A few weeks ago Courtenay got into a graduate program at CU-Boulder. This week they flew here out here to visit, so naturally I drove up from Colorado Springs to spend the weekend with her. I haven’t spent much time in Boulder before this weekend, but I’ve certainly heard plenty about it (more pro triathletes live here than anywhere else in the US). On Thursday I jumped in the water with Dave Scott’s group at Flatiron Athletic Club. The club is pretty cool. Plenty of cardio equipment, frequent yoga classes, open pool time and a well stocked weight room. The swim practice itself was a pretty typical master’s practice. Don’t get me wrong, it was cool to be in the same lane as Matt Reed and next to several other pro athletes (you’ll have to forgive me for not recognizing a lot of ironman athletes), but it wasn’t some mind blowing experience that made me rethink the way I’ve been swimming the past 20 years. Otherwise it was a well organized master’s workout (full range of abilities) with a famous person dishing out the sets to six outdoor lanes
Author Archives: Ben
My First Week as a Resident Athlete
This isn’t the first time I’ve been to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, but it always seems to surprise me how awesome it is here! And now that I’m taking up residency at the Training Center, there’s way more cool stuff that’s open to me. I got here Saturday after a long three […]
Cross (training) Make You Wanna… Jump! Jump!
It’s been a week now since I started the sneak peek of my OpenSky Store. This week I’m still waiting for a bunch of my favorite recovery equipment to be sourced, so in the meantime I’m participating in an Opensky promotion with what I have – a jump rope! This week for Opensky’s Olympic promotion: […]
The Barracks
I moved into the Olympic Training Center today as a resident athlete. Unfortunately, the resident dorms were flooded a few months back and repairs are not yet finished, so I have been relegated to the barracks. These three cinder block buildings – relics left from when the campus was an air force base – are […]
Opensky for the Highly Motivated – Sneak Peak!
This week I’m giving a sneak peak* of my new Opensky store. The Open Sky Project is a community of bloggers who share their favorite products with readers. Opensky sources, ships, and accepts payments for all the good that are sold through the community, and then shares the profits with the bloggers. In the sport […]
A Week Alone With Everyone
Monday morning I said Aloha to my Canadian friends after a relaxing dip in the ocean and a muddy last jaunt through the cane fields of Paia. I came back to Oahu and decided that I would basically repeat the workouts from the week because I felt strong and ready to handle 7 more days […]
Party Time
Ok, it’s not really party time when everyone has just done three 30 hour training weeks in a row. We are slowly cleaning up the mess we’ve made in the rental house and getting ready to fly out tomorrow. Today was out last workout, a 14 mile run with an hour of the fastest pace […]
And Then Everything Was Better
The training camp has continued to involve something hard every day. Tuesday we did a run / swim in the morning at the 27.5 meter pool. We keep doing the same workouts we would in the 25 yard pool, but instead of 5,000 yards we’re actually getting in 5500 meters. It’s almost like free mileage […]
Back on My Feet Again, and Again, and Again, and…
Saturday night was one of the roughest night of sleep I can remember. My skin was itching, smoldering, goose bumped, and otherwise completely lacking in ability to control temperature. Meanwhile, my insides were churning, I had to get up to pee 6 times during the night, I discovered what it would feel like to have […]
Do You Prefer Sunburn or Rash?
The state of my skin the past 48 hours has gone from “don’t want to whine and make excuses†to “wow this really hurts, I can’t believe I let myself get this burned†to “twitterable, but I’ll try not to sound too complainy†to “full on bloggable.†I’ve been taking antibiotics the past 9 days. […]