The Competition

The last couple days since the competition have gone by so fast that I suddenly realized I had not posted a blog about the competition. For those of you back at home, I gather the TV coverage was not great (and in the middle of the night) so you probably don’t have much of an idea what my Olympic debut was like from an athletic point of view.

To say I got off to a bad start in the competition is an understatement. Shooting is the first, and my worst event, and I have historically struggled in it. This year has been a banner year for me in the event, and I felt that I was ready to for a good shoot. During the first shot, I was too aggressive on the trigger and pulled the shot clear into the four ring (4 out of 10). It was so unnerving that I had trouble getting focused on shot two which came shortly thereafter. Another bad shot (6) ended any realistic chances I had for a medal in the first two minutes of my 10 hour competition. But this is the Olympics and you just don’t give up—I certainly didn’t, as my last 18 shots were fine and I pulled together an impressive comeback.

Coming into fencing after a devastating shoot is tough. You know you are behind the eight ball and the fight becomes dissociating yourself from the overall results and focusing on the bout at hand. The first half of fencing was okay for me. I had some great touches and was fencing average against a tough group. Toward the end of my fence, I dropped a few extra bouts that cost me pretty badly. I can’t remember ever being as devastated in a competition as I was walking out of the fencing venue that morning. It was not about having a bad competition, it was feeling that I had come in with such great preparation and not performed to the level I could.

The swim offered me a chance at redemption. I came out of a swimming background and swam at the Air Force Academy in college. I had to dig down pretty deep to find the motivation to swim, but I knew it was an event in which I would shine. I have been working on my swimming since qualifying for the Olympics last year and I wanted to see the fruits of my labor, even if it would not produce a medal. Wearing the new Speedo LZR suits (same design as the US Swim Team), I nailed a best time in the event by nearly two seconds… finally something to boost my spirits.

Riding was next and it proved to shake up the standings big time. In a rainy stadium filled with nearly 35,000 (extremely loud) people, the horses and riders had huge problems getting around the course. The course was as high as any course I have ridden, and the refs went out and checked a few of the jumps because they looked too high (somewhere around 5 of the jumps maxed out at 4 feet high and 4 feet in depth). My ride was fairly good and moved me up about 7 places as some of the top athletes moved to the back of the competition.

All summer I trained for the running course that was conducted at the Olympic test event. It was more or less straight with gentle turns and perfect for me. My coaches and I anticipated hot and humid weather so I trained all summer in long sleeve shirts and sometimes long pants in Colorado’s 95 degree heat to prepare. But like so much that day, the running also changed and my preparations were diminished. It was cool and rainy (which I usually like), but more importantly the course had eight 180 degree turns per 1000 meter lap. This has the effect of nearly leveling the playing field as the good and the bad runners all have to nearly stop at every corner. Fortunately, I was far enough back that I was not going to lose a medal or a top ten finish due to poor course design. So I put together my best effort in the event and ran up to 22nd place.

Afterward, I finally had a chance to meet up with my family in the stands. My intentions to quietly slip in behind them to say hi were interrupted when some in the crowd realized I was an athlete. After nearly 30 minutes of signing autographs and taking pictures with those in the stadium, I finally got to see my family.

It was an emotional roller coaster to go through that day. After shooting and fencing, I was so disappointed in myself I could barely text my wife to tell her I was okay. But the crowd of people who mobbed me after the competition ecstatic about meeting an Olympian reminded me that there is a lot to be said for just being in the competition.

Meeting with my family and friends afterward was also a big boost. I remember a Hallmark ad that ran during the Olympics a while ago. It showed an athlete’s parents giving her two cards before she competed. One was titled “If you win” the other “If you don’t win.” She opens both cards and they are the same. Both say “We are so proud of you.” That’s kind of what it felt like. I may not have been too proud of my performance, but my friends and family didn’t care. They came to support me regardless of the outcome. They would have liked for me to have a great competition, but they were just as happy to see me participate and finish the day. It was a welcome ending to one of the most difficult and devastating days of my athletic career.

So I came into this competition with high but realistic expectations. They didn’t pan out this time, but at the end of the day I can look back and say I did everything I could to be ready for the Olympics. There was not a workout I missed, a sacrifice I didn’t make, or a preparation I could have done better to be ready for this day. When you prepare like that, you just give yourself higher odds of succeeding, you don’t guarantee it. On four of five days, I think I would have had an outstanding competition given my preparation, but that one in five day still lingers and can come out at the least opportune time.

So my performance was not what I expected or hoped for, but I can now say I competed in the Olympics. Sometimes you have to walk away and hold your head high realizing that your only accomplishment was representing your country, your family, and your friends with dignity an pride despite all else. But maybe that is the most important thing anyway…

Two Days!!!

For a long time, people have been asking me if I am getting excited to compete in the Olympics. Surprisingly, I really did not feel much excitement until recently, even at Opening Ceremonies. Perhaps it was traveling half way around the world, dealing with new and different training environments, or the fact that it still seemed so far away; but I never felt that excited.

All that is changing now. The past week has afforded me the opportunity to really get ready for my competition. As training has gotten easier, I have had more time to watch my friends compete both live and on TV (I am watching my triathlon friends on TV while I write this). Watching friends of mine compete and win medals has helped it sink in that I will be taking my place on the international stage shortly.

My wife has been here for about a week now, but my parents and my wife’s grandparents along with some other friends arrived yesterday. That also makes it feel like my time is closing in.

I am also starting to hit my “lasts.” My last shooting practice was yesterday. I’ll have a last massage, last run workout, last swim workout, and last fencing lesson. Those benchmarks make the approaching competition day seem very real and close also.

So the last two days will be mostly filled with rest and relaxation. I’ll see my family and other guests this evening for dinner, and then probably not again until I see them sitting in the stadium watching me compete. It is pretty surreal to think about that.

With less than 48 hours, I am feeling excited and ready to compete. I have been waiting for this my whole life, and soon it will be my turn to face the greatest athletes in the world on the world’s greatest sporting stage.

Village Life

As most of you have likely guessed from my blogging absence, I have been very busy lately. Since my last post, I flew back and forth to Singapore, experienced a minor whiplash injury during a riding practice (no worries--I have since almost completely recovered), and finally settled into life in the Olympic Village.

One of the constants of every Olympic Games is the Village. It is the location where most athletes are housed during the Olympics and is the center of fun, training, medical, and general living needs for athletes. This Olympics, the village is a sizable complex of nearly one square mile filled with numerous apartment complexes, a vast dining room, office space, a fitness center, and even a 50-meter outdoor pool. It was built new for the Olympics and we are the first occupants of the housing (which also has problems of new housing like doors not fitting quite right and small plumbing issues being worked out).

The inside of the village is pristine, a combination of modern apartments with classical Chinese architecture for the small parks and rivers in between buildings. There is also an office for the "mayor" of the village that is built in classic Chinese architecture.

Each country is housed in their own area. Because Team USA is so large, we cover the better part of two apartment buildings in the complex. Our buildings have American flags hanging from nearly every balcony. And while a few of the highest profile athletes have opted to stay in hotels, most of Team USA is in the village. One of the high points of being here is running into friends from other sports and taking to them about their athletic performances. Everyone is excited to be here to compete, and it shows in elevator conversation and passing "hellos".

At the village, the USOC has set up a full medical clinic that is manned 24-hours a day for our medical needs. We also have internet rooms, AT&T phones that call back to the United States for free, and plenty of water and sports drinks in coolers to fight off the natural dehydration in the hot and humid climate here.

Aside from the living accommodations, we have a full laundry facility with a 12-hour turnaround (although I found out today that you have to give them smaller loads or your clothes don't get very clean). There are game rooms, a McDonalds, and lots of TVs to watch events as well. If you wanted, you could spend your entire Olympics in the village and have a pretty good time.

Transit to and from the village is very efficient as well. The Chinese have done a great job of making it easy to get around the city. Cabs only cost about a dollar per ten minutes in the car so I have been taking cabs as often as official Olympic transit vehicles.

All in all, this place is a lot of fun. I am finally able to relax and enjoy the experience, feeling ready to compete in a few days. With only a few workouts left, I am starting to feel ready for my day to come…

Great Olympic Moment

I started swimming competitively when I was eight years old on the tiny Falfin swim team in Colorado Springs. A couple years later, I watched the Seoul Olympics on my family's small black and white TV. Because I was a swimmer, I watched all the swimming events and idolized the swimming greats of the time. Matt Biondi and Janet Evans were my heroes. My parents did not let us watch much TV growing up, but for two weeks in August, we watched the Olympics whenever they were on. Watching Americans win gold medals was pretty much the high point of my summer.

Eight years ago, I went to the Sydney Olympics as a spectator. Four years ago, I went to the Athens Olympics to work for NBC. Neither time did I get to see my favorite Olympic sport (outside of mine), watch a world record be broken, or see an American win a gold medal. Yesterday, I saw all three.

Each night at the village, tickets for the following day are released to athletes. Swimming finals tickets are hot and I was surprised when I found them available on Thursday night. I changed around my Friday schedule to accommodate making the 10am swim session (which is what shows in the evening live in the United States).

Olympic swimming finals met all my expectations. The crowd was on fire for the US team, and the swimmers responded in kind with a fantastic show. Just before the session, I ran into my friend Rowdy Gaines who does the color commentary for NBC in swimming. I would have liked to sit with the US swim team, but my ticket was for the nose bleed section and two attempts to get back to the US swimming section were rebuffed by aggressive but nice volunteers.

The first medal was a surprise in the 200 breast and went to Rebecca Soni of the USA. It was during this race that I realized I had become fairly accustomed to seeing the green World Record line on TV and found myself somewhat expecting to see her swimming along the line in real life as well.

Next up was the 200 backstroke where US men went 1-2. Then came Michael Phelps who broke another World Record to win the 200 IM. The US team was truly having a phenomenal day, and they wrapped up with a bronze medal swim in the 100 freestyle.

But the high point of the day for me was watching the US Flag raised and hearing our national anthem played three times. It's really hard to describe how proud it makes you feel to be in another country and have that experience. This is the third time I have been at an Olympics, and watching an American win a gold medal might be the greatest of all my experiences. Seeing it happen three times in one morning… amazing!

A Change of Scenery

It is not uncommon for an athlete to retire and work for NBC as a broadcaster. What is much more uncommon is for someone to do this in reverse. That is what happened to me, and the experience of working in the last Olympics has clearly given me a different perspective and appreciation for my experience now as an athlete.

Four years ago, I had an amazing opportunity arise. After failing to qualify for the 2004 Olympics, NBC hired me to work for them in Athens. It was bittersweet to be there watching others compete in an Olympics I thought would be my own, but working for NBC proved to be an awesome fallback.

Probably the best part of my Athens experience was getting an “Infinity” pass with an NBC credential. At the Olympics, everything is highly secure and there are security and ID checkpoints around every corner. In Athens, I quickly discovered that the credential NBC issued me was my ticket to see and do virtually anything (with the time I had left after working 16 hour days). I was able to walk around any venue and had full access to anything I needed for my job. Of course, as an Olympic junkie, I took some liberties with my access and found myself in a number of unusual places (like the swimming warm up pool, the floor of the gymnastics venues…)

I had not realized how spoiled I was until I arrived here in Beijing. This time, I have an athlete credential (which does not sport an infinity pass). It did not occur to me that my access had been significantly diminished until I tried to go to the swimming pool to meet with Speedo and pick up a new LZR suit. After four failed attempts to find an athlete entry port, I finally found it. Feeling a bit frustrated, I could not put my finger on what bothered me about having to search for the athlete entry. Then I realized that four years ago, I had never been denied access to any facility. I started wondering if I had been demoted…

In Athens, I worked with Andrea Joyce of NBC at Opening Ceremonies. We were there several hours ahead of time to scope out the infield. At some point, our sense of timing became lost and suddenly opening ceremonies started with us on the field. Rather than walk through the ceremonies, we sat under a speaker for the duration of the ceremonies. It was surreal to watch the entirety of the ceremonies from on the track. My view was spectacular and we were quite comfortable watching from the speaker. But again, it was bittersweet. I had the best seats in the house, but part of me was still somewhat disappointed that I would not be marching in with Team USA.

This year, I had a pleasant change of scenery. At the start of opening ceremonies, I was not sitting in a cool shady spot on the track. I was sweating like a pig in the athlete staging area along with all the other athletes. It must have been 85 degrees in the gymnastics hall where we waited for nearly two hours to march. It was pushing 90 outside when we walked to the stadium.

By the time I reached the stadium, my body was soaked in sweat; and I had consumed nearly a gallon of fluids to stay hydrated. The Ralph Lauren outfits were spectacular, but they were not designed to be cool and comfortable in extreme heat and humidity.

Four hours after arriving at opening ceremonies, Team USA finally made it to the tunnel that leads to the track. You could smell the sweat of thousands of athletes who had just passed through the tunnel. Nearly everyone’s faces were drenched with sweat from the heat. It was not comfortable.

Walking out of the tunnel onto the field is something I will remember for the rest of my life. Unlike Athens, this is my Olympics. The crowds waving US flags were waving for me and my team. A billion people would watch my Team USA compete now. The emotions are really indescribable.

After marching onto the field, we parked in our holding position and waited. By the time the torch was lit, we had been standing for nearly 4 hours. I was tired, jetlagged, and near exhaustion from two hard workouts earlier in the day. But it was all worth it. This time I was watching my opening ceremonies.

So maybe I took a bit of a demotion when I lost my infinity credential and picked up an athlete credential. I can’t go anywhere unquestioned anymore. Rather than sitting in the best seat to watch opening ceremonies, I had to stand for four hours. Instead of having a driver, I take public transit or an Olympic bus. But one thing is for sure: I have it way better off this Olympics than last.

Team Processing

Today I started the final leg of my long Olympic journey. After once again failing to finish packing early, I had stayed up until midnight tying up the final loose ends before leaving today. The punishment for my transgressions was about four-and-a-half hours of sleep and a 4:45am wakeup call to catch a 6:15 flight (I get dressed really quickly).

Normally I would take an Olympic Committee shuttle or taxi to the airport, but Cami wanted to see me off. At 5:30, Cami dropped me at the United desk and we said goodbye. That was probably the first time that it hit me that the Olympics are rapidly approaching.

After a layover in Denver, we arrived in San Francisco. A shuttle drove my team and about 15 other athletes and coaches to San Jose State University. Upon arrival, we were quickly checked into our dorm rooms, home for the next two nights, and given a brief overview of the next two days. Then came the fun part…

One of the big perks of making an Olympic Team is getting the Olympic outfits. I have been competing for years and scored numerous National Team uniforms, but Olympic outfits are legendary. They often set new fashion standards (think the Roots beret worn by the 2002 US Winter Olympic Team), and major apparel companies fight for the right to design and produce the outfits. This year is no different. Nike designed the athletic outfits and Ralph Lauren produced the opening and closing ceremonies outfits. And now that I have seen the outfits, I can say that both companies have risen to the occasion and produced spectacular apparel this year.

Processing takes about four hours total. Only about half that time is taken getting your Olympic apparel. The rest of the time you spend going over medical history, getting briefed on media relations, travel arrangements, and other Olympic rules. But by far my favorite part of processing was ordering my Olympic ring.

Nine years ago, I received my first significant ring, my Air Force Academy class ring. It is white gold with the Air Force Academy crest on one side and my class crest on the other. On the top of the ring sits a star sapphire surrounded by 8 small diamonds and rubies. I am very patriotic and I wanted my ring to show it. That ring is one of my most prized possessions earned by completing the rigorous program at the Academy. A few years back, I decided that if I earned an Olympic ring, I would design it to match my Academy ring. So the ring I selected today was white gold, has the Olympic Rings on the top, and will have a sapphire, ruby, and diamond on either side of the ring. It is the perfect addition to my incredibly small jewelry collection and probably the only ring that could displace my Academy ring from its place on my hand.

The last part of Team Processing is excess luggage shipping. Only about a third of all apparel distributed is mandatory for the Games. Because athletes have to travel with so much sport specific equipment, it is impossible to take all the apparel to China. So after receiving a shopping cart full of clothes and shoes, you decide what you really need, and ship the rest home.

It is finally starting to sink in that the Olympics are here. The excitement of the processing staff and the other athletes is palpable. It feels a lot more real to actually see opening and closing ceremonies uniforms, try on the podium attire, and buy the last few American products before going oversees. Tomorrow will be my last full day on US soil before competing. On Tuesday morning, my team and I will take the non-stop flight from San Francisco to Beijing China and the next leg of my Olympic journey. Opening Ceremonies are just 4 days away!

Uncle Jerry

One of the most interesting parts of my Olympic story is not about me, but it is about my uncle. In media interviews everywhere around the world, it is common for me to spend most or all of my time discussing our relationship. Given that my uncle’s name and image are recognizable around the world, it is not surprising that people want to know about our interactions. In reality, my uncle’s story and my Olympic pursuit have been linked for years. His work has given me a much stronger understanding of the roll the Olympics play in world affairs and in bringing pride to a nation. For those of you who don’t know, my uncle “Jerry” is known publicly as Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, the man who oversaw reconstruction of Iraq from 2003-2004.

The first time that Jerry became involved in my athletic career was back in 1995. As a senior in high school, I had been dabbling in pentathlon for a couple years. My season had gone well, and I had achieved the qualification standard to compete in the Junior World Championships. The only problem was money. My sport federation was not supporting junior programs so I needed to raise the money myself to fly to Taiwan and compete. Jerry found out and bought my ticket and a few pieces of equipment I needed.

Five years later, I was visiting Jerry over the 4th of July. One morning at breakfast, he asked if I had any big plans for the rest of the summer. At the time I was on a break between graduating the Air Force Academy and starting my Air Force active duty job. I mentioned that I wanted to go to watch the Olympics in Sydney, but I had to see if airline ticket prices dropped to an affordable level. Three weeks later, Jerry called me up with a surprise. “Eli, my wife and I have decided that money should not be an issue and you should go watch the Olympics. Call my secretary and have her book you a flight.” Watching the Sydney Olympics was very inspirational, and I came home even more dedicated to my own Olympic pursuit.

Over the next couple years, I rose to the top of the US ranking list in pentathlon. I sent Jerry some shirts that said “Bremer, USA” on them, but I unknowingly sent him more than that. Jerry had seen me dedicate every facet of my life to qualifying for the Olympics and he saw how much impact the Olympics could have on people’s lives.

In 2003, I landed in Cairo mere hours after the US invaded Iraq. I had an opportunity to see first hand the rage in the streets, demonstrations, and massive anti-American sentiment. Interestingly enough, there was a tremendous amount of respect given to me and my teammate for daring to enter a predominantly Muslim country to peaceably represent our county in sports.

Within weeks of my return from Cairo, my dad called and told me to turn on the news. Jerry was being named to a new position. President Bush had appointed him the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the entity charged with civil reconstruction of Iraq. Within days, Jerry was on the ground in Iraq charged with the difficult task of undoing decades of societal decay in mere months.

During the summer of 2003, I continued my pursuit of the Olympics. I was one of only two US athletes to make the final at the 2003 World Championships in Italy. It was 115 degrees there and scorching. In Baghdad, 115 would have felt like winter in July. I was lucky enough to return home after my bout with the heat, while Jerry stayed in Iraq and wore a suit and tie every day in the sweltering heat to show an example of professionalism to the new Iraqi leaders.

Even before the air conditioning turned on (and that took a while) in the summer of 2003, Jerry took on an ambitious task. He decided the Iraqi people needed to see their team in the 2004 Olympics. Many people don’t know this, but Iraq’s Olympic Committee was decertified by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) following the US led invasion.

Prior to the invasion, Uday Hussein had run the Olympic Committee. Athletes were lavishly rewarded for good performances and tortured or executed for poor performance. The country’s Olympic infrastructure was, like the rest of the country, in shambles from years of corrupt and perverse operations.

The IOC decided that they would not allow Iraq to compete in the 2004 Olympics unless an entire new Iraqi Olympic Committee was created, starting with elections at the local level. Considering that Iraq had not held free elections of any kind in a generation, this seemed like an insurmountable task. But Jerry saw the value in giving this devastated country some much needed pride and worked to form the new Olympic Committee.

Months later, the first free elections in decades were held in Iraq, elections to create a new Iraqi Olympic Committee. After intense lobbying and work by my uncle, the IOC decided to allow Iraqi athletes to compete in the 2004 Olympics.

One day during the winter of 2003-2004, I received a call from Jerry in Baghdad. He asked if I was still doing most of my training at the Olympic Training Center (OTC) in Colorado Springs. He told me he was sending out a judo and wrestling team to train at the OTC and asked that I introduce myself and make them feel welcome. Weeks later, the small Iraqi team arrived at the OTC to prepare for the Olympics with the US Team. At the time, the US media was reporting that Iraqis were increasingly opposed to US led occupation and that anti-American sentiment was growing. I was unsure how the Iraqi team would view me, the nephew of the public face of US led occupation.

However, when the Iraqi team found out I was Jerry’s nephew, I was nearly dog-piled. I had grown men kissing me and nearly in tears. In a very emotional discourse of broken English, the Iraqis told me that Uday had tortured them and threatened them, but Jerry had given them hope and pride. During their stay, the Iraqis and I met several times. At one point, I arranged a conference call between the Iraqi team and my uncle in Baghdad. The Iraqis profusely thanked Jerry for his support and the opportunity to train in the US for the Olympics. In exchange, Jerry encouraged the Iraqis to be civil leaders when they returned home and to use their Olympic fame for the betterment of Iraqi society. Several weeks later, the Iraqi team returned home, ready to compete for pride of country rather than fear of torture and death.

When I failed to qualify for the 2004 Olympics, NBC hired me to work for them in Athens at the Olympics. At Opening Ceremonies, I was assigned to work with Andrea Joyce on the field. Andrea was going to conduct interviews with athletes after Opening Ceremonies, and my job was to find the athletes in the 10,000-strong gaggle on the field. During the Parade of Nations, we were able to sit back and watch the show. Three nations received standing ovations from the crowd in Athens: the Greeks, the US team, and the Iraqi team. I have rarely felt more pride than to see people from around the world acknowledge the significance of Iraq competing in the Olympics. An effort that my uncle had literally risked his life for was now the pride of the world.

During the Olympics, the Iraqi soccer team became one of the great stories. At a time when Iraqis factions rarely agreed with each other, the nation of Iraq could agree to support their Olympic soccer team. It was truly a unifying event for the people of Iraq and the nation.

At closing ceremonies, I encountered one of the heads of the Iraqi Olympic Committee. Not knowing how he felt about my uncle, I talked to him for several minutes before telling him who I was. When he saw my name on my credential badge, he responded like the Iraqi athletes had months earlier. He kissed me and told me that Jerry had likely saved his life and the lives of many other sportsmen.

Four years have passed since the 2004 Olympics. Today, Jerry has attempted to quietly step out of the spotlight and I have qualified for the Olympics. I recently had the chance to spend a day with Jerry in Washington DC, and we were able to talk about the Olympics, world affairs, and the normal family stuff. Jerry has always been an Olympic fan, but this year he has a much more personal reason to get involved and watch the Olympics.

I am extremely excited that Jerry, along with all the other friends and family who have helped me, will be able to see their efforts in my life come to fruition. As an Olympian, that may be the most significant part of going to the Olympics, the opportunity to thank your lifelong supporters with the act of representing your country in the Olympics.

I wish I could end this post on a high note, but as I was finishing writing this post, I saw some disturbing news headlines. Unfortunately, the success of the 2004 Iraqi team will not be revisited this year. The IOC has just announced that it is upholding a ban on the Iraqi team over internal problems with the Iraqi Olympic Committee. It is truly sad that the athletes and the people of Iraq will not have the inspiration or the common cause my uncle helped give them.

Drugs and Money (Part 2 of 2)

There is an old saying that when you get together with family, you should not talk about religion or politics. In sports, it’s a little different; the taboo topics seem to be drugs and money. People want to know how drugs impact elite sports and how “amateur athletes” can afford the high cost of training (a few blogs ago I described how it costs about $200 per day to train, not including the opportunity costs of not working a regular job). Every time I talk to a group about the Olympics, I know someone wants to ask. Occasionally a brave soul has the courage to bring up one of these topics and is usually met with stern looks and embarrassment by the rest of the group. Because it seems to be a common theme of interest, I finally decided that it would make for a good blog. In part one, I addressed what I call the big elephant—drugs. Now for part two…

Recently I was talking to a community group about the Olympics. One individual raised his hand and asked a question about the Olympics and “professional” athletes. I assumed he was talking about basketball players who take a hiatus from the substantial salaries of club teams before donning the Team USA uniform at the Olympics. I told him that I believed if those athletes proudly represented their country with the pride and character expected of Team USA, they were a welcome addition. But in this case, the individual did not get the answer he wanted. After I answered several other questions, he again raised his hand and went on a minute long diatribe on how athletes should not be allowed to make money on sports and how doing so wrecked the essence of the Olympics. Honestly, I found it a bit insulting that this individual was suggesting that on top of the 10-12 hour days I put in, I should have another job and should not be allowed to seek corporate partners to support my dream of representing the USA in the Olympics. Despite this, I tactfully informed him that reason I was able to speak to his group for free, speak to over 5000 school kids last year, and hand out free trading cards was because my sponsors support and expect me to conduct public relations work.

Many people who come through the Olympic Training Center think athletes make small fortunes from prize money and endorsements. Furthermore, it is often assumed that the government subsidizes the Olympic Committee (the USOC actually receives no government subsidy and is funded only by corporate sponsorship). In reality, Olympic sports pay virtually nothing. A typical weightlifter of Olympic caliber might make $10,000 per year. Our top shooters (those who are ranked in the top 3 in the world) bring in around $25,000 per year in salary and prize money. For athletes just emerging on the national and international scene, few, if any, make money off their sports. A typical emerging triathlete might make $20,000-$30,000 per year in sponsorships and prize money and spend almost the same flying around the world to compete. Athletes with high visibility will make more money and a few of the top athletes like Michael Phelps score major endorsement deals, but most athletes make nothing more than the cost of training and competition. Small donor sponsors, including hometown family and friends, often subsidize the Olympic dreams of athletes. In my case, I have been fortunate enough to have the Air Force as my biggest supporter because I am an Air Force Officer (now in the Reserves). They help pay the bills and make it possible for me to train 6 days a week to be ready to compete against the best athletes in the world.

The question of “professionalism” still bothers some people, like the gentleman I mentioned earlier, even when they learn how little athletes make. I believe that allowing athletes to seek and retain sponsorships and endorsements is good for the Olympics. The main difference between “professional” Olympians and “professional” athletes from other sports is where they get their money. While a major league sports player earns his salary from the team, Olympians get money almost exclusively through endorsements. This requires athletes to be personable, professional, and presentable to the public. Because of this, most of the high dollar Olympians are exceptionally nice people who are excellent at sharing their Olympic Dream with others.

In most cases, Olympic athletes compete to represent the USA because we love what we do. Many athletes would make more money working minimum wage jobs, but the privilege of competing for your nation at the Olympics is really the best payment of all.

Drugs and Money (Part 1 of 2)

There is an old saying that when you get together with family, you should avoid conversation about religion and politics. In sports, it’s a little different; the taboo topics are drugs and money. People always want to know how drugs impact elite sports and how “amateur athletes” can afford the high cost of training (a few blogs ago I described how it costs about $200 per day to train). Every time I talk to a group about the Olympics, I know someone wants to ask. Occasionally a brave soul has the courage to bring up one of these topics but they are usually met with stern looks of embarrassment from the rest of the group. Because it seems to be a common theme of interest, I finally decided that it would make for a good blog.

Let’s start with the big elephant in the room—drugs. Going back about ten years, there was clearly a major problem with drug usage by US Olympic athletes. While it is unclear how extensive this problem was, the revelation that our highest profile athletes, specifically many in Track and Field, were using drugs severely tarnished the reputation of all US Olympic athletes. Perhaps the biggest reason for this problem was the structural setup of drug testing in the US (and internationally). The US Olympic Committee effectively conducted drug testing of its own athletes which created a problem of credibility and reliability. This is essentially the same problem that every major league sport has right now with their drug testing. From a credibility point of view, can an organization be charged with enforcement of drug policy when that very enforcement is likely to cause detriment to the performance and image of its athletes? Clearly it cannot. So the USOC created an independent organization called the US Antidoping Agency (USADA) back in 2000 to monitor illicit drug use in Olympic athletes. USADA is now completely independent of the USOC and has autonomous authority to test and sanction Olympic athletes both in and out of competition. This functional independence has created the credibility and capability to clean up Olympic sports. While the USOC has and always will always have the goal of making the US Olympic Team the best in the world and promoting the top athletes, USADA’s sole mission is to monitor athletes and keep the US athletes drug free. The conflicting goals work well and this setup makes a lot of sense.

Prior to USADA’s existence, there were major loopholes in the drug testing system. Today, USADA has a policy of no-advance-notice (NAN) out-of-competition (OOC) testing that makes cheating the system virtually impossible. We are required to keep location forms on file with USADA at all times and must consent to drug testing 24/7/365. I have had drug officers come to my house at 6:30am on a Saturday to conduct a NAN OOC test. In a given year, I am likely to get around six NAN OOC tests and the same number of in-competition tests. If I were to refuse a test or test positive for a prohibited substance, it would result in an automatic two year ban from Olympic sports. While this might seem highly intrusive to many of you, I believe it is a great system. Those of us who compete clean are fairly proud to prove it. Furthermore, with the strictest drug testing policies in the world, the US can be proud that their athletes are now probably the cleanest athletes at the Olympics. Being subject to NAN OOC testing is but a small price to pay for this credibility.

The Treadmill Remains Undefeated

In my last blog, I posted some pictures of me running on a treadmill in the lab at the Olympic Training Center using supplemental oxygen. The treadmill in the lab (which I affectionately refer to as the “house of pain”) is not any old treadmill though. This specially made machine can go over 25 miles per hour, faster than any human. It is wider and longer than any commercially available model as well. Many of the best runners in the United States have been tested or trained on this treadmill. Those runners go on to win international competitions and beat the best runners in the world. Every one of them either has or will lose a race at some point in their careers. But because of its work over the years, the treadmill has a well earned tagline that reminds users to stay humble: “The treadmill remains undefeated.”

This morning, I once again went head to head with the treadmill for my Thursday morning supplemental oxygen run. At 5 weeks out from the Olympics, I could not be happier with my fitness and progress I am making. But this morning’s run would prove to be my biggest training challenge of my season… or maybe ever.

Before competing in the Olympics, I will go through a rest period to let my body fully recover and store glycogen, the body’s chief form of energy. Between now any my rest period, which will start in early August, I will be training harder than ever. So when I arrived at the lab this morning (Thursday) at 6am for my run, it had already been a long week. Since Monday, I had already swum three times for a total of 10 miles and run 26 miles including a difficult bout with the treadmill on Tuesday. Furthermore, this morning’s early start was not a welcome event for me.

After a 30 minute warm up, my running coach Alan dropped the bombshell on me. Today my workout would be running 3,000 meters in a simulated race. To make the simulation more real, I would do it at race pace. This was not totally unexpected, but it was completely unwelcome this morning. About 6 weeks ago Alan told me he would make me run a race simulation, but I expected it next week or the week after, and I expected it on a Tuesday when I would be more rested. But today was the day, and I trusted Alan knew what he was doing.

The objective of the run was to run the first kilometer in 2:55, the second in 2:50, and the final kilometer in 2:45. In mile pace, that is starting at 4:40 per mile and building to 4:24 per mile over a 1.82 mile distance. In layman’s terms, it’s really fast.

I did a few striders, short runs designed to loosen up my stride, to get going then got off the treadmill for a final stretching session before starting. Honestly, I find it a bit scary and intimidating to know how much pain I will make myself endure during a run like that, and we noticed that my heart started racing with anticipation and anxiety even before starting. Once I got up the nerve, I jumped on the treadmill and started my race. Within a minute, I could feel something was terribly wrong and I wondered if it was simply panic. 30 seconds later, things were getting worse and faster than simple panic or anxiety could explain. Then it hit me, maybe we had not turned back on the oxygen when I returned to the treadmill from stretching. With a frantic gesture to Alan, I conveyed my concern. He checked and confirmed that the oxygen was shut off and I immediately jumped off the treadmill.

About 10 minutes later, we took another stab at the race, this time with the proper oxygen supply. The difference was night and day. After 2:55 I made the comfortable transition to 2:50 pace and Alan recorded me at 174bpm or 92% of maximum heart rate. At 5:45, we again sped up to 2:45 pace and Alan recorded me at 181 or 95.7% of maximum heart rate. Ahead of time, Alan told me we could stop the race simulation if I exceeded 185 bpm or 98% of my maximum heart rate (it is pretty devastating to approach maximum heart rate and can take days to recover). At 7 minutes into the run, Alan said I could stop the race. Despite the pain, I felt I could tolerate it for 90 more seconds. Twice more, Alan told me I could stop if I wanted, but the competitive side of me kicked in and I determined to finish at all costs. At 8:30 I finished and clocked a 188 bpm heart rate or 99.4% of maximum heart rate. Despite the pain, I was ecstatic that I had completed the test.

Running that fast this far out from the Olympic gives me great confidence in where I will be five weeks from now. I don’t know if any other athlete will be able to match it at the Olympics, but I feel I am well on my way to having the fastest run/swim combination at the Games.

After the workout, I was talking with Alan and Randy (the USOC sports physiologist) about the run. Both were extremely impressed that I could post such a fast time in the middle of the season. After slapping each other on the back a bit, I turned to Alan and Randy and reminded them that regardless of how fast I had just run and how few, if any, other athletes in my sport could match me, we had to remember one thing: Unlike me, the treadmill still remains undefeated.

Supplemental Oxygen

I get a lot of questions about my running training, specifically about my supplemental oxygen training. Last year, National Geographic aired their production “The Incredible Human Machine” which featured my supplemental oxygen training. As promised, here is a full explanation of this high tech training technique.

The Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs is located at around 6200 ft of altitude. That’s high enough that when I leave for a few weeks, I can feel the effects when I come back (and I grew up at this altitude). For years, we have known about the positive effects of living at altitude. When the human body is subject to the reduced oxygen of an altitude environment, it responds by increasing production of oxygen carrying red blood cells. A highly-trained athlete can expect to increase their red blood cell count by 15-20% when living at altitude. This assists the athlete in circulating oxygen to the body during workouts in a hypoxic (less oxygen) environment. But the real benefit is when you go to sea level. Because your body does not instantly revert to the lower number of red blood cells needed for the oxygen rich environment, you essentially have an artificially high ability to carry oxygen within your bloodstream. For me, this makes it possible to run and swim faster when I go to sea level. The effects are similar to blood doping (inserting red blood cells into the bloodstream via IV), but the practice of blood doping is both illegal and dangerous. Living at altitude is not.

There has always been one problem with training at altitude--it is impossible to train as fast as you can at sea level. It seems that no matter how much your body tries to compensate for the altitude by increasing red blood cells, you never feel the same at altitude. So for years there has been debate about whether the benefits of altitude, higher oxygen carrying capacity, outweigh the downside, lower speed in practice. Until now…

Recently some innovative sports scientists came up with a way for athletes to have it both ways. At the lab at the Olympic Training Center, we have supplemental oxygen machines. These contraptions, custom made with random parts including weather balloons, feed athletes 62% oxygen saturated air, roughly similar to the effects of training at sea level. I use supplemental oxygen (nicknamed SO2) training twice a week in running. With a gas mask on my face, I run on a specially designed treadmill that is wider, longer, and faster than any commercially available unit. In the synthetic, oxygen rich, sea level environment, I am able to push my body much harder than normal for 6200ft. This allows me to train race pace and faster frequently. In turn, my body is able to learn the mechanics of running at race pace, the muscles become adjusted to firing at that intensity, and my brain starts to accept that I am capable of running sea level times. This enables me to perform at a much higher level when I descend to sea level for a competition… for instance the Olympics.

SO2 training is a difficult way to train and has some downsides. First, it is expensive. I suck down almost $50 worth of air each session. It also requires two people to assist in running the apparatus and monitoring my heart rate, effort, and mechanics. As an athlete, it is pretty easy to get bored running on a treadmill for upwards of two hours. It is also extremely painful. The bodily chemical reaction that burns oxygen and carbohydrates produces lactic acid which floods your bloodstream. The more oxygen, the more lactic acid your body produces.

All in all, I think SO2 training gives me a big advantage in running. It gives a pretty big confidence boost to know that you have the physiology and endurance of an altitude athlete but the speed of a sea-level athlete.

A Capitol Fourth (Part 2)

The Fourth of July is by far my favorite holiday. I usually spend it in my hometown of Monument, Colorado which has a major 4th of July bash. It starts with a 4-mile race which I have never won (and that bothers me). The race always falls right in the middle of my hardest training so I am usually exhausted and not running well for it. It’s the biggest race in the Colorado Springs area that day, so all the good runners are there to make it a fast and fun race. After the race, the town of 30,000 gathers for the parade. Typically, everyone is either in the parade or watching it. Monument is still small enough that I see old high school friends and teachers every year.

It was a little bittersweet to be away from home on the 4th, but DC could not have been more fun. In the morning (and after an easy run on the hotel treadmill), Cami and I went along with the other athletes for a private tour of the US Capitol. Our tour guide was really knowledgeable and funny, and we learned a lot about the history of Congress and the Capitol building. After lunch, Cami and I met up with my aunt, uncle, and cousin who live just outside of DC for a tour of the Newseum. We had an “emergency” rehearsal the afternoon before the show because the producers did not like how we walked onto the stage, so I had to duck out of the Newseum for a quick jaunt back to the Capitol. After the Newseum, we had dinner and headed over to the Capitol for the performance.

It was raining for the last few hours before the performance, but no one in the crowd or in the show seemed to mind. Looking up at the Capitol from the stage, you could see the crowd of over 100,000 people, a number dwarfed by the onlookers on the mall. There were tons of American flags, and you could feel the excitement and energy in the crowd.

Our part of the show only took a few minutes and, if I do say so myself, we executed our part flawlessly (of course, we could not really screw up walking 10 feet and standing on a platform while music played!). Looking beyond the stage, we could see the Washington Monument in the distance. It was one of those experiences I will never forget as long as I live.

After the show, we attended a reception in the Capitol building. Cami and I got a good laugh when we ran across a notice in the transportation vehicles stating that athletes would ride in the motorcade, but Congressmen needed to walk. We have a picture of the notice on the photo album page of elibremer.com.

The reception was a lot of fun, and again they honored the Olympians in the room as well as the performers at the event. We stayed at the party until almost midnight, then headed back to the hotel.

While I love being home for the 4th of July, this experience was worth the change-up. I love representing the USA, and seeing the nation honor and support our Olympic Team brought more pride than I can describe. It has been described that the Olympic Team is America’s Team. It really felt like that this weekend, and it reminded me how fortunate I am to represent the USA in the greatest sporting event on the planet.

A Capitol Fourth (Part 1)

A couple weeks ago, Cecil, my media relations guy (no really, I don’t know his proper title) called me up and asked if I wanted to go to Washington DC on the 4th of July. The organizers for the celebration on the steps of the US Capital wanted some Olympians to be on stage for the show in a tribute to the US Olympic Team. While to me, being in DC on the 4th would be like being in New Orleans for Marti Gras for most people, I told him I probably should stay home and train. The next morning when my alarm clock went off, I suddenly realized I had totally blown it. As soon my morning swim was over, I called Cecil and told him I wanted to participate if at all possible. Going to the Olympics is cool, but who in their right mind would turn down the opportunity to be part of the national celebration on the 4th of July?

Fortunately, my window of opportunity had not expired and the event organizers were happy to have me participate. About a week ago, they bought my ticket, booked my hotel, and I was ready to go.

Cami decided to come out with me and we arrived early this morning. Today, there were introductions and a rehearsal at 2:00. Scott Hamilton is doing the announcing and we met him in the hotel lobby. He was very down to earth, and was spending the bulk of his energy chasing after his son.

I also ran into Dominic Grazioli, an Olympic shotgun shooter, who is also an Air Force Academy graduate. We had never met, but had a good time talking during the course of the afternoon.

The first practice show went slowly. We spent a lot of time in our ready area, but that gave me a chance to talk to Scott Hamilton a bit. I remember watching Scott skate when I was younger, so it was a real honor to be able to sit down and have lunch with him. Like most of the Olympic greats I have met, Scott turned out to be both a great athlete and great person.

After the first practice, we had a few hours off so Cami and I decided to check out the Smithsonian exhibit on the US Olympic Team. It took a while to walk across the Mall to see the small exhibit, but it was worth it. From the Smithsonian, we returned to the hotel for some rest before the evening dress rehearsal.

The second practice and dress rehearsal started at 7:15. Our hotel is just down the road from the Capitol, but we took a van anyway. After sitting around for a while, I decided to check out the show. Tyler Hicks and Johnny and the News were performing so it was a pretty good show. There were tens of thousands of people watching the dress rehearsal, but hundreds of thousands are supposed to show up for the real thing (I heard that it’s somewhere around 400,000).

After our rehearsal, the other athletes and I spent a while signing autographs and taking pictures with kids at the rehearsal. It was great to see so many kids excited about the Olympics and cheering us on.

Tomorrow will be the real deal. The producers are concerned about the weather, but the show is going on either way. As it turns out, I have an aunt and uncle in town who are going to come down to watch the show. I have not seen them in years and they have never met Cami, so that will also be a high point for tomorrow.

Cami is taking pictures and video, so I’ll try to put them up shortly on my website. If you want to watch the show, tune into PBS the evening of the 4th and we will be on!

For those of you viewing this blog on USA Today, you can view photos later at www.elibremer.com.

Trials and Tribulations

I have been a resident athlete at the US Olympic Training Center for 7 years now. While that is nowhere near a record, it is long enough to get to know many other athletes from different sports. That’s one of the best things about the OTC, being in an environment where you are surrounded by like minded people all pursuing the same dream.

There are 8 resident sports at the OTC and numerous other that come in as “camps.” All in all, I probably have friends in 12 different Olympic sports right now. Each sport has its own way of qualifying for the Olympics. Pentathlon essentially uses solely an international system, meaning you win your slot oversees by competing against other countries. Swimming would be the diametric opposite where a swimmer could win Olympic Trials without having ever set foot outside the country or competed against internationals. Most sports fall somewhere in between pentathlon and swimming and have a relatively complicated selection process. Because of this, most of us at the OTC quest our friends in other sports to learn about their qualification system and what it will take for our friends to qualify.

While I was fortunate enough to secure a slot last summer, most Olympic selection takes place during the spring of the Olympic year. This creates a fairly strange environment around athletes as tensions rise, and suddenly teammates find themselves pitted against each other for a final Olympic slot. In every case, it seems there are great athletes who will be left off the team because there are only so many slots. As an athlete already qualified, it’s hard to balance the excitement of knowing you are going with interacting with your friends, who have worked just as hard as you, who did not make the cut. Having been in their shoes four years ago, I can tell you that it’s not fun to watch the Olympics you thought would be yours come and go without your participation.

Olympic team selection is really a mixture of emotions. I train with and am friends with our top two fencers; one made the team, the other, a returning Olympian, did not. In weightlifting, I had friends I have known and respected for years make the team, and some who did not. Triathlon, which concluded its final Olympic selection last weekend, qualified two good friends of mine, but left many more off the team. And wrestling can be described as nothing short of carnage. My new business partner, a returning Olympic Bronze Medalist, failed to make the team. More World Medalists failed to qualify than I can count, including several friends of mine.

But all elite athletes know that qualifying for the Olympics is tough, and there is a lot of excitement around watching every sport pick their Olympic Team. This week, I have two friends and fellow graduates of the Air Force Academy competing in Track and Field Olympic Trials. Both have a good chance of making the team. Needless to say, I am watching NBC every night this week to check in on them.

So Olympic Trials season is a real roller coaster for athletes, even if you have already qualified. It reminds you how great it is to win your slot on the team, but it’s also humbling to see other great athletes who you respect not make it. For every athlete celebrating after winning an Olympic berth, there are five who go home and try to find the courage to train every day for another four years on the chance they will make it next time. It’s a strange set of emotions to go through. Having now been on both sides of qualifying for the Olympics, I try to celebrate with my friends who qualified and be respectful of those who did not, knowing their sacrifices and dedication were as great as mine.

Sick Day

One of the unique things about being an athlete is that we don’t really get allotted sick days from our jobs. Your competitors rarely give you a pass at the next competition because you were sick for a few days getting ready. So most of the time, athletes just push through minor sickness and try to stay training if at all possible.

This morning, I woke up extremely nauseous and unable to eat anything. My best guess is that I picked up some sort of food poisoning yesterday because it did not feel like a flu. Swim practice was scheduled from 7-9; but I realized that if my stomach could not take on breakfast and my usually morning coffee, I probably had no business knocking out 4 miles in the pool.

Earlier this week, I had some blood work done. It showed that I was extremely worn down and my immune system was under stress. Because next week is a “recovery week,” my coaches decided to press on with normal training this week. So I probably have a depressed immune system to blame for my morning troubles. Sometimes your body just can’t fight off sickness when it is so busy trying to deal with training.

The one good thing about having to take the morning off is that it gave me a chance to catch up on my paperwork. Pentathlon is complicated and there is a ton of paperwork I have to keep up with to train. This morning I had to find a pool in Washington DC to train in next week (more on that trip in an upcoming blog). Then I had to schedule training sessions for my pool here at the OTC. I had to file a reimbursement for World Championships including converting from three different currencies into dollars (during which I discovered the hotel over billed me leading to more paperwork). There is a riding camp in California in two weeks for which I had to find flights and rental car information. And that is just the tip of the iceberg…

I am feeling a lot better this afternoon so I will at least get to knock out a swimming workout and the day will not be a total waste in the athletic sense. It’s never fun to be sidelined because you are sick, but maybe my body just had enough and needed a break. Hopefully by tomorrow I will be up for my 14-mile long run and back to 100%.

The Cost of Excellence

On Tuesday, I had a conversation with Dr. Randy Wilber, USOC sport physiologist, about my supplemental oxygen (SO2) training. For those of you who are not familiar with SO2 training, it basically involves running with an oxygen mask on to simulate sea level conditions. During a typical session Randy said I burn through about a third of a massive oxygen bottle. Each bottle costs about $150 for the US Olympic Committee to fill with the 62% oxygen compound. And that gave me the idea of this blog.

Today, I decided to sketch out the true cost of a week’s worth of training to get ready for the Olympics in pentathlon. There are a lot of little things and a few big things that go into my preparation.

Back to the SO2 training, I run on SO2 twice a week breathing in around $100 worth of expensive air. During my workouts, I am monitored by two PhDs (Randy Wilber and Alan Arata) whose combined time for the two sessions is worth around $400. Given how quickly I have to rotate my shoes, each time I run I burn though about $5 worth of shoes. Multiply that by 6 runs a week and we get $30 per week of damage to my shoes per week. During a typical run, I consume around $5 worth of sports nutrition (generously supplied by Shaklee), and my long run burns closer to $15 worth of product. So my weekly sports nutrition costs for running total about $40. This means just running training is costing about $570 per week this summer.

In fencing, I break a $180 blade about every month of routine use, or you could say about $45 per week for fencing equipment. I get three fencing lessons per week from one of the top US fencing coaches at a value of about $30 per lesson or $90 per week. That brings my fencing total to around $135 per week.

In swimming, I am coached by Dr. Genadijus Sokolovas whose coaching value is worth about $100 per week. Pool time is worth about the same, so let’s say swimming costs about $200 a week right now.

I am not riding every week, but if you averaged the cost of my Olympic prep riding over the next 7 weeks, it would be about $100 per week.

Shooting takes the cake for being by far the cheapest sport I do. I shoot about $10 worth of pellets per week.

And just when you thought we were done, we have to add in the cost of keeping me healthy. Each week, I get three hours of massage totaling $180 worth of massage. I see an Active Release therapist twice a week and his rate is $80 per visit or $160 per week. So my recovery costs about $240 per week.

Adding it all up, that is $1,255 per week between now and the Olympics. Given that I have a six day per week training cycle, that equates to about $209 per day.

So most of you probably now wonder where this money comes from. Like most Olympic athletes, I rely on support from others. Many of the above professionals donate their time, others are employed by the Olympic Committee. Because I am an Air Force Reservist, the Air Force helps by purchasing some equipment for me and paying for my travel to competitions. Sponsors help by donating their products as well. But what is leftover is up to me to fund.

A lot of resources go into preparing our Olympic Team to compete in Beijing this summer. At the risk of being too corny, just think of it this way: Cost of training for the Olympics: $200 per day, being ready to compete against the best athletes in the world: priceless. There are just some things money can’t buy…

Monday Morning

Like most people, I find Mondays a bit intimidating. As I was walking into the pool this morning at 6:45, I found myself trying to avoid thinking of my upcoming week. My training schedule is already set, and I know the next six weeks will be some of the hardest and longest training weeks in my career. So what does my schedule look like?

I am writing this blog at 1:30 Monday afternoon. Already this morning, I swam 4 miles, fenced the 2004 Olympic champion, ran 9 miles on hills, had an interview with a Denver magazine, and tried to sort out some problems with travel arrangements to the Olympics. Fortunately, I have a two hour break before getting in for my second swim of the day, to be shortly followed by a calisthenics session. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are all pretty much the same and I find it hard just to make it through the day on Wednesdays and Fridays.

This week, I have 57 miles of running and 24 miles of swimming broken up into 8 swims and 6 runs. On top of that, I am fencing with the Russian Olympic Pentathlon Team 3 times, doing 3 calisthenics sessions, and working on strengthening my shoulder for shooting. I also have 3 hours of massage (not the nice health spa massage, but more on that in a subsequent blog), 2 doctor appointments, a meeting with my agent, a VIP tour of the Olympic Training Center for some sponsors, and several other administrative meetings.

The next six weeks are going to be long and tough. What is keeping me going is the realization that the Olympics are just around the corner and I only have a short time to complete my training before we leave. It truly is amazing what you can tolerate when there is a goal and a reward right in front of you. So I’ll make it though these next six weeks if only because every morning when I wake up sore and tired, I am thinking about my Olympic competition on August 21st.

The Couch

As an athlete, I train hard. Actually, I train very hard. So most people are surprised when they discover that I spend many hours a day on my living room couch watching TV, responding to emails, or surfing the internet. I am not alone in my apparent “couch potato” status. If you were to tour athlete rooms at the Olympic Training Center, you would find athletes lounging around any time they are not training. So why are the world’s greatest athletes spending so much time doing nothing?

When an athlete trains, they are actually tearing apart their body. During a workout, muscles are torn apart, energy is depleted, and the body is put through substantial trauma. But the human body is an incredible machine and responds by rebuilding and regenerating stronger than before. It is this constant process of tearing down and rebuilding that makes an athlete’s body strong and capable of doing amazing things.

So the process of going to practice is actually damaging to the body but the process of recovering after a workout is where you improve. After practice, when you rest and recover, your muscles rebuild and your body stores energy at higher levels than before the workout. This is fairly counter intuitive for most people as they assume you get stronger during the workout. Elite athletes are well familiar with this phenomenon and therefore take extreme care to recover as hard as they train.

So that is why most of our Olympic Team, myself included, will be spending their summer on the couch, playing xbox, or reading a book!

Finals

Finals at World’s is probably the hardest event in pentathlon. At the Olympics, only two athletes per country can compete, but here countries can enter four. For nations like Russia, Czech Republic, and Hungary, this means having 3-4 athletes who can win a competition in the final.

Finals are run in the classic order of a pentathlon (shooting, fencing, swimming, riding, running) and you don’t carry anything forward from semifinals. It is always hard to get up 36 hours after a tough semifinal and start over again, but everyone is in the same boat. You push through the soreness and fight as hard as you can for every point.

My weakest two events are shooting and fencing. The good thing about that is that I get them out of the way first thing in the competition. Yesterday, I started out with a 173 shoot, one point less than my semifinal score. While this put me in 35th place after one event, it was good enough that I knew I could have a good day. In fencing, I had an extremely rough start. I went 0-5 on my first 5 bouts, a terrible start to any day. But fortunately there were 30 more bouts after that and I fought my way back into the middle of the pack by the end of fencing. My final tally was just under 50% victories… not too bad for the hardest fencing pool of my career and coming into this competition without any significant focus on my fencing training. After two events, I was in 32nd place; but my scores were keeping me competitive with my strong disciplines up next.

We should have swum next, but the temporary competition pool erected for us leaked overnight and had to be drained, fixed, and refilled. So riding was moved ahead of swimming. My horse was pretty good and I knocked down only one rail and had some time penalties. After riding, I moved into 27th place, but started closing the gap toward the top athletes.

With the pool filled, we moved on to swimming. I dropped a full second from my semifinal time and swam a best this year of 2:00.2. Given that I did not rest for this competition, I was extremely happy with that time. The good showing in swimming moved me up to 20th after 4 events.

Running at the end of a final can be extremely psychologically tough. Because I have not trained much speed this year (my running has mostly consisted of long moderate runs to build base fitness), I had no idea how my legs and lungs would handle a 9 minute all out race. For the first 2 kilometers, I stuck with some of the guys who started close to me and were good runners. With one lap to go, I realized I had enough in my legs to make a surge and I began to accelerate. To my surprise, my speed was unmatched and I passed 8 people moving all the way into 12th place.

This was a great end to a great season for me. My goal at the start of the year was top 10 at Worlds, but a 12th place here while training through the competition is more than enough to make me happy. Going into the Olympics, I know where I have room for improvement, and I feel very confident with my training now. In two and a half months, I’ll take another crack at the World’s best athletes and see how things go!

The Wives Club

Written by Cami Bremer

One of Eli’s best pentathlon buddies watched his longtime girlfriend and British teammate Katie Livingston run into the bronze medal position yesterday. I overheard him later talking about how nervous he was while watching the ride (which can sometimes really shake the rankings up). “Welcome to the club,” I thought. The wives club, that is.

It is common knowledge among the US pentathletes that I never quite get to see the full event—that is because I’m turning away or closing my eyes during the first half of Eli’s ride. Eli’s actually a wonderful rider, but it is more nerve wracking than anything to watch your husband ride into a ring on a horse he doesn’t know and just hope that he drew the lucky one…It seems that today he did draw a good one. And as an added bonus, the first round rider (the one in 4th place and the one who will ride Eli’s horse before him) is a very good rider. Sometimes having a bad rider on your good horse is just as bad as drawing a bad horse.

I remember my mom telling me that she was more worn out after swim meets than I was, and I didn’t quite understand. That is, until a married a world-class pentathlete. While Eli is shooting, fencing, swimming, riding and running, my heart is beating harder and faster than his!

Due to overnight shifting ground under the temporary pool, they switched the order of the riding and swimming today. Surprisingly, that does calm the wife’s nerves. Perhaps I’m not as idealistic as I think in that I just want him to ‘survive’ the ride. No, I want him to do well—HE wants to do well and there’s nothing more frustrating than putting together a great competition and then drawing a bad horse. You see, Eli’s strongest sports are swimming and running, both sports of which you are in COMPLETE CONTROL (unlike fencing and riding). So at least this way he will know what he has to do in the swim and run to reach his goal. So, as I compose this email during the break before Eli’s ride, yes, my nerves like this order much better!

And I have to admit that it’s much easier to be watching in person than waiting for results at home. There are a lot of intricacies and dramatic stories that just don’t come across in the results. For example, one looking at yesterday’s women’s results may wonder why Georgina Harland, 2004 Olympic Bronze Medalist and FANTASTIC RUNNER, ran so slowly. But what they couldn’t see from the results was her charge from the 30s into the low teens during the first 2000 meters. And they certainly couldn’t see her when she reentered the stadium clearly hobbling on a badly injured leg. And it’s furthermore unlikely that anyone except for those there saw her teammates hoist her onto the medal podium when their team was awarded the Team silver. THAT is enough to bring tears to any spectator’s eyes. But especially for those whose emotions are uncontrollable by the end of the day—those in the Wives’ Club!

Finals tomorrow!!!

Sorry for the late blog posting. It has been a hectic last couple days around here, and I realized I was behind on my updates.

Thursday was the women’s semi-finals, yesterday was men’s. As I have said on this blog before, semis are hard. Partly what makes them hard is that the result of a semi-final is simply you fail to advance or you don’t fail to advance. Because everyone starts over in the final, it is easy to fall into the trap of trying not to fail in semis and then bombing out.

Semi-finals at World Championships are, for obvious reasons, the hardest in the sport. Of a pool of 35 athletes per group, only 12 can advance to the 36 man final. The men’s field is so deep right now that even the best athletes are vulnerable and can get taken out in semis. Yesterday I advanced to finals, but in my group alone, a former world champion, former world silver medalist, and a former #1 in the world all failed to advance. In fact, the last two slots in our group were taken by me and Andree Mosiev of Russia, the defending Olympic Gold Medalist. So like I said, semis are rough.

Today I had off and tomorrow is finals. As the last qualifying event for the Olympics (not to mention a World title on the line) people are seriously geared up for this competition. I spent the day trying to rid myself of the soreness of yesterday’s competition and watching the women’s final. Tomorrow morning at 7:30 local time, we start off with the 36 man final. Historically worlds has not been a great competition for me, but hopefully I can end that tomorrow with a strong showing. Because I did not rest for the competition, I don’t have particularly high expectations and just want to put together an overall strong day.

For up to the minute results, please visit cardsys.hu or pentathlon.org.

First post from Worlds

World Championships start on Thursday in Budapest. Pentathlon is considered a national sport here, and the Hungarians are eager to put on a good show. Unlike in America, everyone here seems to be familiar with the sport and excited about the upcoming competition.

I arrived here on Sunday after taking a Saturday night flight out of the US. While this is the last chance for people to qualify for the Olympics, it is serving as more of a practice competition for those of us who have already qualified. Because of this, I have been training extremely hard for the last few weeks and have only given myself a short period of rest to prepare for Worlds. Given that we are less than three months until Beijing, now is not the time to be slacking off in training. So right up until the morning I left, training went on as normal.

The venues here are fantastic. Everything is within a half mile of our hotel and all facilities are located in one location. Because most of the facilities are set up as temps, the construction workers are still building them today, only two days before women’s semi-finals. To get everything in one location, the Hungarians have built a 25 meter pool adjacent to the riding venue. This will allow people to see the swim, ride, and run without leaving their seats. We have heard that all 10,000 seats will be filled during the finals.

I have two more days to rest and adjust to the jetlag before competing. Getting over here 4 days ahead of time was a good call because I am extremely tired today and would probably not compete well. Hopefully I can fully recover during the next couple days and be at 100% by the time men’s semi-finals hit. It will take a good day just to make the final here so being adjusted to the time and rested from the travel is extremely important.

Cami is also here this time and will be guest blogging here for the next week. She has our good camera and our video camera, and together we will try to do our best to share this experience with everyone back at home.

Stay tuned, more from Budapest tomorrow.

Memorial Day

I was recently asked by a reporter if there is anything special my family or I do to celebrate Memorial Day. As many of you know, I am in the Air Force Reserves and both my brothers are in the Air Force as well. I told the reporter that I am almost always at a competition in Europe on Memorial Day so there we don’t really have any specific traditions associated with this holiday. But that gave me an idea for this blog. While I am again traveling abroad on Memorial Day (this blog is being written on a flight from Frankfurt to Budapest), I wanted to commemorate three former pentathletes and honor their military service.

General George Patton (US Army)

Perhaps the most famous pentathlete from any country at any time is George Patton. As a young Lieutenant in the army, he competed in the 1912 Olympic Games. When pentathlon was first introduced to the Olympics, it was a requirement that the participant be a military officer. Of course Patton fit the bill and was selected for the Olympic Team. He was a pretty good pentathlete and nearly won a medal. Known for his shooting, it ironically was his shooting that cost him the Silver. At the time, athletes shot five times at a target before changing targets. Patton shot four tens and a miss, giving him a target score of 40 instead of 50. Had he shot the fourth ten, he would have been an Olympic Silver Medalist. Urban legend has it that he shot one shot through the hole of one of the four 10s on the target and the judges called it a miss. But this is probably more myth than reality. In fact, typically a second paper was placed a short distance behind the target to account for the bullets. If an athlete believed they had two shots through the same hole, the back paper was examined. Slight variations in bullet speed and angle would cause two shots to appear on the back paper even if only one showed on the target. In Patton’s case, the judges ruled that he only fired four shots at the target. So what happened to the famous missing shot? While there is an outside chance that he did in fact shoot through the hole of another shot, it is not likely. What probably happened was Patton either forgot to load 5 shots into the gun or simply missed the target.

Major Jim Gregory (US Army)

Like most pentathletes, Jim picked up the sport after swimming in college. Jim started competing when I was a junior and eventually moved to Colorado Springs to train while I was attending the Air Force Academy. As an athlete, he was consistently one of the top in the country, qualifying for several World Championship teams. In 1996, he was an Olympic Team Alternate. Four years later, he was again edged out and was an Olympic Team Alternate. Though Jim wanted to compete, he accepted the role of Olympic Team Manager in 2000 and did an outstanding job getting that team ready and equipped for the Sydney Olympics. His work paid off as the two male US athletes both placed in top 10 and the women won a Silver and 4th. Following the 2000 Olympics, Jim tried out and was selected for army Special Operations. In the last 8 years, Jim has served in numerous hostile environments and been on the front lines of the war on terror as a Special Operations Officer. Today, Jim is cross training into an Army public affairs job that will allow him to spend more time with his wife and kids.

Captain Chad Senior (US Air Force)

Chad may be the best pentathlete in US history. He had rare combination of both extreme talent and a dogged work ethic. A college swimmer and high school running standout, Chad was recruited in 1995 to come to pentathlon. Within a few years, Chad proved to be the fastest run/swim athlete in the world. He struggled with shooting and fencing for a while; but in the 2000 season, things started to click. Chad won the first World Cup and medaled in a couple others. Going into the Olympics, he was ranked #1 in the World Cup Rankings. At the 2000 Olympics, Chad had an incredible day in the first 3 disciplines. His shooting was solid, he had his lifetime best fence, and followed that with his typical outstanding swim. Going into the riding discipline, Chad was leading the competition. As the fastest runner in the sport, Chad was poised to win the first Gold Medal for the US in pentathlon and end our 40 year medal drought. But problems struck near the end of the ride costing Chad a medal. Following the Olympics, Chad went to Army officer training (he had formerly been enlisted), and decided to take another shot at an Olympic Medal. In 2004, he handily qualified for his second Olympic Team, but had a lackluster fence and finished well out of medal contention. Following the 2004 Olympics, Chad decided to try out for the Air Force Pararescue program. He was accepted and in 2005 changed his commission from Army to Air Force. He then started the grueling two year training to become a Combat Rescue Officer (CRO, pronounced crow), the officer version of a Pararescueman. Air Force Pararescue soldiers are the premier soldiers trained and equipped to extract injured pilots from combat zones. Chad recently finished a 3 month stint in Afghanistan and I got to spend about an hour on the phone with him from the Middle East last week. I have always respected Chad’s achievements in pentathlon and he periodically checks in with me and offers me some mentoring as I am heading into big competitions. Chad told me volunteered for a follow on deployment in a war zone and will return to the US at the end of the summer.

Altitude

A lot of people I talk to ask what impact altitude has on my training and performance. The Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs where I train is somewhere around 6300 feet (1900 meters for all you metric fans out there). When you spend a considerable amount of time at altitude, your body physiology starts changing. Your body responds to the hypoxic conditions by turning up the production of red blood cells to increase your oxygen carrying capacity in the reduced oxygen environment. You never really feel good at altitude though, you just get used to the lack of air and your fitness level goes up. Many Olympians come train at the Olympic Training Center specifically to increase their fitness and prepare for sea level events. Michael Phelps and his team are currently out here getting ready for the Olympics.

The big perk of training at altitude comes when you go back down to sea level. Your body is geared up for a reduced oxygen environment, but now you have a lot more oxygen going through your system. Imagine waking up one day and suddenly being able to run faster, have more endurance, and overall feel stronger and that is what going to sea level is like. It feels great to train and compete at sea level, but over time your body realizes you have too many red blood cells and reverts back to a lower count.

So if it feels great to go to sea level, imagine the exact opposite when we come home. This last trip kept me at sea level for four weeks, long enough to substantially reduce my oxygen carrying capacity. This is a well known consequence of spending time at low altitude and we plan for it, but the first week at altitude is never fun. This week has been really rough as I am trying to get back into altitude training and begin my final push toward the Olympics. I am swimming around 4 miles every morning and averaging around 9 miles of running in the afternoon. It has been a struggle to simply finish the workouts, but the hypoxic feeling should be gone by next week. In the mean time, I have to intake a tremendous amount of iron supplements so that my body can produce enough red cells to compensate for the altitude.

In a future blog I will discuss some very advanced training that we have developed to compensate for the altitude without going to sea level. It’s a revolutionary training technique called Supplemental Oxygen Training designed to maximize the benefit of altitude.

Madrid World Cup

Next up, Madrid World Cup. I was excited to go to Spain. I have been to almost every other country in Europe but never to Spain. We were also looking forward to good weather. After two and a half weeks in Europe without seeing the sun, we figured we would get some warm weather in Madrid. We were horribly disappointed when we looked up the weather forecast and discovered it would be overcast and rainy the entire time we were there.

Cami flew over to meet up with me in Madrid. She arrived a few hours before me and found her way to the hotel. The timing worked out very well as she and Mickey and Michael Cintas (my riding coach) went into town for a day of sightseeing before I got there.

The competition was the second day after I arrived. It was held at what appeared to be an extremely large private sports club. The venues were close to each other and it was easy to move from one event to the next. Semi-finals were on Friday and had somewhere around 86 men. I advanced fairly easily through my semi-final group, but others were not so lucky. The number one athlete in the world, Victor Horvath of Hungary, failed to advance from my semi-final. Dennis and Sam advanced in their groups, Niul failed to make it up.

In the final it was a down day for me across the board. Still, it was my third final of the year; and my 26th place finish gave me enough points to bump me up to 9th on the World Cup Ranking List. That is the highest I have ever been on the World Cup list.

After the competition, I decided to cancel my trip to Prague for the last World Cup as well as our planned training camp in Spala Poland before Worlds. I was pretty tired and figured it would be better for me to train at home in Colorado and prep for Worlds and the Olympics. Hopefully that gamble will pay off with a good finish at Worlds next month.

A Week in Warsaw

After a very successful competition in England, we flew to Warsaw for a short training camp. The US Olympic Committee has an agreement with the Polish Olympic Committee that allows us to train in Poland for free. There are three major pentathlon training centers in Poland, we decided to camp out at the one in Warsaw.

Warsaw is an interesting city. As my uncle so aptly put it last when we were discussing it “Warsaw had the distinct disadvantage of being destroyed by the Germans, who are known for their efficiency, and rebuilt by the Soviets, who are known for their inefficiency.” As a result, there are precious few buildings still standing from the old city. What remains now are soviet era apartments that the Polish have gone to great lengths to re-decorate in an effort to dress up the city. Because it has been a couple decades since communism ended, Warsaw looks much more like a city in Western Europe than an Eastern Block country.

Our “hotel”, more like a youth hostel, had wireless internet which made it a substantially nicer stay. I was able to talk to Cami daily on Skype as well as conduct some other business that would normally have been prohibited if I only had phone cards.

The biggest problem we had in Poland was electrical. We like to travel with an Xbox, projector, and speaker system (I know, not really roughing it, but it’s good to stave off the boredom and get in some rest between workouts). Despite a very good transformer, our Xbox met its’ fate after about 10 hours of use. It went out with a loud pop and a billow of smoke. We were not really sure why the transformer failed, but the result was unmistakable. (I forgot to mention on my last blog that we blew up an Xbox in England also, so this trip claimed two gaming systems)

Aside from frying electronics, there’s not much else that happened in Poland. We trained a lot and slept a lot and did very little else.

England World Cup

On March 22nd, I started a marathon trip that would last four weeks, take me across two continents, 5 major cities, and 8 different beds. The first leg was to England. Because of the time change, Dennis, Niul, and I decided to fly over a few days early to adjust to the jetlag. The Brits were happy to accommodate, and my friend and British national team member Ben McLean helped us get set up in a small hotel and access to training facilities while we were there.

While it’s fun to be in other countries, whoever said getting there is half the fun clearly has not flown over the Atlantic too many times. This was somewhere around my 35th time to Europe, and I still have not figured out how to effectively sleep on the plane. We had a great itinerary though, and in Chicago we had a surprise upgrade to Business Class because the plane was overbooked. The Business Class chairs fully recline which did aid my sleep and made it a much more enjoyable flight.

We landed at London’s Heathrow at around 6am on Easter Sunday. This turned out to be very good planning because our travel plans called for me to drive the nearly 2 hours to Bath in a rental car. I’m a pretty good driver when I’m on the left side of the car and the right side of the road, but reverse that and we have problems. Driving in England is scary, and I was glad there was virtually no traffic as my maiden voyage of driving on the left side of the road got underway. (I have no idea why Niul and Dennis trusted me with driving there… for that matter, I don’t know why I trusted my driving there either!)

Perhaps what I enjoy most about being an athlete is the ability to travel and experience life in so many other countries. What I have come to enjoy the least is the exceptionally weak US Dollar. While most national economic events don’t usually impact me much, traveling while the dollar is weak really hits close to home. About an hour into our drive to Bath, we experienced first-hand the low exchange rate. A short stop at a rest area/gas station cost a fortune for small snacks. It was a prelude to a week of cringing at prices every time we went out to eat.

At around 9am we arrived in Bath with car and passengers intact. We found Ben’s house and woke him up (ok, so we are not the best guests in the world). Our hotel would not let us check in until 1pm, so we made breakfast at Ben’s and listened to him rant about never helping us with accommodations again after waking him up “in the middle of the night.”

Over the next three days, we did a pretty good job of adjusting to the time zone and rested for the upcoming World Cup. On Wednesday, we followed Ben on the 45 minute drive to Millfield, the location of the competition. There we met up with the rest of the US athletes who were competing and checked into the competition.

On Thursday we started with the men’s semifinal competition. All in all it was a good day for everyone except Dennis who failed to final. The women competed in semis on Friday and put all three women in the final. At the end of the day, it was a pretty good showing to put 6 of 7 athletes in the final.

Saturday was the men’s final. In pentathlon, you don’t get seeded based on semis so the slate is effectively wiped clean at the start of the day. I began with a fair shoot and fence and a somewhat disappointing swim. But as the day progressed, the weather started to turn cold and rainy. By the start of riding, it was windy as well and across the board the horses were panicking. I was in the second round of riding. In the first round, my good friend and German national team athlete Sebastian Dietz had a fall and broke both bones in his right arm. I have known Sebastian for over 10 years, he is a good rider, and it was a bit unnerving to ride after his accident. My horse had a disastrous ride with a Russian the first round which gave me even more to think about while warming up. As it turned out, I had what would normally be a low score, but better than average for that day and enough to move me up to 21st place before running.

Running started at almost 7pm, by which time it was cold, rainy, windy, and dark. There’s nothing like 30mph blowing rain in nearly pitch black conditions! Even before we started running, I was soaked to the bone and cold. Part of the run was on the track, so we could not use long spikes. There is some perverse part of me that actually likes foul conditions in the run, so I didn’t mind too much.

Running was difficult. The conditions were not conducive to fast times, but that played into my hand has it gave me enough real estate to run all the way up to 10th place. So despite a rough start, England went down as a success locking in my second top 10 in two World Cups.

Another Top 10 World Cup finish!

Just weeks after a fifth place finish at the Mexico City World Cup, Eli just completed his second Top 10 World Cup performance of the season in Millfield, England. Running from 21st place to 10th in just 3000 meters sealed the top 10 performance. Eli finished just behind teammate Sam Sacksen (9th). Niul Manske of Team USA finished 33rd, and Dennis Bowsher was eliminated in qualifying rounds. Full results can be found at http://www.pentathlon.org/uipm/swf/Uipm_swf.html?type=Direct&idcalendar=571&phase=F&sex=Men. I'm sure we'll hear a detailed analysis of the day from Eli at some point, but for now, check out the UIPM Competition Blog at http://www.pentathlon.org/index.php?id=208 for a full idea of how crazy the day was!

Cami

Backtrack on the news--World Cup #2

So as I was posting the latest results from World Cup #3, I realized that there were no entries regarding World Cup #2, which took place in Mexico City on March 4. There, too, Eli was one of three Americans to advance to the final, as Dennis Bowsher and Sam Saksen made a strong showing for the US. Eli put together a solid day, and finished the day with a world cup career-high of fifth place, right behind teammate Bowsher.

Results can be found at http://www.pentathlon.org/uipm/swf/Uipm_swf.html?type=Direct&idcalendar=571&phase=A&sex=Men.

On the women's side, Margaux Isaksen led the women with a silver medal victory! Sheila Taormina was 7th, Mickey Kelly 10th, and Emily Shertzer 20th. Go Team USA!!!

And just in case you're wondering, no we didn't forget World Cup #1. Eli decided to sit that competition out and focus on the whirlwind of competitions this spring. Looks like that was a smart move, as he is having a great World Cup season thus far!

Cami

Bremer one of three US men to final in World Cup #3

Eli competed in the men's semifinal of World Cup #3 today, and will advance to the finals on Saturday. Sam Saksen of Team USA had a FABULOUS day, and was able to easily cruise into the final. Eli and Niul Manske had to run fairly hard to advance, but they will all start with clean slates in Saturday's final.

Complete results can be found at http://www.pentathlon.org/uipm/swf/Uipm_swf.html?type=Direct&idcalendar=571&phase=A&sex=Men. The competition is being webcast for free at http://www.pentathlon.org/. The site is also posting a play-by-play blog so you can keep up with the excitement for the day!

The women (Sheila Taormina, Mickey Kelley and Margaux Isaksen) will compete in tomorrow's semifinal.

Stay tuned, as I'm sure that Eli will be able to provide more exciting details of the day...

Cami