Ben Collins

I still haven’t written a race recap for the Portland ITU Pan-America Cup. I may just not do it. Here’s the short version, which is really the only version I have to tell:

I swam hard. I thought I was doing really well until I realized that the group I was leading on the right side was actually about 15 people behind the V that had emerged on the left. I tried to get into the mix with the lefties and (unlike Matt Chrabot who had a gutsy race) I never quite caught up to the leaders. I was around 10th or 11th out of the water. I ran though transition, mounted my bike, took about ten pedal strokes and pulled off to the side where i handed in my timing chip. As you probably know from reading the blog, my knee has been bugging me since the beginning of September. I told myself if there was any sign of pain I would drop out in hopes that extra recovery would allow me to do Scott Tinley’s Triathlon and Treasure Island. So when my knee was starting to bug me during warmup I realized that the day was likely to be short. I just wish I had a better swim.

Kevin Collington also had a great race, and his recap is worth reading. I decided not to do Tinley’s.

I found my cat this week as well. He is dead. I wrote a biography of Troy, but it’s more for me and I’m not planning to post it. I picked up Troy from the animal shelter in Harlem back in 2002 while I was a student at Columbia. He lived in a house with 14 swimmers and was the coolest cat I’ve ever had contact with. He was only 6 years old. I really loved my cat, and I miss him a lot. My family laid him to rest under the tree outside my bedroom. It was the first tree he ever climbed, though by that time he was well versed in climbing fire escapes and walking from brownstone to brownstone on ledges.

Courtenay Brown also has a cat. He’s named “Kitty” and hates Greg Remaly. Courtenay (on the right) was in Portland for Age Group Nationals and stayed in the room next to me with her friend Maija (on the left). Both are cool people. Greg retired from Triathlon is and is also not doing Tinley’s this year. Greg’s cool too.

Aaron Scheidies is staying here for the weekend. He’s a lot of fun to be around, and pretty funny. Yesterday he took a bus to University of Washington where a sorority girl (Aaron and I agree that we’ve never met a bad looking girl from Delta Gamma) read his text book aloud to help him study for the Physical Therapy Boards. He lost his wallet on the bus and was stranded in the University district with no money, no credit card, no ID and a dead cell battery.

When Aaron came home he woke me from a nap to tell me he was either going to punch me in the face or I was going to do 1 mile repeats with him on the track. I chose the track.

I heard it’s good luck to say “rabbit rabbit rabbit” as your first words of a new month. I’m not sure where that comes from, but will somebody wake me up when September ends?

I went to physical therapy today. Nothing abnormal, I got my legs loosened up – my quads are all knotted up – and then I was hooked up to e-stim. Jake (the PT) asked if I’d like a magazine, and I told him I’d rather just pass out, which I did. But it wasn’t a deep sleep, and I realized part way through that I was snoring! EW!!! Snoring is NOT COOL! Whenever I room with people they say I’m a silent sleeper, so I don’t know where this came from. Maybe it was the elevated legs, or the angle of my head. I don’t get it. I think the PT assistants were making fun of me. I would have.

I’ve also been spending a LOT of time at the Institute of New Medicine. The two acupunture / Chinese medicine specialists – Peter and William – have been a HUGE help to me this year. It’s meant to be preventative medicine, but I’ve been messing myself up enough lately to need some crisis aversion as well. Peter was seeing me for most of the year, but recently he was gone and William started seeing more of me. Chris Lieto describes Peter as Luke Skywalker, and William as Darth Vader. I would call Peter Yoda (he has words of wisdom for every possible question, and usually a book recommendation to go with it), but the William - Darth Vader is more or less spot on (William is offended by this comparison, but he can’t be Han Solo ‘cause Han was an idiot.). William puts needles in and asks if you can feel it. What he means is, “is there an electric shock running through your entire limb?” It’s awesome.

Acupuncture is like directed meditation without anyone directing it. I lay back (you can’t actually move once the needles are in) and focus on breathing. Next thing I know there will be some crazy abstract scene taking place in my mind. When Peter puts the needles in I feel rushes on energy flowing through my body. One day a giant rainbow with the texture of linoleum was flowing into my head and out through my legs. I could actually feel this stream of energy flowing through the room. When William sticks the needles in my individual parts feel alive. He’ll stick needles in my knees, ankles, arms, forehead, abdomen, or wherever he thinks they need to go. In my mind those parts light up like Rudolph’s nose and breath health into my body. The needles either act as exit points for negative energy or entry points for healing energy.

Both Peter and William get results, but it’s interesting for me to see how the two experts harness the force in their own ways. And they are experts – I feel awesome after each session and after a few sessions they can fix the worst of setbacks. It’s better than physical therapy, and I don’t snore when I pass out with needles in my face.

Is it back luck to post two days in a row after being totally inconsistent about publishing for the past couple months? Just in case I set my post to publish tomorrow, and for today I’ll just put a link to my Garmin Blog post.

From back to front:

Ruth Ann Hodel (mom)

Victor Plata (kind of a big deal)

Ben Collins (possessor of posse)

So what are you doing for the long weekend? A hike? A scenic bike ride? An awesome music festival that used to be the highlight of your year when you were a teenager, but has since gone up in price by three-fold and now seems like way too much effort for what it’s worth? (That’s a reference to Seattle Bumbershoot Festival, which was the four day end-of-summer extravaganza for everyone that started school the following Tuesday in Seattle).

I have no desire to go out this weekend. If anyone wants to hang out, they can come over to my house. They just have to leave by 8pm so I can get ready for bed. Do I sound like a senior citizen? Believe it or not, I’m actually enjoying myself the past week and a half that Victor Plata has been here. Just training with somebody is a lot more enjoyable than my normal athletic solitude. Brian Davis has been showing up to some of our swim workouts, as well, and it seems his broken clavicle has finally healed, because I can’t seem to drop him off my feet.

I’m learning a lot. My reading list (which I have been working to shrink down since Peter and William at the institute of new medicine let me borrow a stack of books on eastern medicine) has suddenly grown to the largest it has been since I was taking classes a year ago. This is a good thing, because now I have a good excuse for why I haven’t read anybody else’s blog in weeks.

Ok, that’s my update, now for a story.

Black Barley. This is a nickname for something that should be called, "takes forever to cook and will make tomorrow suck." My dad brought this product home one day last week and seemed anxious  to try it. He made chicken thighs and black barley. The cooking process started at 5:30 and it was estimated that food would be ready at 6:30. At 7:30 the grain was still a little more chewy than any of us would like, but we just decided that must be how it’s supposed to be. I was starving, and Victor and I both had substantial portions.

Fast forward to swim practice. I had to get out twice. I was happy we rode on the trainers so I had a bathroom nearby, and when I went for a short run I couldn’t believe how good the bushes looked. I’m just glad Big Leaf Maples are indigenous to the Northwest because their leaves are quite soft.

There are certain people that have criticized me for eating a lot of fibrous foods, and it’s true that I really enjoy cooking greens like Kale, Collards, Chard and Mustard Greens. I even like bran cereal and grape nuts, but I have never had anything quite as disruptive to my day as black barley.

Tuesday I had this bright idea that after a long hard workout I would go hang out with a friend in a boat on Lake Washington. There’s not a lot of activity involved in this, but I did have to go to the gas station, help carry gas tanks, help prep the boat, dive in the lake, sit in a hot tub… you get the point. It was fun. Victor, meanwhile, had done similar training in the morning, but had spent his day relaxing, self-massaging, eating, drinking water… you get the idea.

When I got home he asked me how I felt, and I answered honestly, “great.” The next morning however, I was dragging my butt. Everything was supposed to be easy, but even the easy swim hurt. Swimming doesn’t hurt me! I’m not supposed to hurt on an easy swim! We finished out workouts and Victor asked how I felt. I answered honestly, “horrible.”

That was my first “learn from experience” lesson from my new coach. The lesson is": when you’re just getting used to a new training program, get as much recovery as you can.” and more importantly, “recovery is recovery.” Which is a little different than my previous philosophy, “if it doesn’t hurt, it must be recovery.”

Wednesday I took a slightly different tactic. After telling Victor how I felt I did my normal eating stretching and DVD watching routine, and kept my feet up, and ate more food, and took a nap. This morning I felt awesome. I got up on the first beep of my alarm, I had one of the best swim workouts of the season, and I was smiling through it all. I even got to beat up Victor on the bike, which was great fun.

Tomorrow I’ll feel great because I recovered today. I learned my lesson.

I’m currently watching the Democratic National Convention. C-Span is way more tolerable than the other channels because there is no commentator. I don’t understand why they pay people to talk about nothing during the breaks. They’re just talking heads. I’d rather watch Superbowl commercials.

In January Victor Plata (far right back row) invited me to race in Brazil with him and Matt Chrabot. I didn’t really know either of them, but over the course of five days in South America we were able to get to know each other pretty well. Victor has been racing ITU for 10 years, and had a wealth of knowledge and stories. Speaking to him was like flipping through an encyclopedia of triathlon. When I came home we stayed in touch, on-and-off. So in June when Victor graduated from Law School and told me he was going to start coaching – it got me thinking. I get along very well with Dr. Mike, and I was very successful under his instructions, but I am also eager to learn from someone who has actually done the races I’m going to, and who has succeeded at the level I want to be at. It was a sad farewell, but I’m excited for Victor to take over as the new CEO of bc.org. (which is my dorky way of saying he’s my new coach)

I started working with Coach Plata this week. He arrived in Seattle Wednesday night to show me in person how to train under him. This week was equal to my highest mileage week for running ever, and my highest volume week in the pool since I was in college. I’m totally wiped. I feel good, and I’m sleeping gloriously, but I also have no desire to up my social schedule. Actually, I haven’t even seen my friends in Seattle yet, and I was gone for most of the past three months.

Ugh I have to get work done, but I’m tired.

Saturday was the USA Triathlon National Junior Championships, held here in Colorado Springs.

This is Peter Mallett and me working hard out on the course. I don’t want to say the event wouldn’t have happened without us, but it certainly wouldn’t have been us much fun.

This is the Junior Girls (women?) rounding the final swim buoy. The leader was Lauren Goldstein-Kral by about 30 seconds. She’s been in this camp at the Olympic Training Center with me, and I expected this type of performance after seeing her swim a 19:30 1500m time trial one morning. She had only been at altitude for a week.

This is Lauren starting the run with a 50 second lead over the next person.

This is Kate Ross, 50 seconds behind Lauren. She’s also part of the Elite Development Camp here in Colorado Springs. She had a group on the bike, and they still lost 20 seconds to Lauren’s awesome TT abilities.

Kate, however, can run like a cheetah. She took down Lauren in the first 5k and extended her lead by (as my roommate Kevin Collington says), “a shit ton.” (He also asked me to add in that a “shit ton” is the time equivalent to a ton of bovine manure, or about a minute and fifty seconds.)

Here’s Kevin Collington helping to clean up some broken glass in the hallway after an unnamed triathlete knocked a picture off the wall. I don’t want to say the picture wouldn’t have fallen without kevin, but it certainly wouldn’t have been as much fun.

That’s it for now.

Really really good. The Olympic Training center has a cafeteria that serves a huge selection of healthy foods. It’s open from 7am until 9pm, so pretty much any time I want to eat. I’ve actually decided the only way to do justice to the oasis of culinary goodness that is the training center’s Caf’ is to describe it though a story.

The night I arrived at the OTC I was pretty hungry. I had been traveling for ten hours on nothing but diet sprite and a chef salad. It was 11pm, and the cafeteria was closed. At night there are ample supplies of cereal, instant oat meal and fruit, so I grabbed a bowl of raisin bran before heading to my room. By the time morning came around I was ravenous. I headed to the Caf’ and grabbed a tray. I started at the entry end of the lineup and grabbed yogurt and fruit, passed the bagels and bread (they have all sorts of stuff to put on it) then poured a small bowl of oatmeal (they always have two kinds of hot cereal, usually steel cut oats and either grits or cream of wheat). Next I grabbed some pancakes with blueberry syrup, plus a couple slices of bacon. My plate was piled up pretty high by the time my eyes fell on the omelette station. I needed to clear space, and quick, so I sat down near a big screen TV and watched the Tour De France coverage.

The omelette station is awesome. Flower is the woman who works there most mornings, and she learned my name after one visit. Now I walk into the Caf’ and she says, “hi Ben, how are you feeling?” (To which I have yet to respond with anything but, “tired”.)

Also on the breakfast menu is a cereal bar (including All-Bran, a few of the Kashi brand cereals, and Low-Fat Granola, which are some of my favorites).

And all that is just the first meal of the day.

Lunch is usually the best meal served. There’s almost always a theme – either Asian or Mexican – plus some standard American and European grub, and the food is always very different. I’ve had chicken Caesar wraps, sushi, tacos, enchiladas, roast pork, bbq ribs, hamburgers, steak, all kinds of grains, fresh veggies, grilled veggies, steamed veggies, and so on.

Dinner is like lunch, but from my experience not quite as good. Always different though.

The two highlights of the Caf’, however, are the grill (slash omelette bar), and the dessert bar. The grill always has grilled cheese, hamburgers (or veggie or turkey or chicken), sweet potato fries (so good), plus a daily special like steak sub sandwich or beef wraps, or stir fry.

The dessert bar is killer. everything baked here is awesome, from the breakfast muffins to the chocolate cake and pie. There’s also low-fat soft serve, yogurt, sorbet and ice cream. I try to limit my dessert intake, but sometimes it’s hard to do. Tonight, for instance, there was coffee cake with blueberries that went really well with my glass of milk, and last night the low-fat chocolate cake and caramel swirl ice cream was begging to be tried.

The last thing I’ll mention is the nutrition labels. They have them on everything in the Caf’. You can make count calories if you want, or make decisions between the beef burger and the turkey burger (the beef is actually lower in fat). Also, when you grab dessert, you know just what the damage is. They even have a sign next to the ice cream that says, “Every athlete has a dream, every choice makes a difference.”

Normally my parents will call me when I’m away from home and tell me about all the wonderful food they’ve had at home. It’s their way of making me a little anxious to come home (and sometimes it works), but on this trip, I could care less. My dad starts describing some salmon dish with veggies, or my mom talks about cookies she bakes and my mind starts wondering. I just don’t care. Food is completely taken care of here. I don’t have to give it a second thought.

(I would totally take pictures of my food and post it if I had a cable for my camera. But I don’t. The picture of the eating area above is all I could find online)

I’ve been in oxygen debt the past two weeks. Today is my 13th day in Colorado Springs, and I really do feel almost normal. The past 12 days, however, have been a bit of a blur. In order to put in the intensity that this camp requires and adapt to the climate I’ve pretty much done nothing besides train eat and sleep. I am a firm believer that it’s the really abnormal things that make the best stories, and so far my time in Colorado Springs blurs together in one swimming biking running eating sleeping experience. What does make a good story, however, is a description of the resident athlete lifestyle, which is pretty abnormal. For those of us staying here it may be a blur, but this is nothing like the rest of the world.

The pool is what I remember most from my visit to the Olympic Training Center as a teenager. It’s an indoor 50m x 25m pool. There are ten lanes, and each has a digital clock of its own (I’ve never actually seen it set up for short course like it is in the picture here). When teams practice here they can program the workouts into a computer and each lane will have a clock set to its individual sendoffs. So say the set is 10×500m and three lanes are on six minutes and three lanes are on seven minutes. The clocks will put up a 10 and then count down from 6 minutes or 7 minutes, and then count down until you have none left. It really takes a lot of mental effort away from the workout, but since swimming is pretty repetitive anyway, this may not be a good thing.

When we’re at the pool we share it with the junior national synchronized swimming team. They play music on the underwater speakers and have their coach saying 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3… and so on for pretty much the entire time we’re in the water. I try to ignore it and get my own song stuck in my head (they play the same one over and over and over…), and it is less obnoxious than you would think. What was obnoxious, however, was walking to my room last night and hearing the synchro girls gathered in a room together listening to the same song and all counting together: “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2…” I had a strong urge to burst into the room and yell, “NINE!”

The pool also has some great filming equipment, which we’ve barely used. I am working hard to improve my stroke efficiency, and we’ve done a little video work with it which helped. I’m hoping to get a few more pointers before I leave.

I was rooming with Greg Billington and John Dahlz, but was moved upstairs into another room with Kevin Collington and Jeremy Gimlour. Kevin was the 2007 Colligiate National Champion, while Jeremy is from the UK and has yet to switch from the British Federation. He’s hoping to get into college in the US, and his top choice is…

…(wait for it)…. 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY!!!! GO LIONS!!! GO BLUE!!!!

I love my alma mater.

Jeremy left yesterday, and was replaced today by Peter Mallet, who races for Riptide Multisport in Denver. I haven’t gotten to know Peter yet because we’ve both spent the day napping and training separately.

I wish I had some dirt on these guys that I could write about, but pretty much everyone here is awesome. We eat tons of food, we watch movies at night, we take power naps when we get a chance, we all have fancy bikes (my Beyond Fabrications is definitely the nicest, though the new SRAM Red groupo looks pretty awesome compared to my Dura-Ace setup.), and we all like to stand in ice water every day (I’ll probably write more about that when I post about the running here).