50th Annual World Championships

This week, I will be blogging from the 2010 World Championships in Chengdu China. Wondering where Chengdu is? Look pretty much on the opposite side of the globe from the United States, and that will put you fairly close!

As a disclaimer, I just traveled over 26 hours and 8500 miles so my writing may not be 100% up to snuff today!

The trip over here started on Sunday morning. With about 26 hours of travel, I made the decision to invest in a hotwire hotel room next to the Denver airport (we have to fly out of Denver because of the guns) which turned out to be a good call. My 7am wakeup allowed me the most possible sleep before my 8:20am flight. And with the length of the trip and the short adjustment before competing (we will be here less than 36 hours before the competition), every bit of sleep counts.

Aside from some problems with seat assignments, things went relatively peacefully for the first 18 hours of travel to Beijing. We knew ahead of time that there might be problems because we had only a two hour layover and our flight to Chengdu was on a separate ticket. The problems started almost immediately when we landed. Even though our bags had been ticketed all the way to Chengdu, we had to find them in the Beijing airport and recheck them. Normally this would not be a problem, but the Chinese have a little thing about guns… even air guns.

Four out of our five bags made it through the x-ray machine without a problem, but they saw the gun in the fifth bag. Since all of our equipment bags look the same, it did not take the security folks long to realize that there were probably more where that one came from. This created the scene that I call the “dead alien” scenario. A bunch of security personnel standing around looking at competition guns like they are dead aliens. Lots of poking, lots of prodding, lots of picking them up and questioning what they are. And lots of lost time. It became apparent that we were going to miss our flight if they did not release us soon, but the Chinese don’t have much of a sense of urgency about things like this. So in a final desperate attempt to make the flight, we left Janusz (coach) with all the guns and dashed off to our connection to Chengdu. The gamble paid off and we barely made our connection. Surprisingly, so did our luggage. After about 26 hours of travel, we landed in Chengdu and quickly made it back to the hotel.

This morning, we caught the only bus to the competition venue to get in a short run and swim. I was excited to see the venue here as I have heard a lot about it. A while ago, a friend told me that China had invested around $20M US dollars into the location. I had seen some pictures and a video online before I came here, and they failed to do it justice. (I will try to post my own video tomorrow). When we arrived at the venue, it was truly breathtaking. This brand new facility was built just for pentathlon and is a world-leader in quality facilities. The swimming and fencing are in one large room. There are actually three 50M pools in the building, one of which is covered with the fencing strips. Next to the swimming/fencing building is the equestrian/combined center. Also on site are stables and a media center. An athlete hotel (about 10 stories tall) will be constructed in the next build-out. After taking it all in, I asked someone if it really cost $20M to build and found out I was way off. As it turns out, it is closer to an $80-100M facility.

The rest of today will be filled with repacking our bags for the competition tomorrow and checking to make sure that we have everything. Tomorrow is the men’s qualification round. The top 36 men tomorrow will advance to the finals on Friday. Women compete in qualification on Thursday and finals on Saturday. We compete in relays on Sunday and Monday with our flight home Tuesday and Wednesday. I will try to update my blog every day while I am here, but if you want up to the minute results, you can find them at www.cardsys.hu.

Cairo Semi-Finals

As with all major competitions, we have to compete in semi-finals to cut down to 36 athletes for the finals. Yesterday we had three groups with 12 athletes advancing from each group.

Two years ago, under the old format, I would have felt fairly confident with my chances given the group I was in. This year, things still have not clicked with the combined run/shoot and my run is still a few months away from being anywhere near my potential, so making finals is going to be tough in every competition.

When I got up in the morning, I went to check to see if my bag had been delivered to the hotel. Considering we are only about a half mile from the airport and they told me the bag came in the night before, I didn’t think it was an unrealistic expectation. What was I thinking? As I said before, customer service isn’t their thing; and it turned out that it was way too hard to get the bag all the way here in the 12 hours after it arrived. More on my bag saga tomorrow…

We started with swimming. The pool here is probably close to 85 degrees which is really hot for a competition pool. Our pool at the Olympic Training Center is normally close to 80 degrees or 81 if synchronized swimming is training (they need warmer water since they spend 6-7 hours submerged with only mild exertion. Good competition pools are 77-78 degrees. Water temperature is much more sensitive than air temperature. In Colorado, you can spend all day outside in 70 degree weather in shorts and a tee shirt. Jump in a 70 degree pool and you will go hypothermic in a few hours.

The net result of the pool was slow swim times across the board. Between that and the rule change prohibiting speed swim suits (we followed swimming with that rule change), the times were really slow. I swam a 2:08 which I was happy with considering the conditions and that I did not rest for this competition (and traveled 7000 miles). It was about the 6^th fastest swim time in my group.

Next up was fencing. With 25 people in my semi-final, there were only 24 bouts. The fewer the bouts, the more each touch is worth. That can cut either way. If you start out well, there is little time for things to go wrong. However, if you start out slowly, it means there is very little time to recover.

My warm up was very good, but my fence started very slow. Within a couple touches, something felt very off. Around the second or third round, I noticed I was sweating profusely and my stomach started to ache badly. Right away, I began thinking of my trip to Cairo in 2006. I had a great shoot, fence, and swim, and only had to run easy to cruise into the final. Instead, I wound up in an ambulance and was sick for three days due to food poisoning. Despite all my international travel, I still have problems with food in Mexico, South America, and Africa. (Asia and Europe don’t seem to bother me.)

ALERT ALERT ALERT: SHAMELESS SPONSOR PROMOTION!!!!!!

Two weeks ago, we were in Cancun, Mexico for a competition there, and I had no problems with the food. Before leaving, I called my brother Justin who is a doctor and asked if there were antibiotics I should take with me in case of stomach problems. He suggested a different approach: Take pre- and probiotics. And lucky me, both are made by my sponsor Shaklee. Prebiotic is a compound that facilitates growth of healthy bacteria in your gut, and probiotic is the actual bacteria. The theory is that if your gut has enough of the good bacteria, it can thwart the bad bacteria that you ingest while traveling. It worked like a charm. I did not have any problems in Mexico which is saying something considering I get sick over half the time I go. In fact, the last time I was in Cancun was for my honeymoon and Cami had to call a doctor to our room after I passed out from sickness. But thanks to Shaklee, I now have a great defense against food sickness.

So at this point, you might be wondering why I was fighting sickness despite having Shaklee's pre- and probiotic. Simple, all my Shaklee products were in my luggage that was sitting at the airport.

END SHAMELESS SPONSOR PROMOTION

By the third round of fencing, I was making frequent trips to the bathroom (this is a loose term to describe what they call toilets here) between my bouts and growing increasingly concerned that things were going downhill. With my focus on my physical well being, my fence paid the toll and I had a disastrous first half of the event. With nothing else to do, I pushed fluids as much as I could take to stave off dehydration and finish. About an hour in, I started to physically turn a corner and my fence improved as well. On the final stretch, I won 6 of my last 8 bouts; but still turned in a very bad overall score.

I entered the combined event in 17^th place, far from my expectations even being unrested. But the point of the competition was to gain valuable experience, especially in the combined, so I tried to stay focused on the task at hand. By the time we started, my stomach had calmed down a bit; but I was still fairly under the weather.

My main goal was to stay very disciplined in shooting. The first shoot I was a bit shaky and timed out. But after running my first 1000, I had a chance to reflect on my mistakes and think about corrections. The second shoot generated a much more positive result. The third shoot built on my second and was my fastest yet. After passing a couple people on the last 1000m run, I finished in 20^th place. While that’s a pretty far fall from grace from where I was a couple years ago at the height of my training, I made a number of improvements in my combined and can build on that as the World Cup season progresses.

The only US athlete to make the final was Will Brady. He had an excellent overall day with his best ever World Cup fence, a fantastic swim, and a strong combined. I’d say the final is a moderate field overall, and Will has a great chance to put up a big finish if things go his way tomorrow.

Egypt World Cup

Cairo is a long way from home. A really, really, really long way from home. I travel a lot; but when I come here, I have to try not to think about the length of the trip. Door to door, it's right around 24 hours. If I’m lucky, I can get 6-7 hours of sleep on the flight over. That leaves 17-18 hours of mind numbing sitting, thinking about how a day of my life is gone, evaporated by waiting in an airplane seat.

For me, travel starts way before getting to the airport. Cami will tell you that I am getting a bit obsessive about getting good flights and picking good seats on those flights. In the end, it really does come down to doing everything to have the best possible chance at a good performance… and trying to mitigate the dizzying boredom that international travel can cause. So this trip started with booking the fastest route I could get. Colorado Springs to Denver, an hour layover, Denver to Frankfurt (about 10 hours), a 4 hour layover, and Frankfurt to Cairo (about 4 more hours). Luckily, my status on the Star Alliance gave me access to a traveler’s club in Frankfurt, so my four hours there were broken up by a somewhat healthy lunch and a hot shower.

Backing up to my departure from Colorado Springs for a second, it was a somewhat unusual experience. I arrived about 50 minutes before the flight to Denver which is actually a lot for me. With Gold status on United (earned by sacrificing about two weeks of my life each year sitting on airplanes at 40k feet), I can bypass the normal line for an expedited check in. Being Gold also means that I get a personal representative on the phone when I call (no kidding, people actually do work at the airlines not just computers), and the ticketing people are usually very nice, knowledgeable, and helpful… usually. This time, it must have been amateur day at ticketing. After scolding me very sternly for not being there two hours before my flight (in Colorado Springs, the counter is often not open that far in advance), he continued to pretty well screw up my check in. After a painful 10 minutes, and having to instruct the self described boss of the ticketing area on his airline's partners, policies, and standard operating procedures (I’m not kidding, any frequent flier would know more than this guy), I proceeded on to the gate. And after being scolded for not being there two hours in advance, I waited 30 minutes to board.

Upon arriving to Cairo, travelers have to purchase a visa. The first time I came here, I made the mistake of shipping my passport out to the Egyptian embassy back in America, and it cost me through the nose. I’ve been here five times since, and now I’ve learned that you can just buy a visa at the airport for $15, it’s basically a small airport tax. So with that completed, it was on to the luggage.

Waiting around for luggage for me is probably a bit like playing roulette to a gambler. You sit there and wait in anticipation to see if you will win. The gambler eagerly watches to see if the little ball lands in the right slot; I eagerly watch to see if my luggage has taken the same route around the world as I did. This time, my odds were better than last year. One bag came in, the other did not. Fortunately, the one that came was my equipment bag. That has everything I need to compete but leaves me in the same clothes I traveled in. After 24 hours of flying, I really want to change (or throw away) my clothes; but the competition equipment is much more important. After all, that is why I endure the travel...

Customer service really isn’t their thing over here. Upon realizing that my bag was “delayed” (that’s EgyptAir for “we have no idea where your bag is and we really don’t care”), I went to the baggage area to make a claim. Ahead of me was a couple and young kid from Germany. They had put a stroller through the checked luggage and it had come out with some battle scars. As they pleaded their case with the apathetic luggage reps, I just laughed to myself and though “good luck with that one!”. After a 15 minute argument, the couple decided it was not worth it and left. Next I had my turn with the apathetic reps.

Because I had my competition bag, I was not too worried or concerned about getting my other bag. Though it was still annoying, I was almost amused by the actions of luggage reps. Upon telling them my bag did not show up, I was greeted with a blank stare. The reps (it takes three of them to do it), took my claim check from me. One looked at it and said a bunch of things in very animated Arabic, the other two pitched in with more blank stares at the claim check. It was as if they had never seen a lost bag before… at the lost baggage office. After about 10 minutes of animated Arabic, they finally told me it did not make it out of Colorado Springs on the first flight. That was it. Nothing about where it was, when it would get in, just that it had not made the flight. Having dealt with this last year, I knew hassling the baggage folks would not help; but I also knew something else, that they give money to you when they lose your bags. So they were a bit surprised when I knew to ask them for my allowance, but another 20 minutes yielded a whopping $40 worth of local currency. Not much, but better than nothing.

By the time I finished with baggage claim stuff, Dennis had arrived on a later flight. There’s another story behind this, but the authorities almost didn’t allow him in. After some negotiations, he was let in.

Next came the pistol check at the airport. Egypt does not require a permit for the guns, but we have to declare them. (I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the tax they collect on them when we leave, but that’s just my theory. In this part of the world, it’s not too hard to get something a lot more dangerous than our air guns.) Awhile back, I wrote in a blog about how security people tend to look at our guns like they are dead aliens. That was true again as the police took turns looking at them, checking serial numbers, checking serial numbers again, checking passports, checking serial numbers again (in case they had changed), standing around doing nothing… you get the picture. An hour later, we made the three minute drive to the hotel and finally were able to check in.

Today, we went out to the venues for some workouts. The facilities are not great, but they work. The biggest problem is dealing with the jetlag and trying to get your body feeling normal after an abusive travel day.

The hotel’s phones went out today, so I had no way of knowing where my lost bag was. I finally went back to the airport to check there. The shuttle bus driver said he would wait, but when I went back out ten minutes later, he was gone (remember, customer service is NOT their thing here). That turned out to be okay since I had to go to another terminal that was about a mile away. After arriving at that terminal, I checked in with the EgyptAir desk. Upon receiving my claim check, the attendant gave me a look that indicated he had probably never seen one before. Finally, he directed me to another baggage specific desk in the basement of the airport. There I found 4 attendants patiently doing nothing and waiting for their shift to end. Upon entering the office, they all looked up at me with a “what the heck are you doing here” look and a total absence of any offer to help. I finally convinced one of them to take my claim check which led to a long studying of the claim check as if he had never seen one before. Mind you that the claim check is a form with the only variable being the claim number. But still, they could not be too careful and studied their standard form for quite a while. Finally, they had the answer. My bag arrived from Frankfurt just 30 minutes earlier, but I could not pick it up. It would be delivered to the baggage office later tonight. When I asked if it would be delivered to my hotel tonight (a three minute drive), the attendant asked how many nights I would be staying at the hotel… not a good sign at all, but hey, customer service just isn’t their thing!

So tomorrow is men’s semi finals. I have been training hard and did not rest for this, so I’m not expecting a lot. My biggest goal is to gain more experience in the combined event so my training is more on target. A decent day in my combined event and I should make the final, anything short of that and it will be hard. But it’s all chalked up to training this season anyway, so the most important thing is to be here and learn from it.