It’s one week until Olympic Trials in San Diego. If you’re paying attention, you may have noticed that I’m not on the start list. A lot of people are paying attention, so I figured I would post a quick explanation of what’s going on, how the situation came to be, and what I hope to happen in the next week that will ensure I get to start the race.

Prior to the release of the San Diego start list, I was operating under the assumption that the International Triathlon Union (ITU) would be creating the start list according to the 2011 World Championship Series results. Under this method they would take the top 30 athletes interested in racing in San Diego according to their ranking on the WCS results from 2011. This was the assumption that I made based on information received from USA Triathlon, as well as the fact that the ITU website listed the 2011 rankings as their most current WCS rankings. The start list for these races is filled by taking the first 30 from the WCS rankings, then filling the remainder from the ITU points list, which is a point ranking that reflects all ITU races and extends from year to year. Last year I did very few races that contribute to the WCS ranking, so I was always planning to get in as one of the 40 athletes selected from the ITU points list. I raced early in the year and got my ranking up to the 40′s. This, I felt was high enough to ensure a start in San Diego so I stopped racing and focused on training. USAT seemed to be thinking along the same lines and they affirmed my decision. By the time the start list was created my rank had slipped ot the 60′s, but with 70 athletes on the start line and not all of the top 70 athletes in the world asking for a start it seemed safe that I would get in.

Wrong.

Instead of using the 2011 WCS rankings, the ITU chose to use the 2012 rankings. How can they use a ranking from a series that hasn’t started? Well, last year there was a race in Yokohama, Japan, which was postponed because of the tsunami. It was held a week or two after the World Championships in Beijing and at the last minute they decided to count the points toward the 2012 series, instead of putting them into the 2011 series post-finale. Now, the issue with that is that many of the top athletes didn’t race in Yokohama. Some were protesting holding a race in questionable waters, but most were just done racing after Beijing because they were ranked high enough not to need to race anymore. So while the top 30 on the ITU points list is almost identical to the top 30 on the 2011 WCS rankings, The top 30 finishers in Yokohama are very different from the top 30 on the points list.

What all that means is that instead of getting in as the first 30 from the WCS rankings, the top athletes in San Diego got in as the next 40, off the ITU Points list. The WCS Rankings drew in some athletes with very low ITU Points List rankings (as high as 180th). So the athletes chosen for San Diego were very different than expected, and the easiest way to get in would have been to race in Yokohama. It turns out I wouldn’t have even needed a very good result in Yokohama to get in to San Diego because not all of the top 30 finishers in Yokohama signed up for San Diego. Regardless, I was injured at that time, so I couldn’t have raced had I known they were going to use the race as the primary qualifier for San Diego.

Knowing that Yokohama was being used as the primary qualifier for San Diego would have changed my approach this spring, however. I could have race another continental cup and had my ITU Points LIst ranking back in the 30′s or 40′s at the time the list was created. It would have been pretty actually. I already have a Brazilian Visa and there were two races in Brazil after I got back from Mooloolaba.

Instead, I found myself in 10th on the wait list when the start list was created. As of Friday, I’m 4th on the wait list. Greg Billington is 1st on the wait list which means when I roll on I’ll be the eighth and final American.

Notice I say “when”. It’s only a week out, but I’m planning to race. I’m in San Diego now, I’m ready to race and when four people on that start list drop out – for whatever reason – I’ll be ready to go. The meeting is Wednesday, if anyone is missing, I’ll be there to take their spot. Hopefully the list rolls a bit more after this weekend. I’d like to know for sure that I’m racing as soon as possible, but I’m confident that it will move and I will get to race. So confident that I’ve invited a posse of friends and family to come watch. I don’t intend to have the biggest cheering section at the event without someone to cheer for.

I went back to South Beach for the 4th time this year. I really like the Nautica South Beach Triathlon, which is why I’ve raced there all but one of the five years it’s been held. This year was a bit of last minute planning. I raced in the Mooloolaba World Cup the last weekend in March, giving me only a week between races that are completely around the world from each other. In 2009 I did the same double, so I knew going into it how much it would suck. Still, with about a week to go before South Beach I just couldn’t justify to myself not going to such a great race and I bought tickets. This time, instead of flying straight from Australia to Florida, I went back to the OTC in Colorado for four days, then flew to Miami two days before the race. That was a better plan than spending a full week trying to train in metropolitan Miami.

The race conditions were perfect. The off-shore breeze provided for flat, clear water like I’ve never seen in Miami. And since we started before the sun came over the horizon it was still rather cool during the race (though seriously humid). I felt flat on the swim and was suffering just to stay on Cameron Dye’s feet. Meanwhile, Javier Gomez (this guy has been ITU World Champion how many times!?) and Dustin McClarty (taker of swim primes) were out of the water 40 seconds ahead of us. On the bike I didn’t know what to expect. I just rode hard. In five minutes I caught Gomez and McClarty, though Bevan Docherty (who just ran down Lance Armstrong at the Panama 70.3) and Cameron Dye (who won this race last year) were right with me. I went to the lead and just kept hammering without ever looking back. At 20k I had 20second advantage over Gomez and Dye, and by the end of the bike I was a little over a minute ahead.  I split a personal best 51:14, though the course may have been half a Kilo short according to my Garmin. I had a good lead starting the run, but – like in the swim – I felt flat. I was hoping to run somewhere in the 32-minute range, but I ended up just over 34. Javier passed me at the 3-mile mark and there was nothing I could do to hang with him. Docherty and Dye were still a ways back, but it didn’t ease my fears. I kept the run hard and finished 2nd. Docherty passed Dye in the final Kilo for 3rd and 4th finishes, respectively.

It was pretty cool to be on the podium with Javier Gomez. He’s a legend. Or he will be. Probably the first true sub-30-minute triathlete, plus he’s one of the best swimmers in the sport and can certainly hold his own on the bike. And even more rare, he’s a humble guy that respects other athletes and carries a truly professional image.

Oh yeah, and Mr. Tanner was handing out awards. I had a million questions for him, but none were appropriate or short enough for that setting.

I just had an incredible weekend in Los Angeles. It was the final lap of my off-season and I made the most of it. After all the fun I’ve had over the past 6 weeks, I’m exhausted! Delightfully exhausted, and really excited to get back into the grind. The trip to SoCal was prompted by Abby getting an interview at UCLA. Basically I was invited along as chauffer and activity coordinator for a weekend of fun. And it was!

Thursday we walked around Venice Beach and fulfilled our desire to smell some salty air and get our feet wet in the ocean. After that we met up with my college buddy Mark Backman for his birthday party in Hermosa Beach.

Friday morning I drove Abby to her interview, hung out at a local espresso bar for a bit, then met up with Peggy McDowell-Cramer, who you may remember as an occasional guest blogger on this site, a 16-time Ironman, and an extraordinary person who I met at my first Age Group National Championships in Kansas City. She took me to the Westwood pool and we swam together. I was just going to play in the water, but she made me do a real set. In return, I made her finish that set and go faster than she thought she could.

After the swim Peggy made me lunch and we chatted until it was time to pick up Abby from UCLA. From there we checked out Santa Monica’s Pier, rode the ferris wheel, shopped some, and had a Sushi dinner (these are all things we can’t do well in Colorado). The only part of the day that didn’t rock was the LA traffic, which is terrible.

Saturday Abby and I went to the Getty Villa museum near Malibu. There was a Picasso exhibit that showed his earlier works. It was cool to see how he started drawing classic antiquities, then slowly began to dissect his paintings as he developed cubism. The art, however, was not the reason for going to the Getty Villa. The museum itself is gorgeous!

From there we spent some time at the beach in Malibu, had dinner with Peggy and her husband Pat (I finally got to hear the story of how Peggy’s sailboat sank and she spent 15 hours in San Francisco Bay before being rescued. I wouldn’t be able to do the story justice, but I wish I’d had a tape recorder so that I could share it with you. Remarkable.)

Saturday night we went to a comedy show at The Improv in West Hollywood. They sat us in front and we ended up being a pretty big part of the show. The comedian, Ian Bagg,  struck gold, an Olympic rifle shooter, triathlete, the owner of True Religion jeans, Snoop’s agent, and a poor couple on their first date made up the front row of the audience. It was among the funniest standup comedy acts I’ve seen.

Sunday it poured the entire day in LA. We sat around and watched movies in the morning, then went to an organ concert, which was remarkable. The pipe organ at the Walt Disney center (picture on left) is a piece of art in itself. Plus, I never realized how much work goes into playing an organ. It looks like a serious workout, just the foot solo alone was impressive, but playing four keyboards, and fifth on your feet takes an incredible amount of talent. I was impressed.

Again with Disney, the concert was icing. The real treat was to see the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which is a sculpture by itself. It was a great way to finish a weekend in Los Angeles. Abby and I were both craving some culture after spending so much time in Colorado Springs, and LA delivered.

Now, back to kicking my butt at swimming biking and running. I’m sick of off-season, time to get faster!

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…

After Guatape I flew straight to Seattle. It’s always hard going home during the season, or anytime really. Whenever I travel someplace for an extended period of time I try to get into a training routine as quickly as possible. (The routine makes training take less time, you have a time for each workout set, you know where to run and where to swim and you have a typical bike course, so the day goes more smoothly and you miss fewer workouts than if you’re constantly looking for lap swim, looking for a new run route and trying to find a group to ride with.) But in Seattle there are so many variables that get in the way of being able to jump into a routine that I end up having to adjust my schedule for each individual day. First, I’m only home a couple times this year, so I need to see the dentist, see my friends, spend time with my 18 month old nephew, spend time with my mom, my dad, my friends, visit my favorite bike shops… And then there’s the issue of transportation. My parents have two cars, mine is in Colorado, so if they’re gone all day I’m stuck at home, which isn’t exactly close to anything. (My parents moved out of the city right before I went to college. I hate the suburbs.) The bike trail is closed for reconstruction by my house as well, which means there are no soft surfaces to run on from my parent’s house – I need a car to get to the state park. What I’m getting at is that visiting home is a cluster*&^% of compounding logistical problems that make it really hard to settle into any kind of routine. So I don’t, and it always ends up being a great time.

My first day in Seattle was the quietest. Just my parents and myself. My sister and brother-in-law (BIL) were working and the nephew was in daycare (they all live in the same house), so I was able to sleep in, do some light training and then head to swim practice with Cascade Swim Club. It was great. Then next day was also quiet, except the nephew was at home with my mom, and I had to finish training super early because my massage therapist refuses to make an appointment after 3pm (he’s good enough that I don’t really care, but he’s also busy enough that I won’t tell you his name unless you promise not to schedule while I’m in town). It was the Thursday before the Monroe Pan American Cup that all hell broke loose. My aunt and uncle came into town with my two cousins, and Tommy Zaferes arrived and was staying with my family for the Monroe race. Rory and Mojdeh also came over to see me, as they just moved to Seattle from Boulder and it had been over a month since I’d been able to visit them. So just to clarify, I was trying to rest and prepare for an ITU continental cup with seven adults, two teenagers, and an 18 month old child living under the same roof and two very close friends making frequent visits, and everyone seeming bummed when I skipped out on the party for a swim/bike/run. It was awesome.

The first day with everyone in the house my cousin, Boomer, came with Tommy and me to the state park for a run. I thought it would be a learning experience for a 17-year-old surfer from Hawaii to try to hang with us, even for an easy run, and it was. Boomer was shocked when we told him that in the entire triathlon we don’t ever stop, walk, or otherwise take a breather. My other cousin, Caitie, was smarter and stayed home.

The day before Monroe the beautiful clear weather Seattle had experienced my first few days back changed and became grey rainy crud. It finally felt like home. Tommy and I did a course preview and attended the prerace meeting where, I have to admit, I was a little surprised to see that Hunter Kemper was actually present. Hunter’s been having such a great season, I thought he’d stick to world cups and the Lifetime series. It was good to see him though, as I feel like I learn a little from every race I do with him. He just exudes experience. Everyone in the field watches Hunter when he races, and Hunter – even as a marked man – is always in the right place at the right time.

Everyone competing in Monroe seemed to agree that for a first year race it was done incredibly well. The course, while boring, was safe and quite spectator friendly. The swim was in a small lake that could have been confused for a flooded drainage ditch (only with clean water), the bike ride took us out and back on the main road along side the lake and featured three 180s and two 90 degree turns on every pancake flat lap, the run – also flat – was four laps on a paved path around the lake that totaled 10.4 kilometers. It was not a course for breakaways. The one unknown going into the race was the quality of the swim field. There were more people I would classify as “super swimmers” in Monroe than any other race I’ve done. Zaferes, McClarty, McCartney, Darling, and Bird are all people who routinely win swim primes over the slightly slower – though often better on land – swimmers like Potts, Dye, and Kemper. Even with a wetsuit we all knew it would be tough to keep up with those guys.

The swim started off fast. Tommy helped me improve my beach starts by having me practice over and over the day before the race, so I was able to get a pretty good leap off the line. I broke out and was almost instantly in third behind Zaferes and McClarty. I stayed right there with only Bird passing me in the first lap. McCartney got ahead at some point and Tommy and I lost those guys feet and led in a large pack about 20 seconds down from the three leaders. Tommy had a terrible transition and lost the lead group, Hunter was right next to me out of the water and with his help we instantly caught the super swimmers within a kilometer from T1. The lead pack became 12 guys with a small lead over the next pack of five that was mainly guys who struggled getting off their wetsuits. 12 to 5 is not really an even race and our lead grew significantly without any of us really pushing that hard. There were a few feeble attempts to get away, but on that course it would have taken a superhero, or someone that nobody cared about (perhaps a wooden leg?) to get away. I followed Hunter’s lead. He and I have talked a little about working together, so I asked if he wanted to try anything, but he confirmed that it was smartest just to wait. I still spent my share of energy at the front. I hate leaches. So I felt good about taking the lead into T2 next to Hunter. We racked and I popped on my KRuuz way faster than Kemper (take that old man!) so I had the edge on the field starting the run. Rory was there wearing his “I [heart] BC” t-shirt that my buddy Tai made for us, and as I started the run with Hunter he was yelling “GO BEN, STAY WITH HIM, STAY WITH HIM, STAY WITH HIM!!!!” I tried to stay with Hunter as he came by me, I tried as hard as I could to run as fast as he was. I’m sure I was going well beyond any speed I’ve maintained in a workout, and I could only hang for 400 meters. After that I just tried to keep the gap from growing too rapidly, and in doing so I put about 10 seconds onto a group of four runners by the second kilometer. I was now being hunted by a pack and I was out in the wind by myself. I kept running, for once I was actually in the race, I had put down the start speed I didn’t think I had and it put me in position to do what I love: RACE!!! At the end of the first lap that group of six lost three people to the penalty board (Personally I think the ITU should stop changing the sport through the advent of new penalty-worthy rules and let the sport change through allowance of tactics like what the Brits did at the Euro Championships this year.) but I was gaining ground on them ever so slowly. On the second lap I had 20 seconds, on the third it was 25, but the group was only two. On the fourth lap Andrew Russell dropped the rest of them and closed the gap on me to just under 20 seconds. All the while, we all lost over two minutes to Kemper. I finished second with Andrew behind me for third.

At the finish I was greeted by a massive group of friends and family and an asthma attack that almost caused me to pass out. I’m not sure how I made it through the final lap without being able to breath, but I was certainly glad the EMTs were at the finish line to hold me up and give me oxygen until I could breath normally. I’ve never had an asthma attack like that before, but now that I have I feel like I’m officially past the point of no return on the nerd spectrum. Seriously, I wear glasses, I’m good at math and science and now I need an inhaler? Where’s my calculator watch? Oh wait; I have one with GPS instead.

The award ceremony was also a highlight thanks to all the supporters present. When I stood up on the podium a large segment of the crowd started chanting, “COLLINS, COLLINS, COLLINS…” When Hunter stood up there was polite clapping, and after it quieted down he turned to my fan section and asked, “where’s my cheer for first?” To which they responded, “COLLINS, COLLINS, COLLINS!” He can run two minutes faster, but he can’t win the hometown crowd.

Tomorrow I race the Edmonton World Cup. I’m here with my parents, and I’m hoping I can convince all of Paula Findlay’s hometown friends to come cheer for me. I wonder if they have t-shirts to show their support? Maybe they could call themselves the “PF-gang”.

Click the thumbnails below for more pics from Monroe. A HUGE thanks to my BIL, Matthew Lamb, for being my star photographer at the event. All the photos are from him.

I’m here in Edmonton, the capitol of Alberta, looking over the past few weeks down south. I’m really enjoying myself this year, and the past three weeks have been no exception. After Cartagena I flew to Guatape, a small mountain town near Medellin in Colombia. The week between races felt like an eternity because there was very little to do. The town of Guatape is beautiful. One of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and I loved riding my bike through the mountains. Guatape is in the middle of a man made lake where every piece of land shoots skyward or drops straight down. Nothing is flat, and there is very little land suitable for building on. Most of the buildings were precariously hanging off the side of a cliff waiting for a mudslide to whisk them into the lake.

Each day in Guatape I would eat breakfast with Arturo Garza and the twins from Puerto Rico, Melissa and Militza Rios (yes they look the same and have names that are very similar, it took me a few days to figure it out). Sometime before lunch I would go for a bike ride and a run, and finish with an afternoon swim in the lake. Between workouts I read Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (if you haven’t read it, you need to.), wrote emails, called friends through Google Voice, and slept more than a lazy house cat. By the time race day crept up to us I was more than ready to race and head home to my family. Still there were things I wanted to do in Guatape that aren’t wise before a race, and I was glad for a 10am start time so I could spend the afternoon being a tourist.

The race itself was not as I had hoped. I lead the swim at a pace I thought was quite strong, but there were still about 15 men in the lead group for the bike. I first tried an immediate breakaway, but on the first of six 1km climbs I was caught. Every time we reached a hill the group would string out, but as soon as we crested and descended the string would ball back up. I put in far more than my fare share of the work because I didn’t want the chase pack to catch us, as did fellow American Nick Vandam. We worked hard. Then, with about 200 meters to go on the bike two Spanish men came to the front. Now, race etiquette says that if you’ve been sitting in the back the entire ride, you stay in the back into T2. At the very least leaches should NEVER take their first pull at the very end and block the people who did all the work. I was irritated, but these two Spanish riders were not done being rude. One of them was racked next to me in transition, he cut me off going to my space and carelessly racked his bike by one brake lever. The rest of his bike fell sideways and hung in such a way as to block my transition box and the space for my bike. I had to stop, hold my bike, move his bike, rack my bike, and only then I was able to reach my shoes and get my helmet in to the box. By the time I had my shoes on I was already 10 seconds back from the lead runners. Start speed on the run is already my weak point, and starting from that far back took me out of the run race. I was running by myself, and not feeling particularly good. I probably couldn’t have hung with the two Spaniards (they ended up 1st and 2nd) on that particular day, but I certainly would have like to start with them and try.

I ended up 7th, which was better than the previous week’s 10th place, but still not the result I was looking for, considering I felt good and I like to think tough courses suit me well. I’ve made the mistake of working more than my share before, but at this race I really though the hills would be an equalizer, making everyone in the pack work. Still, I swam quite well and rode strong. My run was sub-par, but overall it was a good experience. I learned and raced hard, which is what it’s all about.

After the race I tried to rent a jet ski, but the price tag was more than I was willing to pay after finishing short of the prize money. I did make it to climb the stairs to the top of Guatape’s scenic rock. It reminded me of Diamond Head monument in Honolulu, though the view was nothing like Hawaii. I also got to try a local dish called Bandeja Piasa, which includes red beans, rice, pork, ground meat, pork rind, fried egg, fried plantain, chorizo, arepa (corn bread type of thing), hogao sauce, black pudding (glad I didn’t know that at the time), and avacado. I bought a t-shirt, walked through a cathedral, and took the colorful, three-wheeled taxicabs around town. I don’t often get to be a tourist, and I felt that I needed it. Sitting around for a week doing nothing didn’t seem to help me run faster either, so I was hoping that relaxing and having fun would lead to a better race just six days later back home in Washington State.

It did, but that will be my next blog post, which I’ll publish before I race the Edmonton World Cup this weekend. Below is an image gallery from Guatape, click on the images to see the full size.

I’ve been racing pretty well so far this spring, so I decided to throw my name into a few ITU Pan-American Cup races in June. My world ranking in the ITU has plummeted this year, due mainly to a lack of ITU racing on my part, from 60 to 110. It turns out you can’t hold a ranking if you don’t race, and without a high enough ranking you can’t get into big races, no matter how many people think you should be there. So I flew south to Colombia (when it’s spelled with two ‘O’s it refers to the country, rather than the school, town, or production studio) for back-to-back Pan-American Cup races. Looking at the start lists for these races is quite a bit less intimidating than a race like Saint Anthony’s or a World Cup, but there are enough people in the ranking battle that neither race is without some solid talent.

The first race was in Cartagena, a coastal port city with a wall around the inner city. The bike course went around and through a fort and through a section of the city that looked very similar to the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was a cool course and previewing it the day before the race I was really excited for a bike course that offered more than an out and back on crummy roads. The only daunting problem was the heat. I haven’t done any real specific heat training this year. I had decided at the beginning of the year to avoid races with extreme heat and focus on courses that suit me well. It wasn’t until the day before the race that I realized this would be one of the hottest races I’ve ever taken part in. The temperature was around 90 degrees, but the humidity of 70% raised the heat index to 112. Coming from 10% humidity in Colorado, my body was in shock. The water temperature didn’t help either. On Saturday I ran 3km to the race from my hotel so I could preview the swim course. By the time I got there I was drenched in sweat and downing every water source in sight. The ocean, to my surprise, was so warm that I could barely manage a 20-minute loosen-up, and I needed a few bags of water before I was ready to jog home. Still, I figured that with good fitness I would be able to manage the heat just as well as anyone else when it came to the race.

Race day was even hotter. When I stepped out of my air-conditioned hotel room it was like walking into an oven. I brought an extra bottle of ice water to drizzle over my head while I set up for the race. Before the start another athlete came to me and said, “good luck, but I don’t know that we can call this a race. It’s going to be survival.” The swim was so warm that I was content to sit in the pack and follow feet. When I started the bike I was already so hot that I skipped pulls in an attempt to regain composure. By the time the bike was half way over I had goose bumps on my legs. I had planned to attack with another athlete, but each lap we found each other and said, “Maybe next lap”. The pack rode just fast enough that nobody wanted to go it alone, but so slow that nobody was really “pulling”. With a half lap to go I finally decided to go for it. I got 25 seconds into T2, but 1km into the run I was gassed. My HR was at max, my pace was slowing rapidly, and I could barely breath the thick air. I turned my thoughts to the next aide station and focused on staying cool, too stubborn to walk, let alone drop out. I ran the slowest 10km run of my career in 39 minutes, and then collapsed into the care of two Colombian nurses who poured ice water over me and kept a constant supply of cold fluids coming my way. I was 10th. I’m not real happy with the finish, but it’s hard to blame fitness. If I had planned this race further in advance I would have been running in sweats in the middle of the day, but I had no idea that I would be faced with that kind of heat. Even my sunscreen couldn’t hold up to the weather. My back is blistered with sharp red lines around the edges of my race suit. In short, Cartagena was a bad choice for me.

Other than the race, I thought Cartagena was a cool city. The old town is a place I could have wondered through for a day, if I had the chance. Where I was staying was a younger, more beach oriented area. It was littered with expensive fast food and not many healthy restaurant options, so if I ever go back I know to stay in the older part of the city. I will say the race was well organized and they were prepared with plenty of water stations on the run (in 10km there were 20 chances to get water). I only wish there were protocol for extra water on the bike, or at least a course with some shade. An 11:45am start in weather like that is not safe for anyone.

Next up is another Colombian race, but I’m heading up into the mountains near Medellin. The town is called Guatape, and it’s nothing like Cartagena.

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.

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

 

The trip from Miami to Ishigaki was long, and not without its memorable moments. First, while checking in with United in Miami, I had airport security called to escort me away from the check-in counter. Having not raised my voice, and been guilty only of politely asking to have my bags checked through to Ishigaki (to avoid reclaiming in Tokyo) I stood my ground, called the ticket counter guy’s bluff and never saw security (“wait, you’re going to call security on a customer who flew 75,000 miles with your airline last year because I’m inconveniencing you to check my bags through to my final destination?”). Next, in LA I switched from United to ANA for my flight to Tokyo, and was really excited when I was paged to the counter, thinking that I was being upgraded to business class. Wrong, they were calling me up to inform me that United had delivered my luggage to them open and that they had taped it closed. They just wanted me to know that it was United and not ANA who would be responsible for anything missing. That meant I had a twelve-hour flight to Tokyo, and another two flights and seven hours to Ishigaki before I would know whether my bike was completely with me. Luckily, the gods of seat selection were with me throughout the trip, so on the five flights I was seated in an exit row (Miami to Denver – I watched Tron Legacy, which was not very good), first class (Denver to LA), a row of three to myself (for 12 hours from LA to Tokyo – the flight was less than a third full so everyone had a row to lay down in), business class with fully reclining seats (Tokyo to Okinawa – they upgraded the plane from a 767 to a 777 then apologized that they needed to move people from their previously assigned seats – the upgrade didn’t come with service, but the extra 3 hour nap was nice), and then an aisle seat with nobody next to me for the final 40 minute segment into Ishigaki – where I found my bike case fully intact with everything inside it – feeewwww!! In total it took me 31 hours from hugging my mom goodbye at the Miami airport to stepping into the Hotel Lobby in Ishigaki. I slept for at least 14 of hours of that time.