I started growing the beard on the first day of training for 2011, so I started calling it “the fitness beard.” Training is going really well down here in Florida – the beard has almost 11 weeks of fitness in it! Unfortunately for the beard one weekend spent in Gainesville with old college friends earned it less desirable nicknames.

The beard week 11: in terms of masculinity does the fact that I have a beard make up for taking a small white dog for a walk?

The beard made sense in Colorado – it kept me warm on the bike. Now that I’m in Florida it just hinders the application of sunscreen. A more important development is that no fewer than three girls say that with the beard I look like Ryan Gossling from the movie “The Notebook.” I’ve never seen the movie but apparently this is a good thing! Their boyfriends/husbands said I look like Abe Lincoln. I guess I would be OK with either.

The beard week five: Sarah Haskins had to get a picture with Ryan Gossling at Brian Fleischmann’s wedding reception.

The beard is apparently a topic of dinner conversation at the OTC even after my departure. A text from Sarah Groff the other day read “has Kevin shaved?” Nope, not yet! Also, Ethan Brown is destroying me in the pool right now, but I have this beard so that’s OK, right?

My beard is not nearly as cool as Sam Beam’s beard (AKA Iron and Wine). The new album accompanies me back and forth from Clermont several times a week.

To be completely honest the beard is really annoying – it has to go sometime soon!

It won’t be the first adventurous Collington Christmas – we spent Christmas ’05 in the beautiful mountain town of Cuenca, Ecuador. At the time my brother was teaching English there (yes, these third world Christmas adventures are entirely spurred on by my brother’s worldly travels). We flew into Guayaquil, which my brother made sure to point out as the second most dangerous city in South America (behind Lima, Peru apparently). I think he likes to throw these facts out there so that we know what we’re getting ourselves into. I have lots of good memories from Christmas in Ecuador – harrowing 12 hour bus rides through the Andes Mountains, train derailments, using medium size rocks to “launch” our train back onto the tracks…and somehow convincing myself to be OK with all of this by repeating my mantra of “I’m SURE they know what they’re doing” in reference to our savvy Ecuadorian tour guides. Hopefully this Christmas will be equally memorable!

Obviously I’m not bringing a bike and I don’t envision myself doing any swimming, but my brother says we will be able to “walk very briskly” to a nicer neighborhood where I should be able to do a run or two. And once we are out of the city I might be able to run up a volcano or something. If I’m still around next week I’ll post some pictures. I’m SURE I’ll be fine…

In other news I got to do a video for TeamUSA.org about my favorite Holiday traditions. “Triathlete” must be a hard word to spell correctly. Sound it out USOC! Oh well, enjoy!

Yea…I was a fat baby!

Helping out at the Kids4Kids Triathlon Clinic with Jeff from the UF Sports Performance Center.

Watching the Gators play Tennessee in style!

The pontoon start at Augusta 70.3 felt very much like an ITU race, and with so many short course guys on the start line like Eric Limkemann, Brian Fleischmann and Greg Bennett I kept reminding myself that I was about to race for twice as long as I am used to!

13 miles to go. I’m in ninth at this point, I ended up in seventh.

It turns out seventh place is the last person to get paid. Sweet! I also got a spot at the Ironman 70.3 World Champs in Clearwater next month.

Pike’s Peak here in Colorado Springs.

The main reason I do so well up here is the altitude. “Altitude training” is generally considered anything over 3,000 feet above sea level. That is the point that the lack of oxygen begins to affect athletic performance. Colorado Springs is about 6,000 feet above sea level. What’s more, I live on the third floor so that puts me at about 6,090 feet above sea level! Ha. But seriously, there just isn’t a lot of air up here. Some people do better than others at altitude, but I can report that I do very well up here. I am not really affected much by the altitude in terms of my ability to output the same swim speed/cycling wattage/run speed. I know what you’re saying: You’re saying, “Kevin, that just doesn’t make any sense. You should be going four percent slower in the pool, or be putting out 25 watts fewer, or be running 11 seconds per mile slower!” Those are all very good points and in fact I’m sure that they are all completely correct. Physiologically if someone tested me while swimming, biking, or running I’m sure my heart rate and lactate levels would be higher at altitude when compared to the same effort level at sea level. All I’m saying is that my perception of the paces is unchanged – it doesn’t seem to hurt any more up here than at sea level and I think that’s pretty cool. There is one catch though…recovery. I don’t recover nearly as fast as I do at sea level. Maybe this will change after I adapt to altitude a bit better but currently I would guess that I recover ten percent slower.

Speaking of adapting: How long does it take to “adapt” to altitude? The general rule is three weeks. The body takes about that much time to react to the lack of oxygen and create more red blood cells. I can attest to having as much as a ten percent rise in hematocrit (the portion of blood volume occupied by red blood cells) and hemoglobin (oxygen transport mechanism in red blood cells) after three weeks. I never made it much past three or four weeks at altitude in the past so I can’t say what happens after that.

That’s all for now. My next race is the HyVee World Cup in Des Moines, Iowa on June 27. I’m hoping for another good performance but even 75th place doesn’t seem that bad:

I stayed with my coach Jen Hutchison in St. Pete for a few days. She made me a pancake breakfast the day after the race – apparently I was on a diet.

I borrowed Jen’s sweet Jeep Grand Cherokee and drove to Orlando to visit my Mom and Dad. This is my Mom’s dog Cosmo – ferocious!

After a short stop in Gainesville to visit friends (and get some of my favorite pizza at Satchel’s) I made my way up to Jacksonville to help out at the YMCA First Coast Kid’s Triathlon. This is me hanging out with some future triathlon stars the day before the race.

Here are some of the “celebrity big kids” as we were known for the weekend. There were about 10 of us big kids and we were celebrities for various reasons. From left to right: Sophia Every from the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, Jacksonville area fireman Raleigh Zike, Don Redman (completed 650+ triathlons in his lifetime), me (token professional triathlete!), Ty Dickenson (Jacksonville area policeman), Don Davey (ex-NFL football player), and Dustin Crawford, a Navy ensign.

I got to be the big kid for the 8 and under age group.

Here they are parading on over to the start.

We big kid’s had our own race and guess what, I won! Unofficially I completed the 100 yd swim, 3 mile bike and 1/2 mile run in 12 minutes and 45 seconds. Here I am with another of the big kids – Mark Woods, a journalist from the Florida Times-Union. He got third. Don Davey (the ex-NFL football player) got second. Pretty fast for the biggest guy in the field! He’s training for Ironman Austria.

Training in Chula Vista was my first opportunity to devote myself “full time” to triathlon training and I believe I developed a lot as an athlete. I think I am a bit spoiled now, though. At this time last year I was trying to combine a full early season racing schedule with trying to graduate from college. OK, I wasn’t trying very hard to graduate, but with final exams and final projects school still took up a lot of my time. Training at the OTC is completely different – instead of trying to “fit” my training around other parts of my life, training is my life and everything else comes second. So what is it like to train out here? Check out the pics below. Hopefully I captured a little bit about how things work out here.

Otay Lakes Road – the only place around here to do “quality” riding. But thirty minutes of flat riding out on Otay gives access to some great climbs or rolling hills.

The track is sweet and the scenery isn’t bad, either.

The cafeteria is my favorite place on campus! This breakfast made me very happy.

The sports med building is another place I spend a lot of my time. This is the Normatech MVP unit. It uses air pressure to provide compression. I have it set at 80 mm Hg. 15 or 30 minutes using this and it doesn’t even feel like I did a workout.

The cold tank. 55 degrees.

Joey the therapy dog comes every Friday. He is like the OTC’s collective pet. He knows like 57 tricks or something sweet like that.

He even gets his own ID card!

The Alter-G treadmill – it allows you to run at certain percentages of your body weight – down to 20%. It’s great for injured athletes or people like me who want to get in a few extra miles without the leg pounding. Apparently my legs were going too fast to be captured by the phone’s camera.

So what effect will all of this great training have on my triathlon season in 2009? So far it seems to be going pretty well. With some higher priority races coming up I’ll find out soon!

First off, I moved! I managed to acquire full-time Olympic Training Center ‘resident’ status for 2009 so I packed up and left Florida on December 27th and took a sweet road trip across the country and moved into Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California. This will not be permanent as I will be living at the OTC in Colorado Springs, Colorado for the majority of the year, but for now the perennial summer of Chula beats the Colorado Springs winter any day. Thanks to Andrew, Barrett, and Paulo for letting me stay at your places as I bummed it across the country.

Chula Vista is great. Right now the weather averages a dry 50 degree low and 80 degree high. The winter is considered the ‘rainy season,’ meaning it rains about once or twice a month. A suburb of San Diego, Chula is best known for making the news in border patrol related stories. Also, as Mr. Sexton recently reported, Chula was chosen by Forbes.com as one of America’s “most boring cities.” So that’s where I live!

Chula Vista…endless suburbia and shopping centers.

The Otay Reservoir in Chula (this is right outside the training center).

In other news I am now in the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s (USADA) registered testing pool. This means that I have to tell USADA where I am at all times and also set aside one hour of my day between 6 AM and 11 PM to be in a very specific location of my choosing for that entire hour so they can come and test me. I know it sounds like a bit of a pain in the ass…it is. But what USADA does is very much worthwhile and I’m happy to be a part of it.

I’m also excited to report that I’m working with a few new companies this year, namely Shimano, Kiwami, and Rudy Project.

Oh and lastly, since I receive requests on almost a daily basis of, “Kevin, we want to know what you’re doing RIGHT NOW and AT ALL TIMES!” I got a twitter account and put it over in the right sidebar. Barrett has one, too. We’re so trendy. Too much Kevin Collington? Not possible.

How I Ended Up in Kenya 45 Hours Later

As I mentioned previously the San Francisco Triathlon at Treasure Island was a pretty good race for me. Yes, my run wasn’t nearly as it dominant as it has been throughout the year, and I know my ninth place finish might not look like anything special. However, I managed to do something I haven’t done all year and that is why it was such a great result to have heading into the off season – I made the front pack on the bike!

Race Start – 12 PM PST

On the pontoon. Pictures are courtesy of Steve Sexton using my camera.

Before the horn.

The race started and the water was something stupid like 55 degrees. I started on the right with Brian Fleischmann and Ethan. Ethan led to the first buoy with Brian and me in tow. Brian took over the pace making soon thereafter and strung our pack out into a long line for the rest of the swim. At the time I didn’t know that a huge gap separated my group from the main field.

Race Start + 0:18:53

Exiting the swim.

As I exited the water I found myself at the back of a very select front pack of nine athletes – it was a who’s who of American swimmers: Brian Fleischmann, John Dahlz, Dave Kuendig, Ben Collins, Victor Plata, Joe Umphenour, Ethan, me, and some dude from New Zealand or Canada or something. This is dangerous territory for me – I have been in the back of the front swim pack many times this year and my record isn’t very good for making the front bike pack: five for ten. 50% is pretty bad, and what’s more is that the times I did miss the front pack were when it mattered most – World Cups, World University Games, and US Elite Nationals to name a few. So I blazed through T1 and hammered at the start of the bike, eventually solidifying myself into a very select front pack of seven athletes about one minute up on the second pack.

The front pack.

We stayed away the whole time with only Matt Reed and Matt Chrabot bridging up to us. Cries of “The Matts are coming! The Matts are coming!” eminated from our pack for the first two laps – once they caught us the pace picked up as they attacked and counterattacked, effectively making my life miserable for about 40 minutes.

Francisco Serrano and Michael Raelert leading the second pack in.

Race Start + 01:22:10

Once out onto the run course I felt the effects of getting worked by such a small, volatile bike pack. Four athletes passed me from the second pack – hey, that’s normally what I have to do!

Victor Plata is hurrrting, but he won.

Race Start + 01:57:01

I held on for a solid ninth place finish. It was nice to accomplish something I haven’t done all year long, plus I made more money in one day than I ever have in triathlon with an eighth place overall finish in the TriCalifornia series and my ninth place race finish. Sweet! After all, this is my job.

Race Start + 07:55:00

I’m on the runway at SFO about to take off for Orlando. I do not recommend trying to fly out on the same day as a race. Between waiting for awards, getting back to the hotel, and packing everything, I was hard pressed to get to the airport on time.

Race Start + 22:24:00

I’m on the runway in Orlando – taking off again. I arrived in Orlando that morning at six AM and had about a seven hour layover. I took a one hour nap – my only sleep since before the race and the only sleep I would get for a long time. Next stop – Detroit.

Race Start + 33:30:00

Somewhere over the North Atlantic. As you might imagine, I’m quite sore from the race at this point. Two hours to Amsterdam and 12 hours to go.

Race Start + 059:30:00

After arriving in Nairobi the night before, getting six hours of much needed sleep and driving five hours out of Nairobi into the Kenyan highlands I found myself in Southwest Kenya on the Maasai Mara Game Reserve with my roommate from college, Ashish, who met me in Nairobi (he was coming from Thailand). After the safari we stayed with his family who lives in Nairobi.

Safari day one: it’s getting stormy on the Maasai land.

The Great Rift Valley – this is near where the fast runners come from.

Snapping some photos of some hippos.

A big old lion.

Giraffes!

We bribed a park worker at the Nairobi zoo to let us into the Cheetah cage.

Ashish and me at the giraffe park in Nairobi.

Tropical Storm Fay

So, in the mean time the Olympic Training Center was nice enough to give me a room for an extra week. Also, I got to watch both the men’s and women’s Olympic triathlons which ended up being aired on a 24 hour delay. Had I flown out on my original flight I wouldn’t have been so lucky.

Emma Snowsill won the women’s gold.

Jan Frodeno was the surprise winner of the men’s race.

Jan Frodeno was definitely a big surprise in the men’s race. It’s especially amazing since he doesn’t come from any particular sports background other than a late start to swimming and then lifeguarding competitions prior to his entry into the sport of triathlon (according to www.jan-frodeno.com). It’s downright encouraging!

While I was in Hamburg this year I was walking around with Ethan and Steve after the race and we saw Jan racing around the Hamburg bike course on a women’s cruiser bike. We couldn’t figure out what he was up to but we found this on Youtube later that night: