Ben Collins

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.

A few months ago I bought a sailboat at a repo auction. It’s like buying a foreclosed house, only a sailboat is way more fun than a house, and costs much less. The boat had basically been abandoned, but is in nearly perfect condition. It’s a 1972 Catalina with a blue hull and a small cabin. I was gone all summer, which prevented me from spending the five hours it took to clean the boat and get the inboard diesel engine running. The main problem was a bit of a catch 22. The boat was moored in Tacoma, about 50 miles from where I live at the north end of Seattle, which is way too far to drive to work on a boat, but I couldn’t move the boat to Seattle until I had worked on it a bit. Had it been in Seattle I would have been sailing months ago, but as is it took me until yesterday to take the boat on its maiden voyage.

I went out with my dad, who helped me get the diesel running, and we figured out the basics of how to operate the boat. The winds were light, so we were able to figure out what we were doing without any stress.

Today I went out with my friend Peter. Peter’s three years of sailing experience with Seattle Yacht Club adds to my two years of summer sailing camp experience to give us a combined five years of experience on boats under 14 feet long. Obviously we’re qualified to take a boat twice as big out on our own (or maybe people like me are the reason Washington will be instituting a new law requiring boat pilots to have a license.).

We sailed out and back and a to and forth, and now I feel confident enough with the boat that next week after Nationals I’m going to make a voyage from Tacoma to Seattle. The tides for Sunday the 21st are such that the current will be heading north starting just before noon, so I figure if I leave Tacoma around 11:30 I can make the trip in 5 or 6 hours. I want to see if I can make it entirely on wind power, but if it’s a light breeze and the sails aren’t full, I won’t hesitate to give it a diesel boost.

Once in Seattle I am going to rename the boat and have a naming ceremony (any excuse for a party). The current name is Isis, which has no meaning to me. I’m taking suggestions, but what I’d really like is something with three layers of meaning. So an obvious double meaning (for instance if I were visually impaired, like Aaron Scheidies – who went a 1:58:30 at the Malibu Olympic Distance Triathlon, a minute faster than our World Record performance in Dallas last October – I could name it See Worthy), but then I want a third meaning that is more of an inside joke where you’d have to know me to get it (bc dot org knowledge is enough).

The past week in Seattle has been amazing weather. Temperate, sunny, clear skies, clean air… There’s no better place to be than summer in Seattle. Something is different this year, however, when I look out across Lake Washington. It’s quiet. There aren’t a lot of waves. There are twice as many kayakers and sailboats and a third as many wake boarders, jet skis, and cigar boats that scream “I have low self esteem and a small reproductive organ, so I make up for it with a 12 cylinder engine and 30 feet of un-muffled, water and air polluting speed”. The sea-planes are still flying. I have no idea who flies around in sea planes.

There’s extra tax to buy gas on the water, so while pump prices for the car are  around $4/gallon, to fill your boat at the local marina is more like $6/gallon. Figure that a morning of wakeboarding for three people uses about 8 gallons of fuel, and you’re looking at a pricey morning ritual. Taking the bus and packing a lunch can’t even save that much money.

Needless to say, the last time I was on my wakeboard I was being towed by a kite. There are a lot fewer days with enough wind to kiteboard, but it only takes about 20 for the savings in gas alone to pay for a top-of-the-line kite.

That’s a tangent. What I really want to celebrate is that the lake really seems to be less busy, quieter, safer for swimmers, and cleaner. A year ago if I were swimming on a nice day I would be able to taste gasoline in the water from the hundreds of boats zipping back and forth. It’s a miracle that I wasn’t killed by a drunk or inattentive driver. I’ve done three open water swims this week, and seen a total of 3 boats go by while I’ve been in the water. Victor had a boat go between him and the shore – which would have scared the crap out of me (and maybe caused me to go on a witch hunt to get the guys registration info so I could report him to the police) – but that’s as close as either of us came to any trouble.

I think if high gas prices can clean up the lake, and get people to demand more efficient vehicles, then let’s just tax gas extra and use the money to build more safe bike paths, and public transportation infrastructure. I would love to see $8/gallon gas. Would I see you on the bus if that happened? They have wireless internet on some of the routes in Seattle. Rather than watching brake lights, wouldn’t you rather use your laptop? I want to see gas prices so high that when I walk outside my house at 8am during rush hour I’m not suffocated by the smell of exhaust from all the cars just sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on the highway (state route 522 is about a block and a half from my house and it WREAKS in the mornings).

Maybe more tolls would help - though I’m against anything that takes cars off the highway and puts them on side streets because it makes it more dangerous for cyclists. I like Mayor Bloomberg’s idea to just make everyone pay a toll when they come into midtown or lower of manhattan. There is plenty of public transportation to the center of the city, so anyone driving in there is lazy.

When we all start looking at people sitting in traffic the way they look at smokers, then we’ll be getting someplace.

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.

Sunday I raced in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. It was unusually hot before the race, which had me a little nervous, but as a storm approached the heat dissipated a bit, so by the time we started it was below 90 degrees.

The swim was a beach start into Okanagan Lake. (as a geographic aside, Okanagan Lake is 60km long, and is home to the Ogopogo.) I stayed with the leaders for the first lap, but lost feet on the second lap, and fell back. I really like leading the swim, and this is the second time I’ve missed the front pack. Basically I either need to start swimming again, lose the ego, or – more likely – both.

So out of the water I was about 35 seconds behind the leaders, but still ahead of the chase pack by enough that I came out of T1 having to decide if I should sprint to the people in front or wait for the people behind. I started off strong, but realized there were only a few in front of me, and a lot behind. I let them catch up and we ended up catching the next group a lap later. The course was six laps with one big hill on each lap (8% for 600m), and not many technical corners. At the end of the 2nd lap we were in a group of about 10 guys, with three more 40 seconds ahead, including Daniel Wells and Brent McMahon. We finally closed the gap on the fifth lap, and the pace came to a halt. We had minutes on the rest of the chase packs, so there was really no incentive for anyone to ride hard.

  On to the run. 4 flat laps around the waterfront park. It was really nice not to run out and back like I have at almost every other ITU race I’ve done. I had frozen this water-holding neckerchief that my mom gave me, and put it inside my hat in T2. It was in case it was 100 degrees like the day before, but I figured that since it was there I might as well use it. I think I heard fans making fun of me for my red neckerchief, but it really did work to keep me comfortable.

I was a bit nervous about the run, since my training before the camp was a bit inconsistent, but I was able to hold a steady pace and beat almost half of the people in my bike pack. I ended up 8th overall, which earned me 116 ITU points, and will bump up my world ranking over 100 places. Hopefully that means better start position at the next race!

Here’s Dave Messenheimer and me. He always seems to have great advice for what I should have done better during the race, which makes me wonder why he was watching me instead of the three guys that beat him.

After leaving the training center on Tuesday I stayed with my best friend since 7th grade, Noah, who lives in Denver proper and works for the National Renewable Energy Labs in Golden. He is the brain behind the newest developments in ethanol production - mainly making it feasible as a source of energy.

His house is called the Tea-House, and true to it’s name, while I was there we made Kombucha, which was much better than the $4 a bottle stuff you can buy at health food stores.

During the day, while he was working, I drove up to Boulder to visit another good friend, Rory, who I know from living in Hawaii. Rory is in the middle of his world tour, but is waiting for summer to begin in New Zealand before he continues. He took me inner tubing down the Boulder Creek, which is the only memory I have of my family vacation to Boulder 15 years ago.

I think boulder is populated by people who don’t work, but have really nice laptops, which they bring to coffee shops to enjoy a soy latte with vegan brownies (my vegan brownie was not very good). It’s a really yuppee town, and while I didn’t really do any training there, I didn’t quite see the appeal of living there.

From there I flew to Seattle, where I wrote last night’s post from the comfort of my own bed. It was the fist time in 50 days that I’ve been in Seattle, but it was not for long. This morning I flew to Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada (I <3 BC) where I was picked up by my host family, the Rule’s. My hosts are really nice people and are trying hard to make me feel at home. It’s working. I took a wonderful nap this afternoon that may be the first good sleep I’ve gotten.

For some reason my Garmin Edge 705 didn’t figure out that I’m no longer up at 1800m elevation, and it tried to convince me that Kelowna was really high up. WRONG! I just checked google, and it’s only 344 meters here. It’s pretty hot though, Sunday is supposed to be 36 degrees when we race at 2pm. That’s 96.8 F according to google, with water temperatures of 24c (75.2F which is wetsuit Illegal). I’m learning to love the heat. It’s becoming apparent that it’s no coincidence that every race I’ve done this year has been unusually hot. The fact is - I bring the heat. I’m not sure if it’s my boyish good looks, my magnetic personality, or my heart-stopping smile, but I am obviously radiating like plutonium.

The Olympic coverage in Canada is much less US-Centric, which is refreshing, until you realize that all you get to see is Canadians losing! I feel bad, they had a few really good athletes and it’s just not working out for our Northern Neighbors.

Still, almost everything I’ve seen of the Olympic coverage has been amazing. Like Phelps .01 second victory in the 100m butterfly, followed by a quick loss of a Canadian woman wrestler.

Speed-walking is amazing in a different way. It’s not very original to make fun of the sport of speed-walking, but seriously, why is it in the Olympics? They have a rule that you must always have one foot touching the ground, yet judges are not allowed to use video playback to verify. They “walk” in a pack, so judges have no clear sight of everyone’s pair of feet, and they don’t have judges watching each athlete all the time. I figured they were probably pushing the limits, but I was way off. Coming back from a commercial the Canadian Broadcast Channel showed a slow motion clip of the “walking” group. It was just a short intro back into the regular coverage, but it showed about four steps. All three athletes visible in the shot made obvious leaps. There was NO question that those three “walkers” had BOTH feet off the ground between strides. Why is a sport in the Olympics where the object is to cheat discretely? That is infuriating to me. It’s like making a rule that doping is illegal, but, rather than testing athletes, they have to be caught in the act.