Blog – Page 40 – Ben Collins

Lunch

I was feeling bad that I haven’t taken any pictures since I got to California, and also that my post yesterday completely digressed from what I intended to talk about. So here is a picture of what I made myself for lunch today. (I was proud enough to get my camera out for this).

It’s spinach with fresh strawberry, and chicken (cooked with diced onion, lemon, garlic, fennel seeds and sage). Yes, that’s a princess plate. And yes, I could have taken a better pic, but then I wouldn’t have the Bay in the background, which is my segue.

Sunday I’ll be swimming in these waters. Apparently I should be more worried about the cold water than the sharks that are going to be biting me, but since I’ve been swimming in 48 degree lake water already this year, it’s the sharks that I’m scared of.

I’ve never done this race, so in order to prepare myself I’ve ridden the course, and yesterday I ran the 8 miles. It’s tough. Flat for two miles, then you go up, then down, then run on sand, then climb a sand ladder, then go up then go down, then run flat for two more miles. I like things that are hard for everyone, so this should be a lot of fun.

I mentioned the sand ladder. It’s not really made of sand. It’s made of rope and logs, but it’s laying in the sand. I was excited to see this ladder for the first time, but when I finally got my first glimpse it was jaded by an older man standing at the base of the steps – completely naked! He had no hat, no pants, no shirt, no shoes, and I could not see any such items laying around. He did have a small dog – some kind of terrier or Chihuahua, that he was watching (and so was I because it was a distraction). I’m not sure where he left his clothes, but it was nowhere in site. As I started my way up the sand ladder I thought to myself, "I wonder if this is a nude beach?" Luckily, the burn in my legs overtook that sudden primordial urge to streak across Marshal Beach.

Tiburon Girls, Muffins, Robot Fish, and a Long Wet Ramble.

I’ve been in California (specifically Tiburon, north of San Francisco) since Wednesday night. I’m staying with Loren Pokorny and his three women, Greta (the actual head of the house), Sada and Piper (who, despite being born into a post 9/11 world, still find a way to terrorize Loren daily).

For the last month Loren has written about a muffin recipe he got from Desiree Ficker so many times I’ve nearly stopped reading his blog (actually when the sun came out in Seattle I fell behind reading friend’s blogs and haven’t caught up – I’m not sorry about this, Sun in Seattle is as rare as a LMAO blog entry, and I believe Seattlites should get an extra three sick days a year for each of those days.)

I’ve digressed. The "memorial muffins" were great, pumpkiny, and moist, and chewy on the top. Good enough to mention in one blog post, maybe two – once the 24 muffins are gone and I can give a final score for who ate the most muffins. Right now the score is Loren 7.5, Ben 5. It’s been about 36 hours since he made them.

I was able to swim in the Belvedere-Tiburon Lagoon on Friday morning. It’s this shallow little lake that gets filled from ocean water and stays 15-20 degrees warmer than the Bay. We swim a little over a mile at 5:45, which is way too early. Loren asked me to watch his stroke while he flailed after the rest of the group, and I realized he swims entirely with his arms, and uses no core strength at all. It’s as though his underdeveloped arms (if Piper told one of her classmates her daddy could beat up their daddy, she would be flat out lying) are trying to drag a flimsy bag through the water. To make matters worse, all he thinks about are his arms, so they follow no natural plane of motion. His hand exits the water, bends in a way that reminds me of the robot scene in Eurotrip, then enters directly in front of his face and pushes water forward. There is no grace or balance. The improvements he made after our last lesson have been lost to hours of solitary swimming.

It seems like I’m really ripping on Loren (to some extent I am), but this is merely a cruel way of introducing a broader epidemic and a look into some possible solutions to subpar swimming abilities among 99% of triathletes.

There seems to be a lack of knowledge with regards to swim technique. People who try learning to swim at age 30 have no good resource for becoming fast. The American Red Cross has a well planned out schedule of classes to teach young children to swim, but many of the classes don’t apply to adults, and aren’t designed to make people into competitive swimmers. Masters Swimming programs around the country are coached in apathy. Masters coaches, even those few that know how to coach good technique, generally believe that masters swimmers are a bunch of complainers that are there for a workout and don’t care about anything else – so we give them the hardest set they can handle in the time allowed, some do it, others sit on the all or do their own version, and everyone seems content.

Let’s compare this to Tennis. Adults that want to play tennis, even recreationally, will get weekly tennis lesson. There are people at every tennis club in the nation that are highly trained tennis instructors, and their specialty is teaching adults. Why is there not the same demand in swimming? I can understand that recreational swimmers may not care about being fast, but much like tennis, swimming well is a lot more fun that dragging yourself through the water. (I would also argue that swimming takes more technique)

I haven’t yet developed the "Ben Collins’ method to swim instruction", or a good solution (yet), but for everyone reading I have some advice.

First, go find a competent swim instructor, pay for lessons (these are usually less than a massage, but more than a bottle of decent wine -$40-$70 for an hour, depending on where you live). Try to get some drills you can work on on your own. Not every drill is right for every swimmer, so having a coach / instructor that knows why you do a drill is important (ask why, they should be able to answer).

Second, when you go to a masters workout, ask the coach to look at your stroke. If it’s a good / competent coach, they should be excited that somebody there actually cares. I almost always ask my coach to watch me swim ("are my hips staying in line?" "am I crossing over?" "does something look wrong?" – something almost always does).

Third, technique alone will not make you fast. There are a lot of muscles that go into swimming (after cross-country skiing, swimming is the most full body sport) and they need to be trained. Use stretch cords on land to build the proper muscles. It’s much easier to follow the right path with your arms on land than in the water where you’re trying to balance.

Fourth, SHUT UP & SWIM. There’s no use in paying for a swim instructor, a pool membership, and the time to gain strength if you never get around to putting in the yards. Coaches have always told me it takes 10,000 strokes for a change to feel natural. At 15 strokes per length that’s 750 lengths of the pool, or 18750 yards, or nearly eleven miles. For college swimmers that’s a day and a half they have to think about entering farther out or pressing with their chest. For most triathletes that could be half a month. If you want to improve, keep your head wet.

Meanwhile, there is hope for Loren, and the rest of the late bloomers in the swimming world – I’m going to find a better way to make you faster.

Seoul Mates

Alright. These pictures have been referenced by myself, and Chris Tremonte, and I’m sure Steven Sexton will mention it when he finishes writing scholarly articles about biofuels (or whatever those Berkeley graduate slackers do with all their free time). These pictures were all taken within an hour of each other at the airport in Seoul. Had I been there two hours I would likely have photographed 25 more matching couples. Enough with the text, look for yourself.

Intestine Stew for the Seoul

Our weekend in Seoul was great, and a large part of that was due to the mistakes we made. By we I’m referring to the American athletes, Steve Sexton, Dave Massenheimer Chris Tremonte and myself – though the mistakes can all be traced back to me alone.

After the race we headed off to a America Town. The actual name escapes me, but it was exactly like China town, only in Asia, and instead of selling Chinese trinkets they sold American trinkets that had been manufactured in Asia. There was a ton of American clothing, toys (probably containing lead), and US food chains like Subway, Outback, Starbucks, and McDonalds. The last of which made Sexton quite happy, as he had been hoping to find a McDeoux the entire weekend. We probably would have skipped the McDeoux, but I was in desperate need of a urinal. Going in was a mistake. There was a woman that looked like a character out of Saturday Night Live (huge granny sunglasses, frilly skirt and stockings, crazy hair that looked like a wig….), and she was staring straight at us. At first I thought she was just waiting for someone. Maybe she was surprised to see Americans in America town. Wrong. She left, we sat down to share some fries, she came back and found us and stood and stared. It was not even remotely subtle. When we left, he followed for a few blocks before Steve made our intentions quite clear by yelling "RUN!!!" and bolting into a crosswalk. She followed us onto the opposite sidewalk, but left us several minutes later. Unfortunately I hadn’t yet gotten over feeling bad about taking random pictures of people, so I have no photo to help my description. (read this as foreshadowing for later photos).

Later that night we found ourselves in a back alley in the northern part of Seoul. We were pretty hungry, and decided to try a small restaurant with a half dozen well-dressed people sitting outside looking and sounding merry. Ok, I may have made the initial suggestion, but the other guys did go along with it. We ordered whatever they were having, using the pointing method. It was a large wok with fire under it that sat right on the table. What we pointed to looked like a bunch of vegetables all stir fried with some kind of meat. What we got was some kind of meat that none of us could identify – at first. I took a bite and started chewing. It didn’t seem to work. This meat was like one of my dogs chew toys, no matter how hard I bit it would resume its original shape. I tried and tried, but to no avail. Meanwhile, Chris – also trying to chew – proposed an answer as to the type of meat: "I think it’s tripe" – more chewing – "What’s tripe?" – "it’s intestine." "oh…" Finally the taste of the meat in my mouth got to me and I gave up, lifted a napkin when the store owner wasn’t looking and spit it out. Dave and Chris both swallowed theirs, Steve had gone looking for more American food – I was beginning to think Steve was smarter than the rest of us.

Monday morning the four of us agreed that finding a pool to swim in would be a great idea. I had talked to the Aussies earlier and found out that there was an indoor pool about 2km from the hotel. We decided to jog there, but it wasn’t until we were too far to turn back (across the street) that we all realized a) a pool asks for money, and b) "about 2km" is not a very specific set of direction. basically, we were jogging into the unknown with no intention of paying for our mistakes.

After several wrong turns asking twice for directions we ended up at the Worlds Gym, where there was no pool. Luckily, a man in the lobby knew where it was and offered to drive us there. He was an actor in what he described as Seoul’s version of Broadway. He seemed very excited to test out his English, and we were excited not to be lost. It was perfect. We exchanged emails, and he agreed to email us, which has yet to do. Hopefully he does, so I can have a Korean pen pal. 🙂

We showed up at the airport early and Steve, Chris and I had about 90 minutes to wait before boarding. Chris made a couple of comments about matching couples that I ignored, but the third time we saw a matching couple I couldn’t deny that this was in fact a strange trend. With 60 minutes left I started photographing all the matching-outfit couples, and there were TONS. I’ve had to set up a photo album online to show this. It’s amazing.

Live Writer needs autosave or is microsoft conspiring against me?

I spent about an hour last night recounting the odd events that made my trip to Korea so much more than just a typical race. Unfortunately, the Pulitzer worthy piece was deleted when I left my computer for a few minutes and Windows decided to restart itself after updating. I write all my blog entries in Microsoft Live Writer, but unfortunately this program lacks an autosave function. If you don’t save it or post it, and your computer restarts while your off eating Steak and Red Chard (and strawberry shortcake), then whatever you wrote is gone. gone gone gone gone gone. What really ticks me off is that it was two programs by the same company that collectively caused me to lose my work. Chris Tremonte also wrote about them, so you can read about it on his blog. Since he works for Microsoft, I’m guessing this was all a plan to get me to direct traffic to his blog. I’ll post some pictures tonight when I get to Tiburon.

Oh no, I have to leave for the airport in 90 minutes and I haven’t even unpacked yet, let alone packed. I hate leaving my room in a mess like this, there’s nothing worse than coming back from a trip to a messy room.

Seoul Asia Cup – Race Day

My fever is gone and I’m feeling much better today. Whatever illness I had was nothing 19 hours in bed couldn’t fix!

The Seoul Asia Cup had a strong field. I normally don’t look at starts lists, and frankly don’t care, but since I was rooming with the slightly OCD Chris Tremonte, I had no choice but to hear detailed descriptions of the race’s favorites, Simon Thompson of Australia, and Dimitry Gaag of Kazakhstan, and several others that were on Chris’s radar. I found it humorous that while I prepared for the race by learning Korean phrases and reading about the culture, most of the other athletes (who claim not to have any free time) had looked at the start list in depth and somehow found time to analyze the field.

The swim was two laps, with a pontoon start. This was my first pontoon start, which was exciting. When the horn went off I watched everyone dive in. I don’t know if it was fear of diving that close to people, or if I was just caught off guard by the starting horn, but when I hit the water I was already at the feet of the men next to me. I dolphin kicked about 10 times and came up ahead of the field, then continued to sprint for a lead. The field was 50 men wide and the first turn was about 300 meters away. The pace was incredibly fast, but soon three Vs immerged. I was leading a pack near the center, with another group forming on my left and the largest on the right.

Here’s the really strange part of the swim: there were lane lines connecting the turn buoys. No citing needed. As such, the three packs quite suddenly rammed into each other as the group to the left merged into my group, which was already merging into the group on the right. Since there was no place for people on the lane line to go, the swim turned to chaos as athletes were shoved into the yellow rope.

After the first turn I was on the feat f the leaders, and in 3rd or 4th position. Then I hit the lane line, which ripped off my cap. I’m glad my hair is not that long because I was able to keep going, and barely lost ground. A small gap started to open in front of me and as we rounded the second turn I had to kick hard to get away from the aggressive tapping of the swimmers behind me. I was just about able to close the gap when I hit the lane line again, this time losing my goggle straps. I flipped onto my back and was able to get my goggles back on, but was now in the middle of a large group of swimmers and not with the leaders. Pressed against the lane line it was impossible to find open water, so I sat on the feet of the swimmers in front of me and just hoped they would catch back on to the leaders. The pace for the first lap was extreme, and when we ran across the pontoon and dove back in for a second lap there was a significant lap between the four or five people surrounding me and the leaders. I was swimming agressively, and fighting for space, so as not to be shoved into the lane line again. Unfortunately, two of the guys near me were people I know, Steve Sexton (from Berkeley) and Andrew Curtayne (runner up at AG World last year), so I got an earful after the race about slapping hands and otherwise being an ass.

Despite how horrible I felt the swim had gone, I exited the water and had my all-time-best T1, which put me into the lead bike pack. I was in such disbelief that it actually took me a lap to realize there was nobody in front of us. I sat in and did very little work on the bike. The corners were plentiful, but none were particularly difficult. I was able to sit in the middle of the pack without needing to sprint too much out of turns to stay on a wheel. I was in a pack with Thompson and Gaag, and thanks to Tremonte’s ramblings I figured they were strong runners. There was a small attempt at a breakaway on the second lap, but it failed. The rest of the six laps were pretty uneventful.

Into T2, I managed one of my slower transitions. I came in toward the back of the pack, and was already on my own when I left transition. A little weary of the humidity, I ran conservatively and tried to enjoy myself. I figured I would rather finish with something left and build confidence than to find myself in the hospital again.

After the first lap I began building my pace, as I saw Sexton a few positions behind me. At the end of the third lap Steve was biting my heals as we lapped Chris Tremonte and started the final 2.5 km lap. I didn’t look back, and began to run faster. I felt great, and was cheering for the other Americans all the way up until the final sprint. I came in at 13th place, and the top American. Sexton was just behind me, but the gap had increased of the final lap to 22 seconds. Thompson took first followed by Gaag. This is my top finish at an ITU race, and definitely a confidence builder that I was able to race well in humidity. I know I will have better runs in the future and I’m looking forward to really testing my limits again.

After the race I went to cool down in the river, and while I was standing with the other American athletes on the pontoon a man approached us and asked if we would be willing to swim with the Mayor of Seoul. We agreed. I saw an opportunity to use one of the Korean phrases I had learned for the trip and I asked the mayor (I’m sure I mispronounced it) what his name was. "My name? I am O-se-hoon. I am related to your future president, see our names both start with ‘O’! – O-ba-ma, O-se-hoon!" I thought this was humorous, but the smile on the mayor’s face made it quite obvious that there was something about this joke that was missing in the translation.

Seoul Asia Cup – Saturday

After getting in to Seoul Friday night and feasting at the "Broadway Diner" (right below the "Yankz and Mettz Grill") on imitation American food, consisting of butered Atlantic Salmon (quite far from the Atlantic), mussels, sushi, sashimi, kimchi, bread, meat balls, korean bbq ribs, rice, fried rice, azuki bean rice, rice rolled in bamboo shoots – in other words, not very American, but certainly not Korean.

Shortly thereafter, we hit our pillows at mach 6 and didn’t move for another 10 hours. We awoke to breakfast that consisted of the above, minus the ribs, and with the addition of eggs and dumplings (out of 25 dishes, maybe 5 were different from dinner). Not real exciting, but maybe they had leftovers to get rid of.

Eager for adventure, we put our bikes together, and set off for the race course. about a mile away.

The river was buzzing with people. thousands of locals were playing games, dancing, riding bikes along the path, skating on a concrete speed-skate track, playing music, walking, talking, eating, and enjoying the haze of the warm and humid day. Within the last week spring had turned to Summer in Seoul, and as the rain quit, the temperature rose steadily.

What freaked me out was that a good portion of these people – enjoying the weather, the park, their friends.. – were wearing face masks to protect them from the thick smog hanging over the city. The race pamphlet told us that the river was known around the world for its "length and girth" (inevitably the source of a great deal of humor), but the only thing making it appear wide was the thick haze that grayed the opposite bank. I’m sure we were breathing more than most of the park-goers, yet we were the ignorant ones without respiratory guards.

At 1pm we met for the race briefing. I was amazed at how well the Korean Triathlon Union had organized the event. It seemed every detail was taken care of. Throughout the weekend, we would discover that this is typical of Korean culture. They don’t plan in an anal retentive way – they just think about who they are planning for, and the guest always seems to come first in priority.

Finally, we were allowed to swim in the river – though the Aussies and Kiwis chose to find a pool. The water was cool (~65 F or 18 C), but with the heat of the day it was a real struggle to slip on my old Blue Seventy Helix Wetsuit for the first time of the season (Greg already has the 2009 version, but I have yet to try it out). By the time we hopped in the water seemed far too hot for neoprene. Despite some floating garbage, and a little debris, the 27 month cleaning program the city had done with the river seemed to have been a success. It was far cleaner than my expectations.

The only strange part of the 2 lap swim course was that there would be a yellow lane line connecting the buoys. I figured this would make drafting easy, but the full effects were not realized until race day. As for Saturday, a nice but uneventful welcome dinner finished the nice, but uneventful day and sent us into another deep coma. (well, it was a great night’s rest for me anyway, Chris had a sinus infection blooming and spent much of the night spewing phlegm.)

If you really can’t wait for me to post about Sunday, check out the results. The swim was miserable, the bike was awesome, and the run was fun. The course was completely flat, but as much as I hate to admit that wasn’t a true 10k time, I don’t think Thompson ran a true 29:30 – the course must have been short.

Right now I’m curled up in bed (back in Seattle) with a stomach bug I got on the airplane. My fever is dropping, and is almost below 100, and I haven’t visited the porcelain gods in about two hours, so I’m hoping I’ll be better by tomorrow – certainly before I leave for San Francisco on Wednesday. Please forgive me for not having written more, I need sleep.

Seoul Results

Coming Soon!!!!

I’m going to get on a plane, and I’ll write about the trip after I sleep for several hours.

Seattle -> Seoul

I’m on the flight to Seoul, South Korea. Also on board are Chris Tremonte, and the 2008 Collegiate US Champion, Steve Sexton. I tried taking some all natural sleeping aids for the flight, but was only able to stay asleep for a few hours. Not enough to get me through the 12 hour flight, and I still have over five more hours, having already walked around, brushed my teeth three times (free toothbrushes in the bathrooms), finished the chicken wrap I packed, and watched Merry Poppins all the way through.

I learned how to say "yes", "no" "please" "thank you" and "hello" in Korean, which came in very handy when I was checking in. Ok, not really, but the lady at the counter thought I was cute trying to say hello and thank you while she filled out the paperwork for my bike.

I thought I had finally outlasted Klepto the Crow in our ongoing battle over food, but he returned this morning to find a fruit cobbler cooling on the front porch. My mom had woken early and baked me a fruit cobbler for the trip. In the past, Klepto and I have fought over Clif Shot and Clif Bars, and the fights have been solo, mono a rapto. This time, Klepto was in a losing battle. My mom was not about to let him snatch up a single blueberry. Mid-sentence she bolted for the door yelling, "NO, NOT THE CROW!" and waving kitchen implements in Klepto’s direction as she charged. Klepto may be back, but he’ll think twice before he goes after mother’s cobbler.

We’ve been on this flight for almost nine hours now. About an hour ago I got up to use the bathroom and stretch and saw the Chris had also woken from his nap. We went to a large empty space by the exit bulkhead and started talking when we heard a loud thump and a woman screaming. At first I didn’t know where it was coming from and made some joke about a goblin on the wing. A few minutes later Steve joined us, and there was another scream, this time louder and longer. This was not just a yell, this was the scream of a tortured soul. I finally identified the source, a young woman being consoled by her friend, tears streaming down her face, hyperventilating… something was obviously very wrong. I guessed that she had only recently realized that she had forgotten Macaulay Culkin at home.

We tried to ignore it, and continued to talk about how Vista sucks and Chris works for Microsoft so he should care what we think. (Turns out the company gives employees cards good for free tech support just so he can deal with these situations). The screaming kept getting worse. At one point a guy opened the bathroom door to come out, heard the screaming, rolled his eyes and went back into the bathroom, locking the door behind him.

A few more minutes passed and the screaming kept getting worse, until a group of three or four flight attendants approached the three of us. Apparently the woman screaming thought that we were standing there talking about her, which was a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. We relocated to the front of the plane and debated the mental status of a woman that none of us would have notice had she not started screaming in terror.

I’m now in the Lexington Hotel, sharing a room with Chris. He filled me in on the rest of the crazy lady story. Apparently while I was watching 27 dresses he and Steve had met up in the back of the plane to talk again. The two were debating what would happen if they were to jump from a plane at 35,000 feet when he screamer approached them and asked if they were talking about her because she was pregnant. "No we were talking about jumping out of the plane," was out of Steve’s mouth before he really thought about it. Luckily, that seemed like a sufficient answer and she left them alone the rest of the flight. 27 dresses was way less entertaining.

Here’s a picture of the course we’re racing on Sunday. Lots of turns, which should be fun. (click for a bigger version)

Beyond Expectation

Here’s the big advantage of buying a bike from a small company that sells directly and keeps tabs on all the bikes it sells. Beyond Fabrications is awesome, and this story makes that obvious.

Last Thursday I proved that triathletes should never contest a sprint. Especially not at a Thursday night crit, when there’s nothing on the line. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I crashed hard and slid on my side across the finish line at the Seward Park Crit last week. I was making my pass for a hopeful win. The leader was to my right, and another guy on my wheel was trying to pass on my left. I’m not sure if the guy on my left got his bars under my bars, or if they hit my side, but my wheels didn’t stay under me. As I was sliding I looked back and curled into a ball hoping nobody would hit me. About five or six bikes swerved and made it safely around me, and then a guy sprinting (maybe with his head down?) ran square over the top of me and my bike. My poor Beyond Fabrications Radius Carbon frame took the full weight of the impact. Like a carbon secret service agent, my bike spared it’s life for my health. The frame is totaled. Done. Cracked in three places.

It’s pretty obvious where the other guy hit, just in front of the seat tube. That crack is the biggest, and caused two smaller cracks at the other end of the top tube and down near the bottom bracket. I must not have been thinking clearly because it took about four people insisting I not ride home for me to finally give in and call my buddy Peter to come pick me up. I’m pretty sure I would have a multi-piece bike had I hit a single bump on the 20 mile ride home.

While waiting for Peter I called up Jim at Beyond Fabrications and explained what happened. "Jim, I have bad news. I crashed my bike at a local Crit, and I’m leaving next week to go race in Korea."

"Ok, I can get you a crash replacement in the mail tomorrow," Jim’s response floored me. "You’ll have a bike no later than Monday."

"Really?"

"Yeah, you need a bike to race, so we’ll get you a bike. It’s bike racing, crashes happen, you’re not hurt, don’t worry about it."

Jim is my hero. My new Radius Carbon showed up Saturday morning! Jim paid the extra money for overnight shipping!