Did some 200m repeats last Thursday.
A text from coach reads: “Arms are too long and feet too inactive.”
Felt pretty active at the time!
More of them tomorrow!
The beard is gone.
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No, That’s Not a Squirrel On My Face
I ran a 10K PR at this past weekend’s Suncoast 10K in St. Petersburg! QOTD from Kaitlin Shiver: “I didn’t see Kevin during the race, but then I realized he was the guy with the squirrel on his face.”
The Fitness Beard
So I have a beard. This isn’t to say it’s a great beard. In fact it’s probably only a step away from “patchy facial hair,” but I think it just barely squeezes by the threshold of beard status.
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!
blueseventy
I’m excited to announce I’ll be wearing blueseventy wetsuits next year!
Are We There Yet??
Last week I set off from the cold, snowy north in search of a warmer climate to spend the winter months, the destination being central Florida and Jarrod Shoemaker’s training group. My plan was to stop to visit a few friends in Texas on the way and get in some training while also breaking up the long drives. All went to plan except for the training part. Whether it was a bad salad from a Subway in Amarillo (not sure there is such a thing as a good Subway salad actually) or a final parting blow from the Olympic Training Center in the form of a nasty stomach virus (as usual I blame the wrestlers) I don’t know, but I can say I got sicker than I have in a long time. Ugh!
The first leg of the trip was a long drive from Colorado Springs to Fort Worth, TX to visit Barrett Brandon. I left the training center feeling good and in high spirits, but arrived feeling quite the opposite of that. The rest of the week was downhill from there with most training sessions being replaced by naps and my normally scheduled naps being replaced by longer naps. Friday I finally started to feel better, made my way down to Austin, TX, and got in some easy swim/bike/run days to get back into things. On a side note: Austin, TX is awesome. After that a short drive to Houston followed by a long drive the next day to Florida finished things up. Another side note: Houston, TX is not awesome.
I can already tell that coming to Florida for the winter was a good decision. Today is about as cold as it gets here (in the 30s F) and the Coloradoan in me said it was warm out! Training will feature quite a bit of volume and intensity over the next few months and I’m looking forward to all of it!
Christmas in Guatemala
My hour long “run” – averaged 12:33/mile. It was more of a very hard hike.
A Collington Christmas
As you might expect I will be flying out soon to spend Christmas with my family, but unlike most I won’t be going home. No, instead the Collingtons are going to the most dangerous region on earth (not including active war zones of course). It should be a good time! My brother works as a foreign service officer in the country where we are going. Most guess either Mexico or Columbia but neither is correct…close, though!
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!
600 Days!
That’s right – 600 days until London! That’s still a long way off, though…maybe it seems closer because the first US Olympic selection race is less than eight months away. I certainly have a lot of work to do if I plan to get a top nine finish in London next August, but all I can do is work hard and hopefully I’ll get there. I’m also hoping this wonderful Fall weather holds up in Colorado Springs until I leave for warmer climes in January!
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