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.