In Mexico I stayed in a condo with Matt Chrabot. This year was his second win at the Huatulco World Cup, and he’s been on the podium there three of the last four years. If anyone knows how to race well in Huatulco it’s Matt, and staying with him was a great opportunity to learn a little from one of my most successful peers.

Even though Matt lives across the hall from me, we have different coaches and we rarely train together. And that’s just the way it is at the Olympic Training Center. There are about 15 athletes training out of the center in Colorado Springs, but none of us train together on any regular basis. It’s not any kind of animosity between the athletes, we all get along pretty well, it’s a mix of us having different coaches that never talk, and then once the season starts our training priorities are just different. It’s something that USAT has been working to fix, but we won’t see any real change in the structure of the resident program until after London.

In Huatulco, however, Matt and I were on the same plan. Even with different coaches our training objectives in the days leading up to the race were identical. We wanted to practice the hill, and get used to the heat. Even the water was warm in Huatulco, so we did a hard swim workout three days before the race to get used to working hard in warm water. Everything we did meshed up, and it was fun to have a training partner for the week.

We were in a condo, so we had a full kitchen and plenty of space. It was actually a really cool setup because the condominium was brand new, and the two of us were one of just two rooms being rented while we were there. We basically had an entire hotel staff just waiting around for us. We made ourselves omelets and sandwiches during the day then went to the town square for dinner. We found this hole-in-the-wall just off from the main tourist area. It was a little restaurant run by a family in the back yard of their house. They grilled all the food right in front of us, served us homemade lemonade (with mint and cucumber!) and charged us half what we would have paid for lower quality food elsewhere.

Our setup was not conducive to socializing, so the two of us ended up having an inordinate amount of down time, despite getting in everything we wanted to do.  It was by far the best accommodations I’ve had in Huatulco in the three years I’ve done the race, and it was all thanks to Matt’s planning.

….I need to put in an aside here, I’m on an airplane watching Hawaii 5-0 and they just interrogated a guy who was helping triathletes blood dope. I’m not a fan of the image their creating of triathletes…

The whole experience with Matt made me wonder why we’ve never been able to work out the obstacles of training together. We both like group training, but we both stubbornly insist on having our own coaches (for good reason, at this level you really do need a coach who optimizes your schedule for your own individual needs). USAT played with the idea of having mandatory runs and bikes during the week, but the older guys complained and it never happened.

…Now the TV is showing these two triathletes training together in an endless pool at a waterfront house in Kahala, which is probably a 10 million dollar home. That’s probably a more realistic impression of a triathlete, right?…

Anyway, it’s the off-season now. Matt finishes in a few weeks, and over the winter we’ll hit up the fire roads together on our cross bikes. Maybe next year our schedules will match up for more than a few days in Mexico.

…And now they’re showing footage of a race start at Ala Moana Beach Park.  I just saw my former roommate Tai Blechta! That is so cool! They got real triathletes! Now if only they weren’t showing two people in aero helmets climbing the side of a building to steal money from a bank vault…

What was I talking about? This show is distracting…

This weekend is the Hy-Vee Triathlon. I’m stoked. This race, in my mind, is the biggest race in the sport. There’s an unprecedented one million dollar prize purse, including ten $5150 primes, and a $151500 first place prize. Only 30 men were invited, and I’m lucky to be one of those. The race will be near the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines, which is a beautiful place for a showcase event like this. I’m excited to see what I can do against the strongest non-drafting short course field ever assembled.

Next in my list of non-sequitors, I did an interview for Andrew Starykowicz’ site. The short version: pursue an education and work hard.

Finally, my old swim coach Kyle Johnson has moved from the swimming world to the triathlon world. If I were in Seattle, he would be my full time coach. He’s not a swim specialist, he’s an athlete specialist. He just seems to get how the body should move and how to get people to move as efficiently as possible. My best seasons in swimming were while swimming for Kyle. If you’re in the Seattle area, you can get a taste for what I’m talking about at a swim clinic coming up the third weekend in September. Kyle is teaming up with Milt Nelms (he teaches guys like Ian Thorpe to swim better) for two days of making you a better swimmer. For more info, check out this brochure. I highly recommend it. (For myself I pay Kyle over $100 an hour for swim instruction, this clinic is definitely worth the price).

That’s it for now. I’ll leave you with a pretty picture. It’s pretty because Mat Steinmetz at Retul in Boulder made my position look (and feel) pretty much perfect.

I just signed up for two more races in May: 5150 New Orleans on May 15th and the Capitol of Texas Triathlon (CapTex) on May 30th. It’s going to be an awesome month! Training is going very well, the weather is getting nicer, I don’t seem to be allergic to anything in Colorado (a clear nose in May is a delightful change of pace from Washington), and I don’t have to travel over an ocean any time soon. Life is good!

Here’s some photographs of the past couple months. (Just click on the image to see a bigger, uncropped version.) It’s been a nice Spring so far.


View Larger Map
This Map with Route Data was created using a Garmin Forerunner and TrainingPeaks.com, and exported into Google Maps. You can zoom and pan and view the course in great detail.

Sunday I raced the Saint Anthony’s Triahtlon. It’s one of the oldest, most historical professional triathlon races in the world with 28 years behind it. The race was run as well as any race I’ve been to, and this is certainly going to remain part of my calendar in years to come. The start list was intimidating, to say the least, but I went into Sunday’s effort with very little stress, and a insatiable hunger to prove that what I did in South Beach and Ishigaki were not indicative of my fitness and athleticism. I was looking at Olympic medalists, 3-time Olympians, World Championship Series medalists, and instead of being scared I was just excited to see if I could give them a solid race. And I did! I was 5th, behind Filip Ospaly (2010 lifetime Fitness Series winner), Matt Reed, Cameron Dye, and Stewart Hayes. I worked my butt off for it, and I had the best race I could have on the day.

The swim was the only major disappointment of the day. Saint Anthony’s Triahtlon has had some trouble in recent years with the choppiness of the swim course, so when the winds were blowing on race morning they played it safe and moved the swim to a more protected area. This also shortened the course to about an 800 meters swim. You can see in the map I posted the line I took. It was supposed to be a trapezoidal course, but at the end I swam straight in and ran up the beach. The run to T1 was probably longer than the swim itself, and the entry was very shallow and not great for short legged guys like me. I lost a lot of time going to the first buoy and was 7th out of the water with a gap in front of me that Cameron Dye capitalized on in making a break for it early.

The bike was flat and scenic, taking us through the neighborhoods of St. Petersburg, Florida. The roads were smooth, clean, and closed to traffic with plenty of police keeping us safe. I rode hard trying to get away from a large group of riders including Potts, Gimmel, Docherty, Reed, Ospaly, Hayes, and a few other intimidating names. It didn’t work, and I only ended up with about 15 seconds on those guys at T2. I started the run with Matt Reed with a 90 second deficit to Cameron Dye. Reed dropped me from his heels heels toward the end of the first mile. Ospaly came by me soon after that and caught up to Reed. The two of them eventually caught and passed Dye and Ospaly took Reed in the final stretch. While I was suffering in the middle third Stuart Hayes came by with a definitive surge. In the last third of the run I came back to life a bit and tried to close in on Hayes. He was hurting as much as I was, but he kept the gap he’d created taking fourth, while I held off a menacing Potts, Gimmel, Matthews (a.k.a. Barny) and Docherty who were all right behind me. It was a fast hard race, and the most fun I’ve had racing all year.

Now, here’s the graph (click on it for a larger view):

The horizontal axis is timing the point. The 20k bike split is an estimate, there was no timing chip, but since there were two timing points on the run I wanted the bike portion to have at least as much horizontal space as the run. The vertical axis is the time gap from the winner, Filip Ospaly. Negative values indicate a lead over Ospaly, positive values indicate a deficit. An intersection point between two lines indicates the estimated point when those two competitors changed positions.

Since I’ve arrived in Japan there hasn’t been much going on. I sleep a lot. I eat when I should. I train as much as I need to. The rest of the time I’ve just been sitting around, chatting with people, refreshing my inbox to see if the ITU has finally made their decision of whether or not to hold the Yokohama World Championship race in four weeks, or if USA Triathlon has decided yet if they’ll be sending me to the Monterrey World Cup in just three. It’s low stress to the extreme, which is a really nice change of pace from filling out insurance claims, maxing out credit cards, and the other chores of post-theft reestablishment of stuff.

My favorite part of being in Ishigaki is definitely the cycling. The people are quite friendly, and the traffic is light. The roads are pristine and the scenery is endlessly engrossing. My first ride on Wednesday reminded me that I had intended to stay an extra day this year so that I could be a tourist. I’ve been about a third of the way around the island, and I really want to see the rest of it, but I let my budget decide my return date so the tourism will have to wait until next year.

There has been a bit of translational humor, which can almost be expected in a place like Japan where the alphabet and language is so different from English. Like when Steve Sexton and I asked the front desk where we could find a simple meal for relatively little cash they handed us their “English” map of the town and pointed to a place called “Banira Deri”. I told Steve that it was probably a deli (with an ‘L’), which he laughed at and I expected to be true. Unfortunately, most of the landmarks on the English map did not have English signs, so it was hard to identify whether places like “Banana Café” we were supposed to pass were really there. When we did arrive to the street where the “Banira Deri” was supposed to be we found two restaurants – both looked appealing – but neither with the sign we were looking for. The first one had a sign in English, but since it didn’t match our map we assumed it was the second store. It was after browsing both menus that I looked up at the first sign and realized that “Banira Deri” was a double translation of “Vanilla Deli” (first to Japanese characters, then back to English). The food was great.

We swim in a 50m pool at the Ishigaki Sports complex, which also boasts a huge gym, a baseball field and a track and field center. The only thing missing is a velodrome. This is where I did all of my swimming the past few days and most of my running. I’m sure there are plenty of dirt paths on this island, but I haven’t found them, so I just lingered around the track to enjoy the grass and soft surface.

Aside from the food – which has been low protein, high-carb with a very un-western palate – and the training, I’ve been a pretty lame tourist. I figured out how to watch Netflix’s live stream by using a proxy server back home (it won’t stream to IPs outside the US), which has provided some entertainment. I haven’t figured out how to get USAT’s Normatec to work without the voltage converter (they bought a 220 volt Norma, so places like Japan and the United States require us to use a voltage converter to step it up from 110 volts) that was left at home thinking it wouldn’t be needed in Australia last week.

As far as the race goes, I’m excited. We came a long way for this, so I’m not leaving anything on the course. Besides, I have some pent up energy from my anticlimactic participatory experience last weekend at South Beach. I’ll take luck, but all I really need to do (in the crass words of Rory) is “not [mess] up.”

View Larger Map

I thought the Maloolaba graph was cool enough that I went back to Clermont – which was a stereotypically boring race with no separation in the swim and one giant pack on the bike – and made a graph. Next to Maloolaba it’s obvious why I like courses that challenge the athletes on the swim and bike. This graph shows the classic “runners race” that is the triathlon equivalent of a flat sprint stage in cycling.

I know I should post a race report before I talk about the day after, but this is important. And for the curious folks, I was 3rd at Miami International Triathlon. Full race report to come.

Today was going to be a really good day, but that didn’t pan out. After yesterday’s racing and sailing and general enjoyment of the day, I was pretty motivated to get right back to training. My plan was to get up early, drive to Key Biscayne where I could run, ride my bike, and finish with an ocean swim. After that I as going to check out this little fish shack in the state park that was recommended by my friend Ileana (who’s family I’ve been staying with). That all would have served as a pretty good basis for a blog, but I think what actually happened might make for an even better story (better meaning more entertaining).

I did wake up early. I packed my backpack with clothing, Powerbars and sunscreen for the adventure and put my bike in the trunk of the rental car. Then I drove to Key Biscayne for the run. Unfortunately, the traffic in Miami is terrible, so I was already planning to cu tout the fish shack before I even started my run. I lathered on the sunblock and went exploring on the trail. It was hard to get my legs moving for sure, but the run was really pretty. The wind was blowing and it’s the first day I’ve been able to smell since I came down with a cold over a week ago. It ended up taking me almost 50 minutes to run six miles because on top of being sluggish I kept stopping to look at the scenery and take big breaths of fresh air.

Satisfied with my first workout I ran back to the rental, but when I approached I noticed that the trunk was popped. Adrenaline shot through me, and when I lifted the trunk my fears were realized. My bike was gone. I went to the driver’s door; still locked. I opened it and saw that the glove compartment and center console were open. My Rudy Project glasses were gone. Then I saw the little rear window was shattered and there was glass all over the floor. I knew I needed to call the police, but my backpack was gone too, along with my wallet, my cell phone and any hope that this was some kind of prank.

I flagged down a police officer from the highway and he called another unit. Yesterday alone there were 26 break-ins on Key Biscayne, he told me. I wanted to say, “great job!” but he was being really nice, and it’s the burglars who suck. A detective came, finger printed my car, and another officer called the office and had someone try to locate my phone with the GPS signal. The phone was turned off already. I called my mom and asked if she could contact credit card companies for me to report them stolen, and I listed all the things that were missing from my car:

• Black Beyond Fabrications Blink Time Trial Bike with pink bencollins.org decals and K-Swiss stickers.
• A Zipp 900 clincher disk
• 404 clincher front wheel
• Northwave size 43 triathlon shoes
• A Dura-Ace crankset with SRM
• Shimano Dura-Ace time trial groupo with Vision aerobars
• Profile Design Aero-waterbottle (I just bought that Saturday too!)
• Three Powerbars (banana, cookies and cream, and peanut butter)
• Two bike water bottles
• A TYR backpack with:
  • iPhone
  • Wallet ($30, drivers license, credit cards, health insurance, and some other membership cards)
  • USA Triathlon Team Cycling Kit
  • Blue Seventy swim brief and goggles
  • Rudy Project Fluo Green Noyz sunglasses with ImpactX Photochromic Grey lenses
  • A Garmin Edge 800 with North American maps

What they left:

• A Rudy Project Wingspan Aero-Helmet (pink)
• A half-full bottle of Scape 2x Sunblock (SPF 50)

They took a few prints, but it wasn’t very promising. After everything was finished with the police officers I decided to bag the swim (no suit anyway) and head back home to shower, try to call my parents and figure out how to get through TSA without any identification.

Eventually I get money from the bank (another giant hassle that I won’t get into) and I head back to Ileana’s house where her brother is just heading out the door. I give him the short version and he hands me all the cash from his wallet and says to take it just in case. Then he tells me, “Ben, if you can fix it with money, then it’s not a real problem.” Coming from a guy whose family has seen much worse than some stolen equipment, it put things into perspective. I tried to relax, thinking that if I didn’t I was likely to do something else dumb. By now I’m feeling rushed to get to the airport in time to deal with TSA, so I gather my empty bike box, throw everything into a suitcase, realize I don’t have time for a shower, scarf some leftovers and pile it all into the car. As I’m walking out the door the phone rings and I hear the answering machine go on and it’s Ileana hoping to speak to me. She says, “Ben, I know you’re stressed but you need to drive very carefully to the airport. Is there anything I can do to help?” As I’m talking to her I’m standing in the pantry of her parent’s house scarfing down cookies as a pure stress reaction (and by now I’m completely starving, having not eaten anything yet today). I tell her to call my mom and just let my mom know that there are people in Miami taking care of me and so that my mom knows someone to call in Miami if she doesn’t hear from me. Then I hang up, lock the door, and drive to the airport. Advantage was easy, I filled out an incident report, gave the police report number, described what happened and hand in my key. Right then a manager comes out and asks, “are you Ben? I have someone on the phone for you.” It’s my mom. She’s found a photocopy of my birth certificate, passport and drivers license, and she’s faxing it to Advantage so that I can take it with me to TSA (my mom is awesome). I wait a couple minutes, get the fax, then head to the airport (by now I have barely an hour before my flight).

At the Delta check in the agents see my fax, along with my OTC photo ID and they check me right in. TSA is even easier, I just had to step to the side for a minute while a supervisor came, talk a bit about triathlon (what are the distances? How long does that take? Is that a full triathlon?). They complimented me on my resourcefulness, but my mom totally saved the day. Again.

Now, if you know anyone in Miami, please tell them to be on the lookout for my bike. Spread the word to facebook, twitter. Any help is appreciated. I race again in three weeks, so I need a time trial bike ASAP!

I’m staying with Ileana Rodriguez’s family in Miami (She’s the paralympic swimmer that broke the 200 breast American record by 36 seconds a couple months ago). They’re awesome, I haven’t stopped laughing the whole trip. I had a cold when I left Colorado, but it’s hard to feel sick when you’re around so many fun people.

Every night we get together for a family dinner, which has been my chance to learn Cuban culture, and her parent’s chance to practice English. Ileana’s mom is an amazing cook. She’s making Cuban food every night, which is basically rice with stuff on it. Not spicy, just flavorful. It’s perfect food before a race.

A race! I race Miami International Triathlon tomorrow morning! It’s gonna be a super fast course, with only a few risers over the causeway, and no turns without purpose. It’ll be interesting to see how bike superstars Andrew Yoder and Chris Lieto manage the bike portion. Those guys are super dialed in on their Treks and typically put a good amount of time on the rest of the folks. Then there’s the run, Chrabot and Docherty are the best runners in the field, and they’re not so shabby on the bike either. As for swimmers, Kyle Leto, Brian Fleischmann and Cam Dye are all here, so there’s no question that the swim will be red hot.

I can’t wait to mix it up with everyone tomorrow.

A friend of mine just sent me the email below. He copy pasted the header of the results for the boys 15-18 100 yard backstroke at this weekend’s Northwest Age Group Regional Championships. To clarify my surprise, backstroke was definitely not my strength.

Event 12  Boys 15-18 100 Yard Backstroke
==============================

====================================
NWAGR: ! 53.58  3/23/2001 Ben Collins, SSEA-PN
58.59  NWAG 2011 NW Section AG
Name            Age Team                 Seed    Prelims
==================================================================
=== Preliminaries === 

1 Thorderson, Lar  17 Kalispell Aquati    56.59      55.02 qNWAG
26.22        55.02 (28.80)

———–

I wonder if I have any other records that I don’t know about.

UPDATE:

I DO I DO!! I got another email today with a record that makes more sense:

Event 114 Boys 13-18 500 Yard Freestyle
===============================================================================
13 NWAGR: 4:49.18 3/19/2004 Clinton W Stipek, TACOMA
14 NWAGR: 4:41.28 3/1/1998 BEN COLLINS, SSEA-PN
15-18 NWAGR: 4:39.19 3/21/2003 Ben E Bruce, KING – PN
5:27.59 13 NWAG 2011 NW Section AG
5:14.09 14 NWAG 2011 NW Section AG
5:05.29 15-18 NWAG 2011 NW Section AG

From 1998? That’s half my life ago!

Columbia Men’s Swimming and Diving took third at Ivy League Championships over the weekend. Harvard and Princeton have had a lock on the top two for the past 30 years, but Columbia took their fair share of events, including the 400 free relay (video below). Harvard had to win the last relay in order to beat Princeton, but Columbia crushed the field. This video makes me miss college swimming (it also makes me glad I was never in the stands listening to our parents – that would have made me WAY more nervous!). Also, my split on the 400 free relay my senior year (with a rolling start) was a 45 something, which would have been almost a second slower than anyone on this team. These guys are fast!