This is a series of interviews from before and after Saturday’s ITU Pan-America Cup Triathlon courtesy of TriCal TV.

Not everything went right today, but the important stuff did.

The race started right on time, and Brian Fleischmann and I were lined up right along the far left side of the deep water start. I was hoping we would start early since they had us lined up in 14 degree water over two minutes before the gun (and since I was number one I had an extra two minutes in the water at least). For all my nervousness about a deep water start I discovered there was nothing to worry about. I pulled away from the line quickly and met up with Tommy Zafaras (also coached by Victor Plata) around 150m into the swim. He’s fast, so I stuck on his feet until the second buoy. At that point I started having trouble following his line, and I decided it was time to push the pace anyway. I took the lead (thought apparently I was swimming a line that looked like a seismometer reading) and never looked back.

I was first out the water, and was surprised that the group behind me was strung out and I didn’t recognize anyone. I started off on the bike slowly, putting on my shoes and hoping somebody would catch up to work with me. I didn’t want to let up too much because I figured if people had to work to get up to me it would weed out anyone without the firepower to do so. One guy finally caught up, though when he did and I tuned on the gas he lasted less than half the lap before falling back.

From there I turned the 25 seconds I had out the water on the main group into 45 seconds by the end of the 3rd lap, then gave up 15 seconds and finished my solo 40k bike ride about 30 seconds up on a group of 11 that had been working to catch me. I ran like I was being hunted, eleven wolves drooling for the taste of victory if they could catch me. After the first lap (of 3) I had 27 seconds left.

On the sidelines Victor was encouraging me, “you look better than all of those guys! You’re not giving up any time! You won’t give up any time!!” Next to him was my college friend Brandon Basso yelling, “Ben! You look like a runner!!!”

Both helped. I put my head down and a lap later I had 35 seconds over the next runner, but I could see that Steve Sexton had made a move and was running away from the rest of his pack. At the final turn around Steve had closed the gap back to 27 seconds, but with only 1500 meters to go I was starting to think about the finish. I had to snap myself back into the race twice in that final stretch, reminding myself to focus on the moment, “C’mon Ben!” I told myself. “It’s not over yet, endure it.”

And I did. I arrived at finish chute with time to spare, strutted up to the line and grabbing the ribbon with the pride of a lion. This is my first win in an ITU race. Heck, it’s my first win at a legitimate pro race! And I did it the hard way! Solo for 51 kilometers!! I don’t know if it was guts or stupidity (maybe both) but it worked. My parents were there to watch, Victor was there to watch, Tracy and Brandon and Christine and Kelly all made it out to watch me race… it was so exciting! I love having friends and family there for me, and it’s even better when I get to give them a show.

As for the little things: my bike showed up from Reno this morning (huh?) but the only way to get it before the race was to ask my parents to pick it up. Then I sliced my finger nearly to the bone on a metal part of the case. (after being charged both ways I’m realizing this case was a mistake. I’ll have to go back to my homemade no-charge bike case v2.0 – which really doesn’t get charged.) Later on I struggled to get out urine so long that Victor and my dad had yo pack the bike (I haven’t looked inside yet…), and by the time awards were given out my dad was waving his watch at me trying to cut my speech short. I had to ask my mom to drive like road warrior to the Oakland airport in order to get me there at 4:57 for a 5:45 flight back to Denver. I checked in within a minute of the cutoff time, then found a CO2 cartridge in my backpack and was given secondary screening because I gave it to TSA rather than chancing it through the bag scanner. I still made it to the gate, though it wasn’t until I took my seat I felt like the race was finally over. Woohoo!

So far my action packed weekend has been going as planned. Meaning, things have gone wrong and I’m dealing with them. The first thing to go wrong was that Southwest charged me $50 for my new homemade bike case that I was hoping to not be charged for. The lady at the counter pulled out a tape measure and showed a trainee how you measure a suitcase. It came out to 69 inches, 7 inches over and she wouldn’t budge. “It’s only 30 pounds, can’t you give me a few inches leeway for being under the weight limit by so much?” No dice. “I haven’t been charged for the case before, it was designed to be small enough to avoid fees.” No dice. “You can’t just give me a break this one time?” I flashed my pearly whites the cutest way I know how, but still: No dice.

From there I was forced to remember that Denver International has extremely long security lines. They twist around past exhibits and information signs like a ride at Disney. I was glad I had arrived with plenty of time to spare.

The extra time I had allowed before my flight also made me a little surprised when my bike didn’t make it to Oakland. Southwest is normally very good about baggage, in fact, this may be the first time in dozens of flights that I’ve had to file a claim with them. Here I found one downside to flying Southwest: other airlines reimburse baggage fees when the bags don’t show up, Southwest doesn’t. I wasn’t too worried It was a direct flight; one of many direct flights from Denver, and not the last one of the day. I figured it would show up later last night, but when I called yesterday evening, there was still no knowledge of where it was.

In the meantime, I drove to Tiburon and borrowed a bike from Ian Charles. It’s a Scott road bike that’s so light weight I almost hope my bike doesn’t make it. I mean, it’s a little small, and the crank length is off, and it’s always strange riding someone else’s bike, but still, it’s a really nice bike. I rode it around for an hour last night, and if I have to use it, it’ll do the trick.

The first non-bike related problem was when I found out the swim start is a deep water start. ITU races are not normally deep water starts, and the last time I did this race they had a pontoon for us to dive off. I’m not a fan of deep water starts because with this many guys they become unnecessarily rough. People will grab and jab at each other (hopefully unintentionally) and it’s starts like this that are the reason one should wear padded goggles in a race. And if that alone won’t make the swim rough, there’s only 250 meters until the first turn buoy, so we have about 70 men who will likely be 15 or 20 men wide at the first buoy all trying to make a 120 degree turn. That’s going to be rough.

Luckily, I’m start number “1″ so I get to pick my position on the start line first. I’m going for one of the sides. I really don’t want to be in the middle when all these guys start beating at the water trying to get a grip.

So with a crazy swim, and a bike that’s not mine, I’m thankful that the run is exactly as expected. I have my K-Swiss K-Ruuz to run in, and that’s really all I need for the last leg of the race.