Fun with doctors

Okay, once again I have to apologize for a delayed blog posting. But this time I have more of a reason…

Semi’s were on Friday in Rio, and they did not go well. To make a very long story short, it was clear that something was not functioning well in my body. I’ll try to get more into the details of the event in another post, but the gist of it is that I needed to return back to the States ASAP.

I was able to catch a flight out the same night as the competition. The flight from Rio is overnight, so I landed in Houston on Saturday morning. On the flight up from Houston Saturday morning, things took a turn for the worse. By the time I landed, it was clear things were going from bad to worse.

When I reached home, the only excursion I took away from my bed was a very difficult trip to an urgent care facility 5 minutes from our house. The nurse there gave me some powerful anti-biotics but also said I needed further testing.

Today, I had a whole series of blood tests ordered by a specialist to get a clearer picture of what is happening with my physiology. While I doubt it is anything overly serious, we are trying to figure out why I have been sick for the last month and what is causing some muscular problems that are hindering my performance.

We should have results back on Wednesday and a better idea of any underlying cause for my last four weeks of nearly constant cold-like symptoms. Thanks for all the prayer and support, and I’ll post an update when I have one.

On a side note, Steffen Gebhardt and Eva Troutman (Germans) came back today to train with me for the next 4 weeks. Ed Fernon (Australia) will be coming in late tonight as well. We will have a full house of four Olympians and Cami, but it should be a fun few weeks of training!

World Cup Time

Hello faithful blog readers. It has been a long time since I routinely blogged, but that is about to change. Much has been going on, and I am eager to bring everyone up to speed.

There will be four World Cups this year stretched out around the world. Last weekend, the World Cup season started with a World Cup in Charlotte North Carolina. I think I can safely say that I have never had such a difficult start to a season as the preparation for that competition. Here is the Reader’s Digest version:

I was very excited that my friend Steffen Gebhardt from Germany agreed to come out and train with me this February. Steffen and I go way back training with and competing against each other. He is a monster training, and I love the challenge of working out with him. This seemed like a great start to the Olympic qualifying season.

About three weeks before the first World Cup, I started coming down with a cold. I had not been sick all year, so I guess my time was up. And when I got sick, I got clobbered. I was able to train through it somewhat, but the cold turned worse after about 10 days, and I had to start a course of anti-biotics. February is always a tough month for training, but being sick really put an exclamation point on a difficult training month.

About 10 days before we were scheduled to leave for Charlotte, Steffen and I went down to a large park near the track at Colorado College to slog through a ten mile run. We had been training all day, so we had a good chunk of our equipment in the back seat of my four door pickup. That is not unusual for us as you pretty much use your vehicle as a locker room when training full time.

The run was uneventful as Steffen and I explored a new section of a trail I’d never run before. Given the unseasonably warm weather, we were glad for the extra motivation while we hit one of our final distance training runs before competing. When we returned to where we parked, Steffen and I stretched for a few minutes before getting back into the truck. When I approached the truck, I noticed broken glass in the bed. My first thought was that some glass was thrown into the back. Then I saw the back window was broken. My next thought was that a tree branch had fallen through my window (we were parked under a large tree). Colorado Springs and the place we were parked is very safe, so it did not occur to me that this was anything other than an accident until I noticed a huge gash down the side of my rear passenger door. Upon opening the truck, we realized that we had been robbed and all of our training gear had been stolen.

It took about 30 seconds to do a quick survey and realize that everything from our equipment to my wallet and new iphone were missing. Then it hit me… my pistol was in the truck as well. Of everything I use in a competition, the pistol is handily the least replaceable piece of equipment. I shoot an LP@Anschutz pistol modified with an IQ laser shooting canister and a personalized grip. Replacing the pistol exactly is impossible and coming up with a close proximity would take at least two months and about $4,000.

A bystander allowed me to use her phone to call the police who told me they do not respond to the scene of any car break-ins. I asked if it made a difference that a firearm was stolen (even though these are converted air pistols, they retain an international firearm stamp and must be shipped, bought, and sold in accordance with firearm laws). In essence, the police told me it could take weeks before any effort could be put into recovery of the pistol. It was Monday and I had 9 days before leaving for the first World Cup.

I don’t want to go too much into what followed (Google “eli bremer pistol” for the full story), but basically the story went viral. By Tuesday, the story went national “Olympian’s pistol stolen.” By Wednesday, it was in the print edition of USA Today; and NBC Nightly News was getting ready to run it as a national story (I guess writing for USA Today and working for NBC Olympics had more of an impact than I thought). Again, abbreviating the story substantially, a tip came in from all the media coverage. At about 2:30 on Wednesday afternoon, the police called to tell me that my pistol had been recovered and the suspect was in custody. By 4:30, Steffen and I had been to the suspect’s residence and helped identify most of our stolen belongings. There was a substantial amount of other clutter at the location, most of which appeared to be stolen. The police were grateful that they had apprehended the suspect so quickly, recovered a stolen vehicle in his possession, and were ready to make another arrest with the information they already learned. As Steffen and I headed home with the stench of drugs in my truck that permeated all our recovered belongings. For once, it seemed like a blessing that the back window was missing as we aired out our belongings. When I checked the pistol, the trigger had been broken, but everything else worked fine. I remain extremely grateful for the media’s quick action, the thousands of people praying, and the one individual who I cannot identify but knows they played a very special role in identifying the suspect. Thank you to that person, and I look forward to finding a way to express my gratitude when I return home.

On top of the stolen pistol (and dealing with police and media) and a whopping cold, an old injury in my left leg blew up on me. Within days, it was so bad that I could not walk up stairs or run on the flat (thank goodness for treadmills with a decline function). Fortunately, Dr. Mike Leahy and Dr. Gary Wood at Champion Health gave me aggressive treatment. Despite this, when I left for Charlotte last Wednesday, I was not sure if my leg would hold up through the fencing, much less the running.

Thankfully, things came together enough at the World Cup; and everything held together. My swimming and running were slow, but my fencing and shooting were very solid. In the end, I finished 15^th in my semi-final, not enough to advance to the final in the largest competition ever held outside of Europe. But it was a solid day despite all the trials that led up to it, so for that I am grateful.

The high point of the competition in Charlotte was family and friends coming to visit. My parents and older brother came out. Cami’s parents and both her sisters and their husbands (and two nephews) came to watch as well. We also had many friends show up, so it was fun to spend time with a lot of folks I have not seen in a while.

On Monday after the competition, we left for Rio Brazil. It was a 15 hour trip but only a one hour time change. After over 40 trips to Europe in my career, I always welcome long flights that don’t have huge jetlag associated with it.

Because this has gone too long already (my fault for taking too long to post an update) I’ll fill everyone in on the details of this competition tomorrow. In short though, I am in Semi-final A as the lone American. Sam is in Group B, and Will and Dennis will be in Group C. After all three of our women failed to make the final today, it would be good if at least two of the US men can final tomorrow. There are 105 men competing inclusive of nearly all the top 50 athletes in the World. Only 36 can final, so it will be a tough day.

That’s all for now. More from Rio tomorrow…

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.

Welcome to Eli Bremer’s Winning with Shaklee

Welcome back faithful blog readers. It has been a while since my last post for which I apologize. As I forge ahead with a new season, there are some changes that will be coming to my blog. The biggest change is that I will be adding a new feature at least once a month called Winning with Shaklee. This is the first installment of my new feature so please keep reading to learn more about it.

Shortly before the 2007 Pan Am Games, Shaklee and I forged a partnership that would allow me to use their entire product line to enhance my athletic performance. The past two years have been a fantastic alliance between us that has been mutually beneficial. I chose Shaklee because of the quality of their products and their commitment to excellence. As I have expanded my usage of Shaklee products over the past few years, I have only become more impressed with the quality they produce.

My first contract with Shaklee ended a year after the Olympics. Our relationship has been great for both of us, so we began talks to extend my contract with them. During the course of our discussions, we decided it would be beneficial to expand the relationship between us. This is largely because of a substantial opportunity for joint marketing between “EliBremer.com” (my blog) and Shaklee’s massive family.

As part of my new relationship with Shaklee, I will periodically be writing a blog dedicated to my analysis and usage of Shaklee products. In exchange, Shaklee will be promoting my blog to nearly 750,000 new readers in the Shaklee family. Needless to say, I am extremely excited for the opportunity to expand my blog viewership to such a large and engaged audience. Blogging has become a big part of my athletic endeavors and a chance to share my experiences with tens of thousands of people. So with that said, I would like to introduce my first installment of “Winning with Shaklee.”

The beginning of a great relationship

Growing up, my family was fairly in tuned with health and nutrition. My mom has a PhD in human nutrition and my parents have always been into an active outdoor lifestyle. I’m the youngest of three boys in my family, and my two older brothers quit competitive sports around the time of high school. I was the butterball of the family and the last person you would expect to become an athlete. But around the time I turned 15, I decided to turn my dream of becoming an NCAA athlete and Olympian into a chance at reality. I started swimming twice a day and running as well. Soon, I became a standout athlete in high school and was an NCAA recruit in swimming and running.

As you become a better and better athlete, you start to pay more attention to the things that drive up your athletic performance. It was during this time that I started to take my personal nutrition much more seriously. Swimming 7-8 miles a day, I could no longer rely on my meals to provide all the sustenance I needed. So I started to look at sports drinks as a method to deliver nutrition mid workout.

Having a mom with a doctorate in nutrition quickly paid off as she was able to research the major brands on the market. After reviewing the most popular “sports drink,” she concluded that it was not much better than sugar water. Then we turned to some of the more sophisticated drinks. These were better than convenience store brands but still lacked some important elements of nutrition needed mid workout.

A family friend, Karla Kroeker, was a Shaklee distributor and suggested we research Shaklee’ Performance. She gave me a sample to try. I was immediately impressed with the drink, and my mom was equally impressed with the contents of the drink. Unlike other products which were formulated largely for taste and to drive up sales at convenience stores, Performance was developed to fuel the human body during endurance workouts.

Soon I was buying large quantities of Performance and its sister product Physique for workouts and recovery. My ability to sustain large workloads and intensity in practice went up noticeably as did my performance. My coaches noticed a marked improvement in my athletic ability. I demanded a lot out of my body, and I had found the products that enabled me to train to my fullest ability.

Twelve years later, Shaklee signed me as their first of two 2008 Olympians. They were also my first professional sponsorship and that meant a lot to me. Not only did it enable me to drastically expand my product usage (now virtually everything in my house is a Shaklee product), but it also symbolized the culmination of a relationship that started over a decade earlier. Shaklee had enabled me to become a good athlete, and they wanted to be a part of my Olympic experience as well.

So as we head into the 2012 Olympic cycle, I am proud that my relationship with Shaklee has grown to new levels. They are my first sponsorship of this quadrennial, symbolic of the fact that they were also my first sponsor ever. Furthermore, my wife and I recently decided to become Shaklee distributors after many of our friends have asked how to order the products. I take my reputation seriously and only endorse companies and products that I thoroughly believe in.

In my next Winning with Shaklee blog, I’ll explain some major concerns with supplement and health companies, and why I trust Shaklee products with my reputation.

Friday Update

Today was the women’s semi-final. Same format as yesterday; but with fewer women in the competition, there were only two groups. In each group, 18 make it into the final.

The sole women’s competitor for the US was 17 year old Margaux Isaksen. Margaux, affectionately nicknamed Mango by teammates, represented the US in the 2008 Olympics. This year, she has really come on strong, completing the World Cup season ranked in the top 10. She also won a bronze medal at the 2009 Junior World Championships. Given the outstanding season she has had, we did not expect much drama to unfold today. And we were right.

Margaux destroyed the field in the first two thirds of the fence, leading the pack with 7 touches to go. Then, she struggled and only hit one of her last 7 opponents, but still finished in the top ten. Swimming was next, and Margaux posted a 2:19 on my watch (the score board was broken, so I am not exactly sure what her official time was). That’s a bit slow for her, and I expect we will see a faster swim in the final. Finally, she entered the combined run/shoot in 6th place with a pretty large gap between her and 19th place. In shooting, Margaux had a really tough time, but her lead and strength in running were more than enough to overcome the damage done on the shooting range. In the end, she only ran hard the first two 1,000m laps and easily jogged her way into the final on Sunday.

Now back to my update from yesterday. Overall, it was a great day for the US Men’s Team. While I have taken the year almost completely away from training, some other athletes have really stepped up their training and it showed.

Will Brady gets the award for the biggest standout performance of the competition so far. Will has been living in Colorado Springs and training at the OTC for somewhere between three and four years, but has never broken into the top tier of international pentathlon… until yesterday. Battling two training injuries, Will posted career bests in his fence (nearly 900 points) and swim (2:07). Then, starting in 9th place in what I picked as the toughest semi-final grouping, he posted a solid combined time and secured his slot in the final of his first ever World Championships.

Sam Sacksen was in my semi-final group. He had a solid fence at a bit over 800 points, but clocked a disappointing 2:13 swim time. However, he has picked up the combined event really well already and was able to move from around 20th before the event to 11th. His first place performance in the combined event was enough for a berth in the final. That is his first World Championships final as well.

Dennis Bowsher was in the last semi-final group of the day. Struggling, but staying alive in the fence, he ended the event with somewhere around 750 points. Next up was the swim. I had predicted that he could go around 2:02 given that he has been absolutely crushing me in practice the past few weeks. However, he was out slow and never recovered, ending in a 2:06. But he was still alive going into the final combined run/shoot event, starting in 18th place. After the first round, he was within about 10 seconds of 12th place. But a poor second and third round of shooting dropped him farther back, and he finished in 20th place. Had he finaled here, it would have been his second World Championships final, but he will have to wait another year.

All in all, it was a solid day for the US Team. In 2005, the year after the Athens Olympics, the US Team had no athletes in the finals at Worlds. This year, we have two men and one woman. For our program, this is a great way to start a new quad as we push toward the 2012 Olympics.

Competition Day

Today was the men’s semi-final competition here in London. In the pentathlon, only 36 people compete in the finals events. At “open” competitions, World Cups, World Championships, and Continental Championships, we have to compete through semi-finals to make it to the finals. At the Olympics and the World Cup Final, only 36 are invited. (If you want to read more about semi-final formats, check out my blog from last year’s World Championships). So today we had to cut from a field of 96 athletes down to 36 for Saturday’s final.

There were three semi-final groups of 32 athletes. I was disappointed to learn that my group was the earliest, starting at 7:30 this morning. Not that I normally mind getting up early, but 7:30am here is 12:30am at home… and I am pretty much never up that late. So physiologically, it sort of felt like we were competing through the middle of the night. But since most pentathlons are held in Europe, and I have “hopped across the pond” around 40 times now, I’m actually used to that feeling. It still never feels quite right.

The first discipline for my group was fencing. And the word of the day for my fencing would have to be bipolar. I had a great start and was actually leading after 7 bouts with 6 victories and just one defeat. Then I lost 6 in a row and dropped to around 18th place by the 13th bout. Then it all clicked again; and on the last 18 bouts, I won 13 and only lost 5. For any pentathlon junkies out there, that equated to just over 900 points and put me around 6th at the end of fencing.

Then came the 200 meter swim. I had no idea how I would perform in the event. After getting pretty well clobbered this World Cup season in the new combined run/shoot, I decided to back way off of swimming and see if I could get a hang of the new format by Worlds. So I have only been swimming three times per week to total six miles per week since May. To put that in perspective, during the same period last summer, there were many days I would swim six miles. So chalk up lack of training to the prospects of a bad swim.

But there was a compounding factor that made me think I might have some speed in my swim. TYR sent us some of their new swim suits (you know the ones that have been making headlines and that swimming will not allow next year) before we left. They are every bit as fast, and fun, as I have heard from the swimmers who have tried them. At the Olympics, I swam in the LZR and it felt fast. These blow the LZR out of the water, so to speak, and thus have created the controversy. In a nutshell, they are buoyant; and buoyancy helps you swim faster. So I knew I was wearing technology that would make me pretty fast. In the end, I swam a 2:04, about what I expected to swim and fast enough to put me in 5th after two events.

Next up was the combined run/shoot. I wouldn’t say I was anxious or scared of it, but I wondered how my training would stand up. The last seven weeks have felt a bit like cramming for a final in college. It seems like you are getting a lot done, but you don’t know until you open the test how you will do. I have been shooting okay in practice, but I also knew that the competition and everything that goes with it can cause a performance breakdown.

There were about 35 seconds between me and the all important 13th place (top 12 from each group make the final) which is not a lot of buffer. My first shoot was pretty shaky and dropped me down to 12th. I made up ground in running the first 1,000m and knew that I would still final with two decent shoots. The second shoot did not improve much, and I dropped back to around 20th. Making up places again in the run, I headed into the final shoot. That was better, but not enough to put me in competition for the final.

My last 1000m was probably the perfect end to the season. Shortly after leaving the shooting, I easily cruised passed Andree Mosiev, the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist. He started the combined in 8th place today and would eventually finish around 24th. Shortly before the Olympics at last year’s World Championships, Andree and I were also in the same semi-final. We both had to run hard and finished 11th and 12th in our group. Later that summer, he went on to win the Olympics, and I had my lifetime best competition with a medal at the World Cup Final. (I would have much preferred his season to mine in case you were wondering.)

So as I finished up my last event of this season back in 20th place in my semi-final (at an event where I finished 12th in the final last year), it didn’t really bother me too much. For me, this year was about exploring the new format of the sport and exploring my interest in continuing on through the 2012 Olympics. If you had asked me 3 months ago, I would have told you I am retiring at the end of this season. If you ask me today… dream on, I’m not telling anyone yet!

(This will not be the last blog from London. Tomorrow, I’ll fill you in on the other US men’s athlete’s results and on Margaux’s quest to make it to the women’s final. I’ll also recap what I think about the new format and my potential to pick up the combined run/shoot.)

Flight to London

We purchased the plane tickets early enough that we able to book a fantastic itinerary. When you travel a lot and have to compete right after travel, things like your itinerary make a big difference. For this flight, we were scheduled to leave Colorado Springs at about 6:20pm, connect in Denver, and take the direct from Denver to London arriving at just after 11am. Any time you can get to Europe in less than 12 hours door to door, you have a great itinerary. So I have been looking forward to this flight more than I typically do.

The agent in Colorado Springs told me I had a great chance of receiving a free upgrade on the flight to London. The only thing better than a fast itinerary is a fast itinerary where you get upgraded to business class. Because I am now a Premier Executive on United, something I earned by flying nearly 60,000 miles last year, I often get upgraded if the flights are full. However, my hopes were dashed when I checked in in Denver and was told I would not be getting upgraded this flight. Oh well, can’t win them all…

I was able to use my United status to board the London flight early, giving me time to unpack my carryon and settle in before the crowds hit. As I boarded the plane, the flight crew was there greeting people. Still a little disappointed that I had not made the cut for an upgrade, I wasn’t paying much attention to my surroundings. That is until one of the flight attendants turned to me and said “hey, you're that pentathlon guy.” Boy was I surprised! I’ve been flying a lot the last few years, but I have never been recognized by an international flight crew. Turns out, I flew this attendant’s flight back from London in April. I’m pretty outgoing and spent about an hour hanging out in the galley talking with the crew. Airline crews have a tough and thankless job and are largely underappreciated, so I always try to befriend them given the opportunity. Anyway, this guy was one of the flight attendants and remembered me from that flight.

After getting seated, the flight attendant came and found me in my seat, and asked where I was going. Then he came and brought another attendant over and introduced her to me. We talked for a little bit until the flight started to fill up.

After takeoff, the second flight attendant came around and proudly told me she was training for her first triathlon. We talked a little while longer, and then she again had to get back to work.

A while later, she returned manning the drink cart. I received small consolation prize for missing the upgrade, my own bottle of water and a complimentary glass of wine. So no seat upgrade for me this trip, but my new and old flight attendant friends made sure to give me business class service even if I was assigned Economy Plus.

World Championships

For those of you who routinely read my blog, I apologize for my recent silence. This summer, I have been extremely busy and not able to apply proper time to blogging. However, I’ll be posting every day for the next week so stay tuned!

The World Championships this year are in London. It’s fitting that the first championship of the 2012 quad is the location of the next summer Olympics. While I don’t believe the venue will be the same, this gives the athletes an idea of the weather and culture of the city.

Since I have not written much of late, and I plan on blogging every day from London, I though I would start with a recap of what has been going on with my life and my athletic career. This should bring everyone up to speed and shed light on the upcoming competition and my expectations.

Most of this past year, I have been working on developing my new company, 5Ring Insight (www.5ringinsight.com). We use Olympians to teach performance methodology to elite business professionals (picture an MBA program based on sports). That has eaten up much of my time and money since the Olympics. It also gave me a much needed break from sports. The end of last season was quite an emotional and physical roller coaster.

When I left for Beijing, I was in better shape and had trained harder than any other time in my life. A riding accident a week before the Olympics left me wondering if I would even compete. Though I dodged the bullet on a concussion, I obtained a severe whiplash injury and spent two of the seven days before the Olympics in a neck brace. Even with good sports med treatment, the physical and psychological damage was done before the event started. On a good day, a top 10 finish was possible; on a great day, maybe a medal. But instead I finished a lackluster 22nd place.

Because I was considering retiring, the 2008 World Cup Final in Portugal was potentially the final competition of my career. Still in great shape from my Olympic preparation but no longer injured, I had a blowout competition. Despite an extremely bad ride, I finished with a Bronze Medal. In pentathlon, the World Cup Final is a very important event, considered by many to be as prestigious and difficult as World Championships. So I ended last season with a career high finish and an end of the season ranking of 9th in the World.

In January, after recovering from a sinus surgery (which went fantastically well, thank you Dr. Galloway), I found myself fairly out of shape. Bears put on fat to hibernate, but I had no such excuse for my winter weight increase. So I decided to start training again to get back in shape. The first World Cup was scheduled for March and I began training for it. My plan at first was to simply get back in shape; but as the season progressed, I also wanted to see if I was still motivated enough to go through the grueling training that is pentathlon.

Our sport format also changed this year to combine the run and shoot which presented both a challenge and opportunity. It was a challenge because I have trained slow fire shooting for so long, and it’s a little hard to teach an old dog new tricks. The opportunity came from the fact that slow fire shooting has historically been my weakest sport, and the new format would give me a fresh start to my worst event.

After “limping” through the World Cup season and US Nationals, trying to split my time between training and work, I applied more effort over the summer. I decreased my swimming volumes and drastically increased my running to drop some more weight and improve overall fitness in preparation for Worlds. I also started training the shooting event much more seriously. My general lack of shooting training this year was actually planned as I wanted to observe other athletes and not train bad habits before I could properly study the new format. Several other top athletes worldwide took a similar approach, most did not compete at all this year. But after Nationals in June, I started putting in the time in shooting. That gave me about 7 weeks of really dedicated training; not enough to be good, but enough to find out if I take well to the new format.

So it will be an interesting experience in London this week. It’s hard to believe that one year has passed since the Olympics, and I am extremely glad I took so much time off. I’m not in nearly the shape I was in last year, but I am enjoying getting back into the swing of things. So with that as the backdrop, please stay tuned for my daily reports from the 2009 World Championships (competition starts Thursday).

Flight home

After a very short night, I had to catch the hotel’s 7am shuttle to get to the Cairo airport. 7am also represented 11pm Colorado time, or almost exactly the time I would get home that night (door to door, it’s about 24 hours). That’s never a pleasant thought, but I knew I was so tired that I would sleep on the airplane. Of course I had to get to the airplane first…

Western airports tend to be orderly places where people naturally form lines and everything is marked. Your more likely to see a 60 woman in a Burka throw an elbow than you will an accurate flight schedule. Furthermore, I am convinced that they think good customer service shows weakness. The Cairo airport is a mob scene of people crowding around. There are also plenty of supposedly helpful people who just pull you from one line and put you in another (not a faster line, just a different line) and then demand a tip. Another difference is that you clear your luggage trough security before you check in to your flight. This presented a problem for me since I always travel on an e-ticket. After waiting 15 minutes in a throng of people pushing their way to a small opening toward security, I was informed that I needed to get some sort of confirmation that I had a flight. So I dragged my bags over to Egypt Air “Customer Service” (remember what I said about customer service). Another 15 minute wait and a rude attendant yielded a dot matrix printed piece of paper that somehow would get me into security. 20 more minutes and several flights of stairs with 130 pounds of luggage in tow completed the task of asking for compensation for my lost bags (which they said would take at least a month if allowed).

Finally I made it back to security. After years of traveling with my gun, I’ve learned a few things about getting it through foreign airports. It’s totally legal to travel with it in checked luggage; but be honest, would you want to explain to some Egyptian guy the difference between a firearm and an air gun? My packing skill worked and the gun went through without raising any eyebrows. An hour more checking in, passport control, and another security checkpoint, and I was finally able to relax. The flight from Cairo to London went by in what seemed like a few minutes as I slept almost the entire way.

In London, I waited at the Star Alliance Lounge until right before my flight. As I was boarding, my dad called on my Blackberry. I thought that was strange since he knew I was traveling abroad so I answered the call. He was calling to let me know that his mom died this morning. A few weeks ago, I was in DC and scheduled to have dinner with my aunt and uncle and visit my grandmother. My grandmother broke her pelvis that day so we had to cancel. Fortunately I had a chance to see my grandmother last fall one last time. She had suffered from sever dementia for a number of years and was living in a nursing home down the street from my aunt and uncle until she died. Because I grew up on the opposite side of the country from her, I did not know my grandmother very well; but I feel really badly for my dad and his siblings with their loss.

The flight from London to Chicago went by quickly also. I had an entire row of three seats to myself. This gave me the opportunity for four more hours of sleep. That made me very happy because I need to get right back on to Colorado time for training. Sleeping on the return flight always seems to help me with that.

Finally came the flight from Chicago to Colorado Springs. I always try to avoid that flight and connect through Denver because it is delayed so often. As I presented my ticket to board the plane, the attendant said they had been looking for me. Great, sounded like the start of my trip was happening all over again! However, for once my luck improved. They were overbooked in Economy and were bumping me to First Class because of my airline status. That was a big sigh of relief and some much appreciated leg room. The flight left early, had a tail wind, and landed way ahead of schedule. Five days, 15,000 miles, 3 continents, and nearly 45 hours sitting on airplanes… the life of a pentathlete!

Alexandria (Part 2) Video Blog

Hopefully this will work. Sorry for the delay, it took me a while to figure out how to get this right!

Breakfast in Alexandria (this was before we decided to go into the library)



Outside the library 1



Outside the library 2


There is a small museum inside the library that we decided to go into:


Then we went into the main library:


After this, we walked (and took a short bus ride) to the citadel:




My favorite drink in Egypt!




Big Mosque:



Taxi ride... or not




Kicked out of taxi:


Talking to guys on the street:


This was a wedding procession that went by. Interesting way to have a wedding!



Taxi ride to train:



So that is how a video blog works. Let me know if you liked it and want another installment.

Alexandria (Part 1)

After the competition, Steffen Gebhardt and I decided we should see something new. Both of us have been to Cairo a number of times and seen everything there is to see there. That’s not saying much because all there is to see in Cairo are the pyramids (very impressive), the sphinx (very unimpressive), the museum (very disorganized), and the Nile (very polluted). So we started asking our Egyptian friends what was within a half day trip of Cairo.

I’m not a history buff, but I’m kind of a nerd and watch a lot of History Channel. I knew Alexandria had a long and interesting history so we decided to check that out. To get there, we would need to take a train about 3 hours to the coast of the Mediterranean. From all my travel in Europe (and the fact that Steffen lives there), we figured trains would be simple and easy for us to understand. What we did not take into account was that these are Egyptian trains and they don’t follow any of the same rules. Take for instance schedules. European trains have them, Egyptian trains don’t. Working bathrooms, sanitary conditions, all things lacking on the trains there. We did figure out that there is a first class cabin and we happily paid the extra $1 (no kidding) to upgrade. The conditions in 1st class were what you might expect on an inner city buss or metro in the US, minus working bathrooms.

It’s a bit sobering traveling through the countryside in a place like Egypt. In America, we hear people complain about poverty and how bad the poor have it. A few months ago, I saw a TV special woman complaining that the government needed to give her better housing. In the background of her “poverty stricken” apartment she had a 60 inch flat screen. Poverty in the countryside of Egypt looked a little different. Women washing clothes in the muddy irrigation trenches, shanties built out of garbage, and small brick huts with dirt floors. It looked like the villages had electricity, but the outlying houses did not. Without trash service, locals made piles or refuse just outside the villages. The poorest of people were sorting through these piles before they were burned.

After three hours on the train, we arrived in Alexandria. We had no idea where to go, what to see, or where we would spend the night. I had checked on Expedia and only found very expensive western hotels. I prefer more of a local flavor (not to mention that all my friends say I am the cheapest person they know), so Steffen and I figured we would look for something other than a western chain. We were more or less dragged off the train by a guy who seemed quite helpful. Turned out that he was a cab driver and he pressured us into getting into his cab. We knew better than to get in without a pre-negotiated price, so we got a map, decided where we wanted to go, and then pointed it out. After agreeing on a price (that was almost certainly too high), we got into the cab. About 40 minutes later, we reached the area where we figured we would have the best shot of getting a cheap but safe motel.

Unlike inner city Europe, I never felt that I would get my pocket picked. It does not seem like the kind of place where someone will totally swindle you when you buy something at a street vendor. But they have their own form of dishonesty when it comes to dealing with tourists. We told the driver to let us out and started to pay him. He suddenly said we had to pay twice that much since there were two of us. This is somewhat common there. After negotiating a deal, they will try to add on other fees. For instance, I hired a camel at the pyramids and agreed on a price of around $10 for an hour tour. When I finished, the guide said it would be another $10 to get off the camel (which was met by my jumping off for free). My guess is that it often works on unsuspecting tourists which only reinforces the behavior. Steffen and I did not buy it so we gave the cabbie the agreed upon fair and jumped out of the cab. As we walked off, the cabbie yelled at us; but we had paid him a reasonable fair despite his attempted dishonesty.

For the next three hours, Steffen and I walked around Alexandria finding nothing of interest. No historical sites, no hotels, no local restaurants that looked safe to eat at. As the afternoon wore on, we took a turn down a street and found a security checkpoint. We asked what was going on and were informed that it was a private beach/resort area. The fee to enter was about $1 so we paid and went in. The beach was much cleaner and better kempt than the other beaches and the area felt safer. But all this still yielded no hotels or dinner possibilities. As we reached the end of the private beach, we were greeted by a woman and her daughter who asked if we needed help. It turns out that she, her husband, and her daughter who are Egyptians all spoke English and German. Lucky break for us. They lived about a half mile away and invited us to their flat. We talked for a while and they offered to find us a flat to rent for the night. For about $60, we secured a 3 bedroom place that would have registered below one star in the US, but was perfect for our budget and needs.

After getting the keys to the flat, our new Egyptian friends gave us some advice on where to go sightseeing that night and where to find dinner. It was really only after we left that Steffen and I started wondering if this was a particularly safe situation. We didn’t really know these people and we had no idea how safe the area was. Given my family background and association with the military, I am always trying to err on the side of caution. Steffen knows the security issues surrounding me also, so he said he would take the lead on any further discussions with our new friends. When we returned that night, the husband engaged Steffen in a long discussion about politics, something you are not supposed to do in a foreign culture if you are not in a secure area. But Steffen kept the conversation mostly in German and asked questions more than gave opinions. At one point, the wife looked at me and noted that I looked like I had security concerns about being there. Steffen gave me a quick glance knowing why I was worried, but we played if off on being in a foreign culture.

That night, we checked the apartment to make sure we could lock it securely from the inside. We took a couple extra steps for security, but it seemed like a legit and somewhat safe situation. With passports and credit cards by our beds for easy access, we actually slept well in our cheap accommodations.

The next morning, we met up with our host family again, returned the keys, and went on our way. Rather than trying to write everything about Alexandria, I thought I would try something new and do a video blog. Let me know what you think of it!

Competition day

Six hours of sleep later, I caught the bus to the competition. Using a practice suit from another athlete and a British swim cap, I limped through one of my worst swims. Its been years since I raced without a technical suit, and combined with little sleep and the stress of not knowing if I would even find the basic equipment to compete, the results spoke for themselves.

Next up was fencing. Steffen Gebhardt of Germany lent me his fencing outfit, nice and sweaty from three hours he spent fencing right before me in the other group. Fencing with someone else’s epees presents another challenge. You typically set up all your epees the same, and changing the grip and the blade angle throws your coordination off. For some reason, this didn’t really effect me nearly as much as I expected. Three hours later, I ended fencing with the 12 highest score and was 17th overall.

Finally we came to the run/shoot. This is new for me and would be only my second time attempting the new format. Since Mexico’s World Cup a few weeks ago, I felt like I had made some serious progress and was ready to test my ability and strategy. But I spent more time and energy looking for shorts to wear (I was lucky to have traveled in an old pair of running shoes), than I did thinking about how to execute when the time came. With a borrowed gun of a completely different make than my own, I was surprised to only move back a couple slots after the first shoot series. But the second and third series proved harder. With the higher heart rate from running, the unfamiliarity proved too much and I timed out (70 seconds) twice.

In the end, I think I finished somewhere between 25th and 30th, but I’m not really sure. I think that with my own equipment, it would have been a very different day. This competition ended a two year streak of making every final, so at least I get to blame it on luggage!

Not as exciting as yesterday's post

But here is the follow on...

The flight to Cairo went by quickly. I slept about two thirds the flight and stayed occupied the other third by watching the Greek islands slip by one at a time beneath the airplane. Night came as we crossed over Alexandria and into Africa. Shortly thereafter, we landed in Cairo.

Egypt is one of the few countries I travel to that requires a visa. It’s only $15, but you have to stand in line to buy it at the airport. Then you wait in line for passport control. By the time I cleared passport control, my travel day was stretching to nearly 20 hours. Not too bad, but long enough that I was eager to get to the hotel and pack for the competition the next morning. This is where my luck started to run out.

As I mentioned earlier, I just made it to Premier Executive on United. There are a number of perks associated with this that are supposed to make travel a little nicer and keep you loyal to your most frequent airline. One of the perks is priority luggage. Not only do ticketing agents stop hassling you about overweight luggage, your bags also typically come out first or near the front on the carousel. So when my bags did not come out shortly after the baggage started, I knew there was probably a problem. Once the final bag came out, I realized my bags probably didn’t make the Denver to Frankfurt connection. My lucky streak came screeching to a halt as I started to think of the chances that my bags, full of the equipment I needed to compete, would come in that night.

The line for the lost luggage was only about 4 people long, but it still seemed to take forever. I had to wait for a guy who was very upset about some discoloration on his brand new suitcase (clearly not a frequent flier if he still is under the delusion that luggage ever looks good after its maiden voyage). Then there was the lady who had hard cased suitcases, one of which had been crushed before being returned to her. Then the American professor who lives in Cairo who also arrived empty handed. Finally I had my turn.

In the 21st century, you would expect that computer systems would instantly track luggage and know where it is en rout to the final destination. Surprisingly nearly 30 minutes of computer searches and phone calls by the luggage agent yielded absolutely nothing. I had my Blackberry with me and let Cami know what was going on in real time. She tried calling United at the same time and was told that all they knew was that my bags made it to Denver. That news was nearly 24 hours old to me. I was curious what continent they were on and if we would be reunited before the competition. I knew several other flight schedules that my bags could have taken which would land them in Cairo that night. The easiest was if they caught the flight from Denver to London several hours after the Frankfurt flight and then from London to Cairo. There was also a rout through Chicago that would have put them into Cairo the middle of the following morning. Not ideal, but in time to still have my gun for the shooting (the gun is the hardest piece of equipment to borrow). But the luggage agent came up with nothing and I left customs with only my carryon.

Outside customs, there were throngs of people waiting for passengers. The competition organizers had my itinerary and had agreed to pick me up. As my newfound luck would have it, they were nowhere to be found. With a bit of searching on my Blackberry, I was able to locate the number of the Egyptian Pentathlon Federation and I placed an extremely expensive call. At $2.50 per minute, I was happy that the phone was answered on the first ring by someone who spoke good English. He knew who I was and, after asking about my location, said the person sent to fetch me was in the wrong terminal. Another expensive phone call ten minutes later vectored Usama to me.

Usama is a cop and told me to wait while he checked on my luggage again. I was glad he offered because I thought he would have a better chance finding out where the bags were than I did. An hour later, the Ukrainian team exited customs. They told me Usama was still inside checking on my bags. Another 30 minutes passed and he returned with no more news about the bags. That’s when it really sunk in that I would spend the next day trying to hobble together borrowed equipment, giving me an extreme uphill battle to make the final.

(I'm posting this from the Library in Alexandria. I'll finish the competition blog and have it up when I get back to Cairo tonight.)

Chain Reaction

There is so much to this story I just don’t know where to start. So how about I start by saying this has been one of the most eventful travel experiences I have ever had.

It started back in Colorado Springs a couple days ago (but it all seems like one long day now). For the first time in my extensive travel career, I made the airplane late. Well, it was actually TSA who was responsible; but that’s not important. As the gate pulled away from the plane, the flight attendant received a call. The next thing that happened was that I was paged. (That’s never a good thing. You don’t want to be “that guy” on an airplane.) To make a very long story short, TSA had a problem with my pistol and had not put it on the plane. I wound up off the plane, in TSA’s office, then back on the plane per the pilot’s direction (rather than on a later flight). I was surprised that they had not loaded my bag onto the plane and that it took them 45 minutes after check in to contact me with their concerns.

According to my row-mate, they announced something about a gun and everyone was looking strangely at me when I returned to the aircraft. But NO ONE complained about the flight being late in front of me. As the plane took off, I realized that people were likely drawing some much more imaginative scenarios in their heads. “Thirty year old male in top physical condition with a military hair cut and a strange gun that TSA has a problem with then suddenly does not have a problem with.” And this right on the heels of the Navy shooting the pirates. It was much more fun to just sit there stoically rather than tell them that the gun in question was just a souped up bb gun!

When we deplaned (only the bureaucracy of airlines would use deplane instead of exit like the rest of the world) in Denver, I saw my luggage being unloaded. I had been concerned it would not make it onto the Denver flight with the confusion at the Colorado Springs airport. I only had about 35 minutes to make my connection on the Denver to Frankfurt flight, so I rapidly went the length of the airport and then to a new terminal and finally onto the Luftansa flight. While it was probably well over a mile between my two gates, it was less than half of that if you were to cross over outside (like the luggage carts).

I started feeling lucky for the first time on the trip when I realized that I had an empty seat next to me on the plane. This is luxury fit for a king when you are used to traveling cramped in economy class and NEVER seem to get that free upgrade. My coveted empty seat was one of the only ones on the plane and gave me the aisle and window seats together for a combined space about 4 feet across. With the help of a sleep aid earplugs, eye shades, a neck pillow, my extra seat, and a ridiculously early morning wakeup, I slept a near record of almost 7 hours on the flight. My luck seemed to be continuing.

In Frankfurt, I exercised my newly earned rights to the travel lounges. As a freshly minted Premier Executive, I can use these lounges on international flights. This is a real treat for frequent fliers. And to boot, the lounge in Frankfurt has free showers and outstanding food (also free). My luck was simply on a roll!

Stay tuned for “The rest of the story” tomorrow for me (maybe late tonight for those of you in the USA). What this means is that I am about to fall asleep and can't responsibly blog anymore. You’ll find out why tomorrow.

Trial run/shoot

The title reminds me of a Wheel of Fortune before and after phrase. But believe me, today's new combined event was no gameshow, though some may count it as entertainment!

Today we did the combined run/shoot. I honestly had no idea how it would go since I had never done it. I started in 13th place and needed to stay in the top 18 to make the final. The first set of shooting was okay. I think I moved down a couple slots, but nothing too bad. The second round of shooting was a lot rougher. I timed out (went over 70 seconds) and that was a bit disconcerting. I could tell I had fallen pretty far back as I headed out on the second 1000m run. When we entered the third round of shooting, I knew I would have to lay it all on the line in an attempt to make the final. So I decided to take some risk, which ultimately paid off. I shot a lot faster and made it out of the shooting box in 17th place. The last 1000 meter run was a total fight to hold my position. Running at 7500 ft and with extreme pollution is not fun. In the end, I crossed the finish line in 17th place, earning a slot in tomorrow’s final. We’ll see how things go the second go around...stay tuned for updates tomorrow and I promise they'll be more exciting than this late-night rudimentary recap.

Pentathlon's Makeover--the New Rules

So after much drama, the electronic targets were released from the airport late last night. The competition organizers were busy this morning setting them up. I had a chance to go by and look at the venue. It looks like everything will be in working order. The wind was bad last night and they don't have wind blocks properly set up, but it does not appear that that will cause a problem today.

Here is a quick summary for those of you unfamiliar with our new sport format. There were a number of changes made to the sport for the 2012 quad. All were geared toward making the competition run faster and be more spectator friendly. About 40 minutes was cut from riding by eliminating some formal customs from the beginning. That was a very good change and I don't think anyone objected. The other change was highly controversial and barely passed in November. That was to combine the run and the shoot into one event, sort of like a winter biathlon. This is the first major competition with the new format.

The run/shoot is conducted as follows: You start about 30 meters from the shooting line. Athletes are handicapped based on their scores for the first two events (for instance, I am in 13th place and will start about 30 seconds behind the leader). You run to the line and you have to hit the target 5 times before leaving the range. The target is 10 meters away (33ft) and is about the size of a silver dollar. After 5 shots or 70 seconds, whichever comes first, you run 1000 meters. This is repeated three times continuously. Because of the original handicap, the first person to cross the finish line is the winner.

In a semifinal event, the top 36 athletes advance to the final. At this competition, we only have two groups so the top 18 move forward.

If you're interested, you can find the full explanation and rules at http://www.pentathlon.org/index.php?id=256.

Out of 'retirement'? Maybe...ask next week

Today we held the semi-finals for the first World Cup of the 2012 Olympic cycle... well sort of. In a semi-final, you compete in everything but riding. The top 36 athletes compete in the final two days later. Today we just swam and fenced. It turns out that the shooting score boxes are tied up at customs at the airport so we can't shoot. Since our new format is a combined shoot/run, we could not shoot or run today (we are scheduled for tomorrow).

I am not in good shape yet this season. After pretty much retiring after World Cup Final, I began reconsidering that decision over the winter. Over Christmas I had sinus surgery (which gave me MUCH better breathing out of my nose), but I also packed on a few pounds (okay, more than a few), courtesy of Cami's awesome pralines and divinity. After the New Year, I decided to get back in shape and start training again, committing to compete at least through this season to see how I like the new format. And quite frankly, I need to make sure that I still love training and competing--because that's what it takes to commit to another four years. And so far (only the past two months), I have really enjoyed getting back into the sport and am seriously considering committing to the 2012 Olympics.

But back to today. I swam a 2:08, six seconds slower than at the Olympics; but not bad for high altitude and only about eight weeks of training. My fencing put me right in the middle of the pack, and I go into tomorrow's run/shoot in 13th place. The top 18 make it into Saturday's final after tomorrow's run/shoot. I am about 20 seconds ahead of 19th place which would normally be a cake walk going into running. However, with the combined event, I have no idea where I stand.

Stay tuned for updates on the blog tomorrow and then (hopefully) in the final on Saturday!

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…