Jet lag

I've lost track, but I think I have flown over to Europe and back around 40 times. That includes the 5 times that I bounced back and forth in the past 6 months. So you would think that after so much travel, I would be used to the 8 hour time zone change. Not so much!

My wife Cami, who went over to watch Worlds last week, seems to have no problem with jet lag. When she arrived in Berlin, she adjusted within a day. When we came home, she was able to sleep in until 7am. I, on the other hand, have been waking up between 4:30 and 5 every morning and unable to get back to sleep. Among frequent travelers it is well known that some people adjust well to jet lag and others dont. Unfortunately for me, I have never seemed to adjust well; but at a certain point you just cope with it anyway.

I am still waiting to find out if I will be flying out to Beijing in two weeks. The World Cup Final is in Beijing on the 15th of September. It is the "test event" for the Olympics, meaning that they will use the same venues and staff for the event as for the Olympics. (I think that all sports are required to have a test event prior to the Olympics). If I get the invitation to go, the Olympic Committee will expedite my visa and put me on the same flight as Dennis. If I dont get the invitation to go, I am done for the season and will start my break and preparation for next season.

So back to jet lag. If I fly out to Beijing, it will be the 7th major flight of the past 6 months. Because it takes about a week to adjust each way, I will have spent around 14 of 25 weeks since March jet lagged. (By the way, at about 24 hours per flight, I have spent 2 weeks on airplanes since March as well). It's part of the job as an athlete. And while I can't say I enjoy throwing away 2 weeks of my life to sitting on an airplane, I love what I do and I would not trade it for anything!

Better Late than Never

So I have been pretty bad about keeping new content on my blog lately. In Berlin, the only place we had internet was at "Easy Internet" upstairs from a Dunkin Donuts. Although it was near the hotel, it was still a pain to get there, find a working computer, and suffer through a slow internet connection. Furthermore, we could not connect our computers online so there was no way to upload video or pictures. Enough of my whining though, now for the updates from the competition!

Making the final at Worlds is always a big accomplishment. As I have mentioned before, there are always a few great athletes who are knocked out in the semi-final and you always breath a big sigh of relief when the semis are over.

The final itself was probably the toughest competition in the history of pentathlon. My score of around 5250 on a long course swim and a difficult run would normally have put me well into the top 15. This year, it was good for 29th. I was hoping for a top 20, but I cant complain too much about my place. At the end of the day, you only control how you compete and I was pretty happy with my overall score.

The women's final went very well for Sheila. She finished 9th overall, the first time a US women has finished in the top 10 at Worlds in 8 years. Mickey had a rough time in fencing and finished 29th.

At Worlds, we also compete in the relay event. This is not an event in the Olympics yet, but it is possible that it will be added by 2012 as a second pentathlon event at the London Games. The relay consists of 3 athletes. Shooting is 3x10 shots, fencing is 3x3 touches, swimming is 3x100 meters, riding is 3x9 jumps (on 3 different horses), and running is 3x1500 meters. Our team was me, Dennis, and Sam Sacksen. We knew ahead of time that we did not have a realistic chance at a medal, but it is always fun to compete in the relay anyway. We held our own in shooting (apparently I saved up my best shoot for the relay!), but got pretty well schwacked in fencing. Swimming we were also middle of the pack. In riding, we drew a really bad set of horses and that cost us a top 8 finish. (My horse was completely blind in the left eye). We rode the horses we drew pretty well, but sometimes you just have to realize that it't not your day. In running I think we also held our own, but finished a disappointing 12th overall.

After the competition at Worlds, there is always a party. This year, DKB, a German bank and major sponsor of the competition, hosted the party at the riding venue. It was amazing with demonstrations in martial arts, a live band, and an awesome private fireworks display. It was great that Cami was able to be there for that and we were able to enjoy it together.

After a late night, we had a 7am bus to the airport. Cami came along with me, but her flight was a couple hours later. I was flying with Dennis, Mickey, and Emily; but Cami was on a different airline and had a different itinerary. We all had breakfast together in the Berlin airport, then went our separate ways.

22 hours later, we were back in Colorado Springs. When you fly, it does not bother you very much if the airline is delayed on a connecting flight because it only effects your layover. When your last flight is delayed, it really stinks because you get home that much later (and after 20 hours of travel, every extra minute grits on your nerves). United always seems to have problems getting out of Chicago on time, and yesterday was no exception. After an hour delay prior to boarding, we sat on the runway for another hour waiting to take off. Fortunately, I slept from the time we boarded until we landed in Colorado Springs; but the delay cost us getting dinner at the OTC that night.

I had just enough time to pick up my truck from the OTC and get back to the airport when Cami landed. Cami made it on time, but her luggage decided to stay on vacation for a little longer. We think her bags will arrive today at some point.

I might be flying to Beijing in a couple weeks. Right now, I am the first reserve for the World Cup Final. I promise better pictures from Beijing if we have internet!

For now, it's unpack and get back to training. If I am in World Cup Final, I will have to train pretty hard for the next two weeks that I am home to get back in shape.

At World Championships in Berlin

The story of how we got to Berlin sounded like a bad joke... "So there was a bus with 10 Egyptians, 7 Americans, and a Polish bus driver who did not speak any English...)" What would take just over 2 hours in a car took us 6 hours by bus with what must be the most inept bus driver in all of Poland... and mind you, we are talking about Poland here! (For those of you who dont know, I am Polish so you can make fun of me also). The real high point of the bus ride was when the bus driver got lost trying to find the hotel in Berlin. He would pull over to some unsuspecting pedestrian, open the door of the bus, and yell out "Bahnhaustrassen" was the name of the street that we were trying to find. The shocked pedestrian would, inevitably, jump back and yell "nine!" implying that they did not want to go there. Eventually, we found the hotel despite the best attempts by our bus driver to get as lost as possible.

Today was the Semi Finals of the World Championships for men. Our women competed yesterday and Sheila and Mickey both easily made it through to the final. They will compete in the final tomorrow. I think that Ted has found a way to have live results on my website, so feel free to check it here. Otherwise, go to Cardsys.hu and good luck navigating a Hungarian website!

In World Cups and World Championships, we have to compete in semi-finals to narrow the field down to 36 for the final. The reason for this is that it would be logistically impossible to fence the roughly 100 competitors and difficult to find the nearly 60 horses you need for that many athletes. As a result, we compete in shooting, fencing, swimming and running and the top 12 athletes from the 3 semi-final groups move on to the final.

Semi-finals always take their toll on a few of the best athletes. Today in my group, the guy who won World Championships last year did not advance. I started in 11th before the run with the 2004 Olympic Gold Medalist right behind me. We both made it through to the final, but the Russian who started right behind us and recently earned a slot at the 2008 Olympics at European Championships did not.

Dennis was very close to making the final, but a bad fence left him in 14th place Niul and Sam did not have good days today and finished farther down.

So on Sunday I will be competing in the final. We will do all 5 sports and nothing from the semi-finals will carry on. You start with a clean slate and the top 36 go head to head. We will try to have results and maybe even some pictures loaded onto the website by early Sunday morning in the US.

Thats all for now. More tomorrow on the women's competition.

World Championships Training Camp

My apologies to those of you who have been checking for more frequent updates. Since getting back from Rio, it has been a very busy time for me and I have not had much time or ability to blog.



Last week, we left Colorado on Tuesday for Europe. We flew to Chicago, then overnight to Frankfurt, then to Berlin. From Berlin, we took a 3 hour bus ride to Drzonkow (pronounced John-kov) Poland. World Championships are not until this upcoming Friday, but we wanted to adjust to the time and the climate before competing.



Drzonkow itself is a tiny town on the outskirts of Zelona Gora, a small city in western Poland. There is a facility here that is really great to train at, but the town itself literally has one small shop and nothing else. Fortunately, I have my laptop (with dvd player) and Niul brought his Xbox 360. Until yesterday we were playing the Xbox on a small black and white TV. Last night, Janusz produced a projector (courtesy of the local pentathlon club) and we now play Xbox on a 70 inch screen in our hotel rooms!



There is only one internet connection here and I have not been able to hook up my laptop to the internet. Therefore, I don't have any pics yet for the blog; but I am hoping to load some in next week. The high point of the trip (aside from playing 70 inch Xbox) has been trying to snap photos of my teammates sleaping with funny expressions on their faces. Yes, we really are that bored!



Tomorrow we are getting on a bus at 8am for Berlin. I expect that it will take 3-4 hours to get to our hotel in downtown Berlin and after that we will try to visit the competition site. Cami is leaving Colorado to come out here tomorrow and will arive on Thursday in Berlin. That will be the first time that Cami has been able to join me at a competition this year. Our former exchange student, Vanessa, lives in Berlin and is going to show Cami around and give her the full tourist experience.



That's all for now. I'll try to get some competition updates out from Berlin after tomorrow.