Happy New Year!
I am SO TIRED of looking at my post from Guatape. And after battling not one but TWO viruses on my website in the past month I found myself looking at that post a lot. I must post something new! If you visited my website you may have been notified that it was an “attack” site. I’m sorry if my website attacked you. Very aggressive, my website. Just like real-life Kevin. The Google Reader users out there can pay no mind to this apology.
I’m starting to race early this year at the Pan American Championship in La Paz, Argentina on January 15th. This is a race I always wanted to do but could never justify – with the most ridiculous travel for any triathlon EVER and also the race date in mid January it just never made sense. Now that I am being forced to go in order to solidify my start at Olympic Trials in May I’m happy to make the trip. Speaking of the Olympics, the men’s team is wide open. It’s ON!! With eight weeks of solid training in the Florida heat under my belt I AM ready to go for La Paz! No negative affirmations here.
May 2012 be full of happiness and free of attack websites!
2012 – another year with PAULO at the helm. Thanks to Lauren Harrison for the pic.
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!
Stuck in Colorado
I was going to fly back to Florida this week but not anymore (not that I’m complaining!). The only problem is that I’m racing the Chicago Triathlon this weekend and I was going home to get race wheels!
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:
Olympic Triathlon!
Oh man, I’m excited. The women’s Olympic triathlon starts in 6 hours! That’s 10 AM local time in Beijing (it’s already tomorrow there), or 10 PM Eastern Standard Time (tonight!), and 8 PM here in Colorado Springs. The men’s race starts 24 hours after the women’s race. Here is the info on US TV coverage:
Back to Training
After a fun three weeks of racing in Europe I am now back in the states and back to training. I am lucky enough to be able to spend five weeks in Colorado Springs, Colorado at the Olympic Training Center at a development training camp put on by USA Triathlon. This means access to amazing training facilities, great food, and I get to hang out with all of my friends at the camp! It’s a pretty sweet deal.
I spend most of my day training, going to lectures, or watching the Tour de France in the cafeteria.
Counting down to the Olympics.
There are only 12 days left until the Beijing Olympics! It will be pretty exciting to watch the Olympics from here at the OTC. Unfortunately, with the Tour de France ending today 12 days also marks how long until more TV entertainment comes around to watch at breakfast, lunch and dinner! Some more pics:
A scenic view from the OTC campus.
Even the foxes on campus are fit!
New USOC Website
The United States Olympic Committee just launched a new website in conjunction with all of the national governing bodies of Olympic sports here in the United States in the hopes of delivering up to date news and content on all things related to Team USA and the Olympics. The main USOC site is www.TeamUSA.org and the site specific to triathlon is triathlon.TeamUSA.org.
It looks like they have done a very good job with it. In fact I think I just saw more triathlon related content in one sitting than I ever thought possible. Here are a few things I found (including an article that mentions me!):
- Matt Reed secures Olympic spot with 5th place finish at World Champs
- An article on Sarah Haskins’ silver medal at World Champs
- Jasmine Oeinck – 2nd at U23 World Champs
- Pictures of Americans at Junior Worlds
- An article on next weekend’s World University Championship
Update
I haven’t posted in awhile and that’s mainly because I’ve been hitting some high volume training in the past 3 weeks – this week ended up at 26.75 hours. This seems like a lot to me now but I have a feeling this will probably be normal for me in the near future. My highest previous weekly total was 23.75 hours.
In other news, the United States passed Russia in the men’s Olympic rankings to move into eighth place after Matt Reed’s tenth place finish today at the Madrid World Cup. The top eight nations get to send three athletes to the Olympics so good job Matt! There is only one more race to score Olympic points and that is the World Championships in Vancouver in two weeks. Matt has been racing like a champ all year so I’m pretty confident the United States can hold onto this position.
