This season has been anything but easy. Yet, somehow, I feel the need to wear shades - my future is just so bright! Without reiterating the crap storm that I’ve been through this year (if you haven’t been reading my blog, just assume it sucked, and the long breaks between posts are usually a bad sign as well). But who ever got ahead with a negative attitude? If something’s not right, I’ll do my best to fix it.

My biggest weakness this year has been my running speed. I’ve been trying and trying to run more with the idea that more is better. If college 10k runners do 80+ miles per week, then that will make me a better runner too, right? I’ve been in this periodic function of volume, injury, depression, excitement, volume, injury… At no point am I “fast” from this cycle. I swim well enough, I can ride with anyone in the ITU (disregard Madrid where I was dropped on the final lap), but when we start running there’s just no speed there. I don’t fade, I just can’t produce the speed I need to win an ITU race from the pack. Coach Victor and I talk about this frequently, and this week he encouraged me to use my USA Triathlon high performance funding to find a running specialist to add to my coaching staff. The search is on!

I’ve been taking advice from the resident swim coach, Mike Doane (also And Pott’s coach), and I talked him into helping me with adjusting my program. Mike has a very similar approach to Victor’s, but with a swimmer-esque twist to it. Given my background, I like the way that twist looks. I’m also planning to talk to Bobby McGee (running mechanist extraordinaire and Boulder resident), and anyone else recommended to me in the Colorado area. I think the biggest gap in my current advising situation is the lack of face-time I have with my coach, so I’m definitely planning to utilize someone local.

The first thing Mike did with me this week was to encourage me to take an unneeded (but completely necessary) day off. This is definitely a swimmer practice, so I’m not entirely sure how it fits into my plan to become more of a runner - but so far I like it. Today is my first complete day off in 2010. Even when I took a “week off” in June I was running every day. It’s nice to just relax.

Tomorrow I’ll start altering my routine as I get ready for Alcatraz in two weeks, then the ITU World Championship Series Grand Final in Budapest on September 11th (my first pro World Championships! Just qualifying was a multi-year process - I’m so excited to even be on the start line!!). Just five more races in the season, it’s time to follow Matt Chrabot’s lead and get serious (after writing this he was 4th in Kitzbuhel yesterday! That’s the best American finish at a WCS race this year - bravo Matt!).

Just to add one more thing about Matt, he’s becoming a pretty interesting writer. He’s a punchy guy who doesn’t care if you love him or hate him (it’s hard to be in the middle) , and who speaks his mind. Add him to your bookmarks, the updates are few, but worth the read. You can also check out this interview.

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.

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 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 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.

I wrote a race report for Hy-Vee, but then I was sucked into a whirlwind of fun during my visit home to Seattle - and now I can’t find it. The short version is this: I swam really well, missed a $5k bonus out of the water by 5s, rode with 50 or 60 other men on the narrow bike course, had bad positioning into T2, and ran from the back of the pack up to 25th place by the end. I’m happy with it.

After the race I flew home to Seattle for a week “off”, where I was under coaches orders to “play hard”. This is not a task that I’ve ever had trouble with. I went sailing with friends for two days, I saw friends I haven’t seen all year, baked banana bread with my family (gluten free!), ran trails through muddy forests, and went rowing in a double with Mom.

The rowing was the scariest of those adventures. For a swimmer, who is perfectly willing to jump in the lake and swim, I was unjustifiably petrified of flipping the rowing shell. My mom didn’t seem nervous at all, though I think she expected me to have a little more natural talent.

Seattle’s summer starts in the end of June, and it’s fun to see all the pasty Seattleites crowding every inch of open space (all those green trees can make it hard to avoid the shade) for the full 20 hours of sunshine we had on father’s day. Or maybe summer started the day after father’s day. I can’t remember. I decided to stay in Seattle an extra week and begin my training block here. My reasoning is pretty simple: I love Seattle, and it’s nice to be around my family and friends. It’s been a really good trip, and I will be going back to Colorado refreshed and excited to be there again.

Oh yeah, how can I forget about the newest member of my family?! Carter Lamb, my sister’s first child celebrated his 7th month of life last week! I have to say, the little guy is growing on me quickly, even if seeing my sister’s eyes on a little kid brings waves of terror into my subconscious. Hopefully he doesn’t learn to torture me like she did.

I Left Madrid this morning. Right now I’m somewhere in the sky above the Eastern United States on a United Airlines flight to Chicago, where I’ll continue on to Des Moines for the Hy-Vee World Cup on Sunday.

[photo credit: ITU's Delly Carr - Taken in Madrid 2010]

The Madrid World Championship Series Triathlon went much better than my result shows, and I’m unusually ok with how things turned out. I was near the front of the swim - which I had hoped for considering my swim fitness going in - but lacked the running speed through the long transition that was required to make the breakaway group. I suffered the first lap trying to hang on to whomever I could, and found myself in a chase group that was bearing down quickly on the leaders. The third lap we caught them, and the pace eased off a bit.

Let me take a moment to talk about this bike course. I knew going in that there was a hill, but I was told it was about 60 seconds long at the most. WRONG! The very first part was about 60 seconds, but that was just long enough to make your legs start burning. Then there was a false flat, and another couple short inclines that made the total 2km climb take over 3 minutes. This was followed by a 1km steep descent, and a 2km straight false flat downhill back to transition. We had eight laps.

On the 7th lap I was toward the front of the group. I saw a couple of guys surging behind me, and tried to go with them, but my legs were fried. On the decent I was with a few motivated guys, but I could barely hold their wheels. A certain British world champion even told me to “pull you f-ing c***”, something I haven’t heard since my first pro race in 2007. I tried to pull, I really did. I even made my way to the front of the group before the hill, hoping to give myself a chance to lose ground on the incline, but it was not enough. On the final hill I found myself quite suddenly alone (aside from the fans lining the hill). I watched the men I had been riding with as they disappeared beyond the turn in front of me, and felt my legs scream as I dove deeper into lactic acid hell. I was popped. For the first time in a professional race I was dropped from a bike group. I finished the lap alone, somewhere about half way between the ten leaders and the massive chase group behind me. I started the run alone, but my legs were so tired that it didn’t take long before I was being passed by the fastest runners behind, then the not so fast runners behind. I was barely able to jog for the first 4km of the run, but then suddenly my legs recovered and I was able to pick up the pace. I stopped being passed so quickly, and eventually I even started to pass a couple of guys. I’m not saying I was going “fast”, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the last 6km were faster than the first 4. I posted the 3rd slowest run split, and finished in 38th place.

This finish was my “worst case scenario”, and yet I’m not disappointed. There was nobody on the start line that didn’t deserve to be in such a competitive race, and I played the cards I had on the day. My cycling fitness is obviously not where it should be, and that’s taking away from my ability to run fast out of T2.

Regardless, I positioned myself well on the bike, and had a tactically sound race. I didn’t fade in the heat, I’m traveling back to the states without any road rash - for the first time this season - and I have another race this weekend where I have a great opportunity to perform even better. 38th is certainly not what I had hoped for, but when there are 70 talented and fast men on the start line, 38th is always a possibility.

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I’m in Des Moines. Staying with JJ Bailey, who I met at my first mainland triathlon, the Kansas City Age Group National Championships in 2006. We started the run together and I edged him out by a hair with an effort that put me in the med tent. JJ’s house is where I stayed when I raced the Hy-Vee Triathlon in 2007. It was my first home stay in triathlon, and one I have very fond memories from. I’ll have to dig up the blog post from that trip and link back to it. If I remember correctly the giant buck’s head on the wall scared me a bit. This time, I’m simply drunk on the familiar smell of the Midwest. It’s that fertile aroma of humid air that’s drifted over thousands of miles of soil since leaving the ocean. I’m not sure what the smell is, but it reminds me of childhood trips to Missouri, and catching fireflies. I think my alarm went off 24 hours ago - it’s time for bed. I’ll figure out how to connect to the internet to post this tomorrow. Goodnight.