I’m starting off on a rapid-fire weekend! Last night I stayed with Rory in Boulder, this morning I swam with Tyler Butterfield at the outdoor 50m pool, and now, after a solid breakfast with Rory and Mojdeh, I’m on the shuttle to Denver International for a quick flight to San Francisco. There, I’ll get a ride to my hotel from Christine, put my bike together, head to Treasure Island for a bike/run workout, plus the prerace meeting at 5. Then it’s dinner with Victor and my parents, and sleep.

And if one busy day isn’t enough, tomorrow I race at 1pm, finish by 3. Drug testing, then awards (hopefully!) at 3:30, then record breaking bike packing and a quick trip to Oakland to catch a 5:45pm flight back to Denver.

I love this.

This weekend I’m racing in San Francisco. It will be my first of three weekends in a row of racing, so I’m viewing this one as a fancy, fast workout. The San Francisco Pan-America Cup is held on Treasure Island, in the middle of the Bay Bridge, and it’s a really unique and technical bike course. Despite the fact that I’m coming in tired, I’m excited, this race is going to be fun!

Here in Colorado things are going smoothly. It’s been really hot, like I talked about in my post a few days ago, so I’m looking forward to the cool weather in San Francisco. I’ve started to become possessive of swim workouts. It’s not a good thing, but I’ve been pushing the pace so frequently that when I have an off day (or someone else has a good day), I start thinking something is wrong. This morning I wore my wetsuit to get ready for Saturday (it’ll be my first wetsuit race since this race in 2008!). With a wetsuit on I thought something was wrong for a different reason: I was way too hot! Luckily, it doesn’t seem like I’ve lost my ability to get out of the suit quickly, and my new Blue 70 Helix is a pretty awesome suit. I was absolutely flying down the lane. I really like the detailing they’ve done with the arms to allow for greater feel of the water. It’s too bad winning swim practice doesn’t translate directly to winning races because with that suit on I would be the world champion!

Next week I head to Hamburg, then London, and we’ve been told that internet costs 20 euros a day, so I will likely not be blogging while I”m there. Instead, I may just repost the blogs from the last time I was in Hamburg.

I’m really tired today, despite having laid in bed for over 10 hours last night. I’m looking forward to a recovery spin and some easy running miles this afternoon. At breakfast this morning everyone else looked tired too, so at least I’m not alone.
Here are two pictures from a bbq we had yesterday at Robby’s new house.

The dog on the motorcycle is Buckley. Robby saved him from an abusive family, and now he’s the happiest dog in Colorado.

And this is Kevin Collington. He’s just happy to be here.

It’s the fourth of July, which is my favorite holiday. I like it because the weather’s nice, and I have absolutely no obligations. If I want to see family, I see family, if I want to see friends, I’ll hang out with friends – and everyone else has the same lack of obligations. It’s the perfect day. This morning I had a career day on the track. I did 10×600 with 2 minutes rest and averaged 1:40. That’s pretty good for me! I think it must have been the special kicks I was wearing from K-Swiss. These USA K-Ona’s are perfect for Independence day, or a podium. And with a run workout like that, I hope to have more opportunities to wear them!

Here’s some pictures from the pool party we had at the OTC today. I didn’t think wrestlers could swim, but check out what they CAN do!

It was one of those days. You know, where it’s 100 degrees, and you’re running intervals on a black track that’s so hot your feet start to burn through the soles. You decide to take extra rest after one of the intervals so that you can run to the far end of the soccer fields where there are sprinklers shooting cold water – pure, refreshing, revitalizing, geysers of relief from the relentless sun! – but just as you tilt your head back and leap in front of the gushing jet, the sprinklers shut off. Not so much as a stray drop of mist survives long enough to make contact with your skin. Defeated, overheated, and depleted, you go back to the black all-weather surface to suffer through the rest of the workout.

It was that kind of day.

Well, I’m back in Colorado Springs after two weeks of mostly ups, and a big down to finish off the trip. Like I mentioned in my last blog, I had a lot of fun the first week in Seattle. Then I kicked my training into high gear, put in a solid week of training leading up to my birthday last sunday. It was my “golden” birthday, meaning my age and the day of the month were the same. I turned 27 on the 27th. I had a bunch of friends over for pizza making and cake, and got to see Courtenay for the first time in well over a month.

That was a big up, but also the big down. Courtenay has been struggling with my travel and the difficulties of a boyfriend living at the training center and prioritizing an Olympic Dream over her. And I admit it. I have been so involved in training that I’ve allowed us to spend more than five of the past six months apart. Not to mention that visitor limitations at the training center make it really hard for her to visit me here. For me it was all short term. Two years until the Olympics, and perhaps I could move to Boulder before then, and what’s two years in a long term relationship? But we aren’t on the same page. She’s moving on. I’m back to being single. Not too thrilled about it, but hopefully she’ll be happier for it.

After Courtenay collected her belongings in Seattle, she came back to Colorado Springs with me for a short (2 hour) visit to collect her things from my room at the training center. Saying goodbye sucked. I think this may be the most I’ve ever mentioned my relationship (21 months of it!) on the blog, having tried to keep some level of personal-life privacy, it’s certainly weighing heavily on my mind, and the causes for the breakup are a dynamic of my lifestyle, a sacrifice that many of my peers have also made, that most people wouldn’t think of when they think of “young up-and-coming pro triathletes”.

To finish on a positive note, I came back to Colorado to find that my first batch of home-brew Kombucha is finished, and it’s delicious! Perfect timing too, since Dave’s G.T. Kombucha has been temporarily pulled from the shelves in many states, pending a liquor board review of the alcohol content. I’m pretty sure it’s negligible, but it’ll be interesting to find out if we will need to show our IDs to buy Kombucha from Wholefoods.