More Posts from Mark
Sunday 27 July 2008
(Attached
picture with Diana was taken from just a few moments
after we found out that I made the Olympics. My
mom was in Spain to watch the race, but she got
nervous and didn't watch the finish. We
couldn’t find her for awhile)
Staying disciplined in Singapore.
Sunday July 27th, 2008
Flight from San Francisco to Tokyo was fairly non-descript other than my encounter with a guy that was going to Asia to close one sweatshop that paid employees very little so that his company could open up a new sweatshop in a different country that could pay the workers even less. I’m not going to elaborate. Flight from Tokyo to Singapore was longer than expected and by the time that I finally arrived in my hotel room I had been traveling for 25 hours.
On the trip to Singapore I did a bit of reading. I’m currently reading two books (there’s a point to why I’m sharing this information with everyone). The first is “Disciplines of a Godly Man” by R. Kent Hughes. As one could imagine, the concept of the book is to use biblical teaching for modern application, and even if you’re not a Christian, it’s a good read. (I’m not preaching – there’s a reason I’m reading the book). The second book is “The CEO of the Sofa” by P.J. O’Rourke. The author pontificates on pop culture and politics from the comfort of his living room couch all while sipping a martini. The perspectives are essentially polar opposites.
I bring up my reading list because I just arrived in Singapore and my first inclination is to do the opposite of what I am here to do. I am a mere 2 weeks away from the start of the Olympics and less than a month away from my 10K race and I am faced with a self-discipline problem. The hotel, the pool we swim at, the meals (thus far only breakfast), the weather, and the general Singapore atmosphere all make me feel like reclining in a lounge chair and enjoying a drink under a palm tree.
Let me set the stage. Surprisingly, I couldn’t sleep very well last night so I woke up early this morning and went down to an early breakfast at the hotel. The most sufficient description of the breakfast is to use the phrase “the best breakfast I’ve ever had.” Really, the best ever, and I’ve had quite a few good breakfasts. This wasn’t one of those places that have a waffle bar that everyone goes nuts over. This was a place with a 20 person staff cooking fresh, flavorful, diverse foods at the whim of the hotel guest. My breakfast was broken in to about 9 courses consisting of: fresh Indian naan and a plate of breakfast curry, French Toast, poached eggs, an omelet, a fruit platter, smoked salmon with cream cheese, some sort of breakfast pudding, a few rolls and some delicious coffee. I avoided the pastries and about 5 other stations featuring breakfast items from all sorts of cultures. For the breakfast enthusiast this was essentially Willie Wonka’s Breakfast Factory
After breakfast we had the option of going to the pool to swim. Since we arrived so late last night we were not required to get in the water, but I felt that it was a good idea to swim considering I had just consumed the equivalent of three meals in 45 minutes. The pool is at a country club that rivals anything in your neighborhood and the pool looks out over a tremendous golf course. The pool itself is one of those state of the art aquatics facilities catering to members that exercise leisurely.
Now, to the point. We all have a bit of a discipline problem in our lives in one area or another. Reading Hughes book reminded me of many areas of my life that I lack discipline, but I’ll keep this post in relation to swimming. The circumstances of our current “training camp” are primed for someone to loose their self-control. For most of the swimmers on the team, this time in Singapore is primarily about adjusting to the time difference and to begin to taper. (For those who don’t understand “taper” here’s a quick synopsis: Taper is about getting your body and mind extra rest so that it is prepared for peak performance. This means less swimming and very little hard training.)
The problem is that we all live a fairly disciplined life at home, in fact our discipline at home is one of the main reasons we made it to the Olympics in the first place. Those that can avoid the beer and the pastries typically find more success than those that cannot. Swimming is about discipline and routines and patterns, and we’ve just put a bunch of athletes in a beautiful tropical location where our discipline is going to be tested. (There’s a “no alcohol” protocol, but there isn’t a “no 10 pastries” protocol.)
I became self-aware of the situation while I nearly sank to the bottom of the pool this morning. I have to discipline myself in two ways. First, I need to keep the diet under control. Some people think that swimmers can eat whatever we want in any quantity, but the reality is that we have all become very efficient at swimming and an 8,000 meter workout doesn’t burn as many calories as you might think. Second, because I swim the 10K at the end of the Olympics, I have to train hard for the entire time here in Singapore. While the other swimmers do 3,000 meter warm-up practices and 15 meter sprints for main sets, I have to continue 8,000 to 9,000 meter workouts with a pretty high intensity. I’m going to be doing a lot of swimming on my own while the other swimmers arrive after me and leave before me.
The discipline required to fulfill both of these objectives is not unattainable, but often times we set out to discipline ourselves under the assumption that something is easy and quickly find out that it’s more than we bargained for. I’ve been pretty disciplined in my life and I’m self-aware enough to recognize when I’m being tempted, so it’s a winnable contest, but that’s not to say I can snap my fingers and have complete self-control. The pastries look good, and doing 8x800 on 9 minutes is not really all that enjoyable.
Anyway, being disciplined is on my mind and I thought I’d share it with you.
____________
Continuation of post 4
After Melbourne, I went back into training to prepare for the USA Olympic Trials which would be held in October of 2007. Sometime in 2006 the International Olympic Committee had determined that the 10K open water swim would be introduced as an Olympic sport in Beijing. I didn’t have one of those pivotal life-altering moments when I found out, rather the reality of the Olympics seemed to grow steadily in the beginning of 2007. I stopped focusing on the 25K race, and with my coaches John Dussliere and Gregg Wilson, I mapped out a plan for making the Olympics in the 10K.
Going into the 10K USA Olympic Trials in 2007 I was not the favorite to win. Chip Peterson was the clear favorite, followed by Fran Crippen. I was supposed to get third or maybe fourth behind Chad LaTourette. At the race the top 2 Americans would qualify for the World Championships (which would be the Olympic qualifier) to be held in May of 2008. Third place, as is often the case in swimming, was essentially no different than last place.
In preparation for USA Olympic Trials I decided to make a few sacrifices to ensure that I would be at my best for the race. I recognized that life in Santa Barbara was full of distractions and that I needed to go somewhere that I wouldn’t be tempted by friends, family and the town of Santa Barbara itself. I decided to go up to Colorado Springs and to the Olympic Training Center for most of July, August, September and October leading up to the race. John Dussliere (coach at Santa Barbara Swim Club) came up a few times to coach me, but he had responsibilities to the rest of the swim club program that kept him from working with me full-time. Gregg had his hands full as the UCSB coach. Diana stayed at home to continue working as a preschool teacher for most of the time I was away. That summer and fall I spent a lot of time alone in the wate.
Obviously, the race in October went well. I swam most of the race in 4 to 8th place, and took the lead with about 1500 meters to go. Chip Peterson and I pulled away from the pack with 800 meters left and I touched him out by 1 second at the finish.
(The above picture is of me hugging Diana after the race in October. Keep in mind that I was convinced that I was going to get third and that my swimming career was going to be finished. It was a pretty emotional moment and the picture made it in USA Today.)
Now that the American Open Water Trials were completed the confusion about how to qualify for the Olympics began. Since the 10K would premiere in Beijing the International Olympic Committee wanted to limit the number of participants to 25 men. They created a bizarre selection process that would make you very confused, but for the purposes of this post the only thing that was important was that I placed in the top 10 or that I beat the other American (Chip Peterson) at the World Championships.
During the fall of 2007 and early in 2008 I went back to training in Santa Barbara, but I soon found that swimming in Santa Barbara was not as ideal as it was in Colorado Springs. Training at the Olympic Training Center took away the temptations of home, and without those temptations I logged many hours of lonely swimming in February, March and April. (Coach John came up a few times, but even when he was on deck I was the only athlete in the water).
In May the USA Open Water delegation went to Seville, Spain to compete in the World Championships. I had made quite a few sacrifices to get into the race at all and now I had one opportunity to make the Olympics. However, if I failed to place in the top 10 in that race my career would be over. Seemingly it would have been an anxious time, but I felt a tremendous peace leading into the race (a future post on nerves, peace and joy, with a bit of a faith testimony, coming sometime soon). I swam the race of my life and got 7th, nearly touched 4th and was only a few seconds behind 3rd.
The lack of anxiety I felt before and during the race made the post-race tension peculiar. Because the final sprint to the finish line had been very close between 4th through 13th place the officials didn’t want to prematurely announce places. The key was to finish in the top 10 and because so many of us touched at essentially the same time we had to wait for 15 minutes after the race to discover who would be an Olympian and who would be watching the race from home. My 7th place finish put me on the team, and that’s the story of how we got here. Next post from Singapore.
_______________
Over the past few posts I’ve written about what’s been going on in my life here at Stanford, but I haven’t really explained the process of how I actually got here. If you’ve heard this before you can leave now, but if you’re interested in staying……here goes.
Part 1 2006-2007
Leading up to 2006 I was a good swimmer but I couldn’t get over the hump - there were too many great swimmers that stood in the way of making it to the top. I failed to make the Olympic team in 2004 (after failing to make the Olympics in 1996 and 2000 as well) and nearly gave up the sport, but my mom encouraged me to stick with it. In the summer of 2005 the UCSB assistant coach, Jeremy Kipp (now at USC), encouraged me to do an ocean race in Santa Barbara. The race was against local fitness enthusiasts mostly in their 40’s and 50’s that swim primarily to stay healthy.
Fortunately I won the race, and even though it was against marginal swimmers, it was a big confidence boost. I still wanted to be a top level pool swimmer, but I could see the writing on the wall. Open water swimming had started as a novelty, but the curiosity quickly grew. The following year, 2006, I decided to abandon any hope at a career in the pool and devoted myself full-time to open water swimming. My original goal was simple: make the USA National Team in the 25 kilometer race. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that the Olympics were a possibility.
The USA Open Water National Championships for the 25k would be in May of 2006 in Fort Myers, Florida. That March I changed my training regime. Even though I was already a distance swimmer that had logged many miles in the pool, I increased my practice distance total from 70,000 meters a week to about 100,000 meters per week. The goal at the time was to focus on the 25 Kilometer race because there was a very limited number of swimmers in America willing to swim a 5 hour race. I realized that all I needed to do was to be able to swim for 5 hours at a reasonably fast pace and I could win the battle of attrition. I figured “Heck, I’m spending 20 hours a week training for a 4 minute race and I’m not finding success, but if I train 30 hours a week for a 5 hour race I can be on the National Team.” It seemed pretty basic at that point.
So, I went to Fort Myers and I decided to enter the 5K and 10K races that were held a couple of days before the 25K. (Coincidentally, the largest hammerhead shark every caught was reeled in less than 2 miles from the race course – one week before the competition). To my surprise I got 3rd in both the 5K and 10K races and beat quite a few accomplished swimmers. Then, in the 25K, I won the race by 15 minutes and put myself on the National Team.
That week in Fort Myers in 2006 was the beginning of my open water swimming career. As a National Team member I qualified for the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia and I spent the remainder of 2006 and the beginning of 2007 training for that competition. I went to Melbourne with high hopes (I would race the 5K, 10K and 25K over a week long period) but quickly realized that the rest of the world is really good at open water swimming. In the 5K I got 17st and in the 10K I got 20th. The water was freezing, my confidence was shot, and I was miserable. Fortunately the final race of the week, the 25K, was my best race and I got 4th place. My overall performance was still a bit disheartening, but I reminded myself that 4th place in the world is better than I’d ever been before in any race.
After Melbourne I came home to Santa Barbara and started to focus on the USA Olympic Trials that would be held in October of 2007. (Next post: USA Olympic Trials 2007 and World Olympic Trials 2008)
I attached two pictures. The first is of my 25K in 2006. I’m in the water and Gregg Wilson, coach at UCSB and close friend, is in the kayak next to me (Gregg is in the front and a volunteer that had never kayaked before is paddling in back). In this particular 25K race each swimmer went all the way around Estero Island in Fort Myers. Gregg is navigating my direction and supplying me with water and food when necessary. About 10 minutes after this photo was taken, the kayak capsized in rough water and Gregg had to get fished out of the ocean by the Coast Guard.
The second picture is of Diana and I just a few moments after the 25K in Melbourne. I was exhausted, nearing hypothermia, and not really interested in taking a picture. Diana, on the other hand, is always ready to smile for the camera.
Staying disciplined in Singapore.
Sunday July 27th, 2008
Flight from San Francisco to Tokyo was fairly non-descript other than my encounter with a guy that was going to Asia to close one sweatshop that paid employees very little so that his company could open up a new sweatshop in a different country that could pay the workers even less. I’m not going to elaborate. Flight from Tokyo to Singapore was longer than expected and by the time that I finally arrived in my hotel room I had been traveling for 25 hours.
On the trip to Singapore I did a bit of reading. I’m currently reading two books (there’s a point to why I’m sharing this information with everyone). The first is “Disciplines of a Godly Man” by R. Kent Hughes. As one could imagine, the concept of the book is to use biblical teaching for modern application, and even if you’re not a Christian, it’s a good read. (I’m not preaching – there’s a reason I’m reading the book). The second book is “The CEO of the Sofa” by P.J. O’Rourke. The author pontificates on pop culture and politics from the comfort of his living room couch all while sipping a martini. The perspectives are essentially polar opposites.
I bring up my reading list because I just arrived in Singapore and my first inclination is to do the opposite of what I am here to do. I am a mere 2 weeks away from the start of the Olympics and less than a month away from my 10K race and I am faced with a self-discipline problem. The hotel, the pool we swim at, the meals (thus far only breakfast), the weather, and the general Singapore atmosphere all make me feel like reclining in a lounge chair and enjoying a drink under a palm tree.
Let me set the stage. Surprisingly, I couldn’t sleep very well last night so I woke up early this morning and went down to an early breakfast at the hotel. The most sufficient description of the breakfast is to use the phrase “the best breakfast I’ve ever had.” Really, the best ever, and I’ve had quite a few good breakfasts. This wasn’t one of those places that have a waffle bar that everyone goes nuts over. This was a place with a 20 person staff cooking fresh, flavorful, diverse foods at the whim of the hotel guest. My breakfast was broken in to about 9 courses consisting of: fresh Indian naan and a plate of breakfast curry, French Toast, poached eggs, an omelet, a fruit platter, smoked salmon with cream cheese, some sort of breakfast pudding, a few rolls and some delicious coffee. I avoided the pastries and about 5 other stations featuring breakfast items from all sorts of cultures. For the breakfast enthusiast this was essentially Willie Wonka’s Breakfast Factory
After breakfast we had the option of going to the pool to swim. Since we arrived so late last night we were not required to get in the water, but I felt that it was a good idea to swim considering I had just consumed the equivalent of three meals in 45 minutes. The pool is at a country club that rivals anything in your neighborhood and the pool looks out over a tremendous golf course. The pool itself is one of those state of the art aquatics facilities catering to members that exercise leisurely.
Now, to the point. We all have a bit of a discipline problem in our lives in one area or another. Reading Hughes book reminded me of many areas of my life that I lack discipline, but I’ll keep this post in relation to swimming. The circumstances of our current “training camp” are primed for someone to loose their self-control. For most of the swimmers on the team, this time in Singapore is primarily about adjusting to the time difference and to begin to taper. (For those who don’t understand “taper” here’s a quick synopsis: Taper is about getting your body and mind extra rest so that it is prepared for peak performance. This means less swimming and very little hard training.)
The problem is that we all live a fairly disciplined life at home, in fact our discipline at home is one of the main reasons we made it to the Olympics in the first place. Those that can avoid the beer and the pastries typically find more success than those that cannot. Swimming is about discipline and routines and patterns, and we’ve just put a bunch of athletes in a beautiful tropical location where our discipline is going to be tested. (There’s a “no alcohol” protocol, but there isn’t a “no 10 pastries” protocol.)
I became self-aware of the situation while I nearly sank to the bottom of the pool this morning. I have to discipline myself in two ways. First, I need to keep the diet under control. Some people think that swimmers can eat whatever we want in any quantity, but the reality is that we have all become very efficient at swimming and an 8,000 meter workout doesn’t burn as many calories as you might think. Second, because I swim the 10K at the end of the Olympics, I have to train hard for the entire time here in Singapore. While the other swimmers do 3,000 meter warm-up practices and 15 meter sprints for main sets, I have to continue 8,000 to 9,000 meter workouts with a pretty high intensity. I’m going to be doing a lot of swimming on my own while the other swimmers arrive after me and leave before me.
The discipline required to fulfill both of these objectives is not unattainable, but often times we set out to discipline ourselves under the assumption that something is easy and quickly find out that it’s more than we bargained for. I’ve been pretty disciplined in my life and I’m self-aware enough to recognize when I’m being tempted, so it’s a winnable contest, but that’s not to say I can snap my fingers and have complete self-control. The pastries look good, and doing 8x800 on 9 minutes is not really all that enjoyable.
Anyway, being disciplined is on my mind and I thought I’d share it with you.
____________
Continuation of post 4
After Melbourne, I went back into training to prepare for the USA Olympic Trials which would be held in October of 2007. Sometime in 2006 the International Olympic Committee had determined that the 10K open water swim would be introduced as an Olympic sport in Beijing. I didn’t have one of those pivotal life-altering moments when I found out, rather the reality of the Olympics seemed to grow steadily in the beginning of 2007. I stopped focusing on the 25K race, and with my coaches John Dussliere and Gregg Wilson, I mapped out a plan for making the Olympics in the 10K.
Going into the 10K USA Olympic Trials in 2007 I was not the favorite to win. Chip Peterson was the clear favorite, followed by Fran Crippen. I was supposed to get third or maybe fourth behind Chad LaTourette. At the race the top 2 Americans would qualify for the World Championships (which would be the Olympic qualifier) to be held in May of 2008. Third place, as is often the case in swimming, was essentially no different than last place.
In preparation for USA Olympic Trials I decided to make a few sacrifices to ensure that I would be at my best for the race. I recognized that life in Santa Barbara was full of distractions and that I needed to go somewhere that I wouldn’t be tempted by friends, family and the town of Santa Barbara itself. I decided to go up to Colorado Springs and to the Olympic Training Center for most of July, August, September and October leading up to the race. John Dussliere (coach at Santa Barbara Swim Club) came up a few times to coach me, but he had responsibilities to the rest of the swim club program that kept him from working with me full-time. Gregg had his hands full as the UCSB coach. Diana stayed at home to continue working as a preschool teacher for most of the time I was away. That summer and fall I spent a lot of time alone in the wate.
Obviously, the race in October went well. I swam most of the race in 4 to 8th place, and took the lead with about 1500 meters to go. Chip Peterson and I pulled away from the pack with 800 meters left and I touched him out by 1 second at the finish.
(The above picture is of me hugging Diana after the race in October. Keep in mind that I was convinced that I was going to get third and that my swimming career was going to be finished. It was a pretty emotional moment and the picture made it in USA Today.)
Now that the American Open Water Trials were completed the confusion about how to qualify for the Olympics began. Since the 10K would premiere in Beijing the International Olympic Committee wanted to limit the number of participants to 25 men. They created a bizarre selection process that would make you very confused, but for the purposes of this post the only thing that was important was that I placed in the top 10 or that I beat the other American (Chip Peterson) at the World Championships.
During the fall of 2007 and early in 2008 I went back to training in Santa Barbara, but I soon found that swimming in Santa Barbara was not as ideal as it was in Colorado Springs. Training at the Olympic Training Center took away the temptations of home, and without those temptations I logged many hours of lonely swimming in February, March and April. (Coach John came up a few times, but even when he was on deck I was the only athlete in the water).
In May the USA Open Water delegation went to Seville, Spain to compete in the World Championships. I had made quite a few sacrifices to get into the race at all and now I had one opportunity to make the Olympics. However, if I failed to place in the top 10 in that race my career would be over. Seemingly it would have been an anxious time, but I felt a tremendous peace leading into the race (a future post on nerves, peace and joy, with a bit of a faith testimony, coming sometime soon). I swam the race of my life and got 7th, nearly touched 4th and was only a few seconds behind 3rd.
The lack of anxiety I felt before and during the race made the post-race tension peculiar. Because the final sprint to the finish line had been very close between 4th through 13th place the officials didn’t want to prematurely announce places. The key was to finish in the top 10 and because so many of us touched at essentially the same time we had to wait for 15 minutes after the race to discover who would be an Olympian and who would be watching the race from home. My 7th place finish put me on the team, and that’s the story of how we got here. Next post from Singapore.
_______________
Over the past few posts I’ve written about what’s been going on in my life here at Stanford, but I haven’t really explained the process of how I actually got here. If you’ve heard this before you can leave now, but if you’re interested in staying……here goes.
Part 1 2006-2007
Leading up to 2006 I was a good swimmer but I couldn’t get over the hump - there were too many great swimmers that stood in the way of making it to the top. I failed to make the Olympic team in 2004 (after failing to make the Olympics in 1996 and 2000 as well) and nearly gave up the sport, but my mom encouraged me to stick with it. In the summer of 2005 the UCSB assistant coach, Jeremy Kipp (now at USC), encouraged me to do an ocean race in Santa Barbara. The race was against local fitness enthusiasts mostly in their 40’s and 50’s that swim primarily to stay healthy.
Fortunately I won the race, and even though it was against marginal swimmers, it was a big confidence boost. I still wanted to be a top level pool swimmer, but I could see the writing on the wall. Open water swimming had started as a novelty, but the curiosity quickly grew. The following year, 2006, I decided to abandon any hope at a career in the pool and devoted myself full-time to open water swimming. My original goal was simple: make the USA National Team in the 25 kilometer race. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that the Olympics were a possibility.
The USA Open Water National Championships for the 25k would be in May of 2006 in Fort Myers, Florida. That March I changed my training regime. Even though I was already a distance swimmer that had logged many miles in the pool, I increased my practice distance total from 70,000 meters a week to about 100,000 meters per week. The goal at the time was to focus on the 25 Kilometer race because there was a very limited number of swimmers in America willing to swim a 5 hour race. I realized that all I needed to do was to be able to swim for 5 hours at a reasonably fast pace and I could win the battle of attrition. I figured “Heck, I’m spending 20 hours a week training for a 4 minute race and I’m not finding success, but if I train 30 hours a week for a 5 hour race I can be on the National Team.” It seemed pretty basic at that point.
So, I went to Fort Myers and I decided to enter the 5K and 10K races that were held a couple of days before the 25K. (Coincidentally, the largest hammerhead shark every caught was reeled in less than 2 miles from the race course – one week before the competition). To my surprise I got 3rd in both the 5K and 10K races and beat quite a few accomplished swimmers. Then, in the 25K, I won the race by 15 minutes and put myself on the National Team.
That week in Fort Myers in 2006 was the beginning of my open water swimming career. As a National Team member I qualified for the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia and I spent the remainder of 2006 and the beginning of 2007 training for that competition. I went to Melbourne with high hopes (I would race the 5K, 10K and 25K over a week long period) but quickly realized that the rest of the world is really good at open water swimming. In the 5K I got 17st and in the 10K I got 20th. The water was freezing, my confidence was shot, and I was miserable. Fortunately the final race of the week, the 25K, was my best race and I got 4th place. My overall performance was still a bit disheartening, but I reminded myself that 4th place in the world is better than I’d ever been before in any race.
After Melbourne I came home to Santa Barbara and started to focus on the USA Olympic Trials that would be held in October of 2007. (Next post: USA Olympic Trials 2007 and World Olympic Trials 2008)
I attached two pictures. The first is of my 25K in 2006. I’m in the water and Gregg Wilson, coach at UCSB and close friend, is in the kayak next to me (Gregg is in the front and a volunteer that had never kayaked before is paddling in back). In this particular 25K race each swimmer went all the way around Estero Island in Fort Myers. Gregg is navigating my direction and supplying me with water and food when necessary. About 10 minutes after this photo was taken, the kayak capsized in rough water and Gregg had to get fished out of the ocean by the Coast Guard.
The second picture is of Diana and I just a few moments after the 25K in Melbourne. I was exhausted, nearing hypothermia, and not really interested in taking a picture. Diana, on the other hand, is always ready to smile for the camera.
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