I’ve been in Singapore for nearly 3 days and I have yet to find the dark underbelly.  Singapore is not like Andy Griffith’s Mayberry, it’s more like Dr Seuss’ Whoville.  The people are, from this observers’ perspective, absurdly good-natured.  While exploring the city yesterday I witnessed a guy digging a trench next to the road.  He was sitting in his backhoe and he had an enormous grin on his face. I watched him for a few moments and he didn’t stop smiling the entire time – the guy was REALLY enjoying digging with his backhoe.

I continued to explore, and while walking in the downtown district I encountered a few locals here and there, and they were all positive and upbeat.  Even the electronics salesman that tried to sell me a digital camera for twice the actual value was really quite friendly about the whole matter.

The place is also incredibly clean.  There’s no spitting (as the attached photo indicates) and no chewing gum.  There’s also no litter – anywhere.  Apparently there is a strict no-tolerance policy on everything, but I jaywalked 3 times yesterday and I didn’t get flogged, so I think it’s more of a myth.  Singapore is a success, and I’m interested to find out if there is a Letters to the Editor/Complaint section in the local newspape.

The downside to Singap ore is that if someone is looking for authentic Southeast Asian culture I doubt this is the place to visit.  All the street signs/menus are in English, everyone speaks English, and there’s a Starbucks on every corner.  With all of the banks and high-end shopping, Singapore is capitalism on steroids and could easily be confused with a very humid Newport Beach         .

As for the training camp itself: I’m pretty tired.  The reason that I went out exploring the first two days was to prevent myself from sleeping in the middle of the day so as to acclimate to the time difference.  However, it didn’t seem to work out the way I intended.  I did double practices the first two days here (8,000 per) and explored the city in between sessions.  Unfortunately my body didn’t adjust, so I was awake most of the night.  Right now I’m tired from traveling, swimming, exploring and not sleeping.  The combination showed last night and this morning at practice when I had a couple of awful sessions.  Today I decided to take a different approach to my adjustment process and am going to try and rest any time I can, regardless of the hour.

One observation from the pool that’s pretty funny.  Every day the swimmers all get in the water for a 7am training session and most of us do an 800 to 1,000 meter warm-up.  During this warm-up period time all of the coaches go to the coffee bar and have complimentary cappuccino or espresso.  They then return to the side of the pool, with a cup and saucer in hand, and casually sip their morning beverage.  It’s rather funny to watch 15 coaches, who typically chug coffee from a 7-11 Styrofoam cup, daintily sip cappuccinos during practice..

Skit night is forthcoming.

Attached picture is of me enjoying a made-to-order smoothie at breakfast.  The martini glass is a nice touch, and I asked for white chocolate chips on top to make it completely obnoxious.

 mdw

(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.

We've had my nephew's Olympic swim diary. Now it's time for a break with a friend's take on how Chinese Olympic policy will affect the yen and your wallet. The Fox Business announcer pronounces his guest's surname, "Mi-nerd, " short i sound, when it is actually a long i sound, "m-EYE-nerd. "

I have a blog, but I don’t think Dan Rather will be worried.  The blog is at swimroom.com.  Josh Ilika, who some of you may know as the guy that gave a really, really, really long speech at my wedding, created a professional website for the swimming community and fans of swimming and it actually gets a lot of web traffic.  I’ll still be sending you posts directly, but if you want to post a response for the ENTIRE WORLD TO SEE then you can go to his site.  He gave my posts the title “The Adventures of Mark Warkentin” which makes me sound like Dora the Explorer’s sidekick.  The blog is currently accepting suggestions for an alternative title.
 
Also, I’ll be swimming exactly 1 month from today.
 
Post 3 on July 21st 2008
 
Ralph and Me
 
On Saturday the team went to San Jose State University to do processing for the United States Olympic Committee (USOC).  Last week we’d already gotten a lot of clothing from USA Swimming but the USOC (the parent governing body for all American Olympic sports) has a different set of clothing for the athletes.  At certain times over the next month the USOC wants all American athletes to look like a team, regardless if we are 10K swimmers or basketball players or high jumpers.  For instance, when we get off the plane in Beijing, all American athletes are required to wear a particular outfit – no questions, complaints or requests otherwise will be tolerated.  Similarly, when we give official press conference interviews we are required to wear an outfit with a particular sequence of shoes, pants, shirt and jacket.  Diana can attest to the fact that I hardly ever dress correctly for any social engagement, so I’m a bit nervous of the dress code police that will be monitoring my outfits. 

The primary focus of the processing was to get fitted for our Opening Ceremony attire.  My good friend Ralph Lauren is the official outfitter of the USA Olympic Team, and I’ve got to give the guy credit for designing a pretty cool looking Opening Ceremony uniform.  The uniform was modeled after the 1920 Olympic Team uniform as seen in the movie “Chariots of Fire”.

Let me back up.  We got to SJSU and were taken into a room about the same size as your high school basketball gym.  The room was set up like a grocery store, except instead of frozen foods, dairy products and vegetables, the room was filled with shirts, shoes, pants, jackets and hats.  So, per instruction, we all grabbed a Home Depot Shopping cart and started filling them up. 

It wasn’t a free-for-all (I had a checklist of things that I was issued) but it was still a rather surreal experience.  It took about an hour and a half to get through the room and I was as happy as a pig in mud.  My favorite part was getting our measurements taken by a tailor with a thick Italian accent.  He looked me over once: “44 Regular, 32 Long” and someone appeared with a sport coat and pants.  We chatted about suits, neckties and buttons as he sized me up, finishing with “Excellent, this is very nice.”

When I got to the last section of the room my shopping cart was full (actually it was overflowing) and my face hurt because I had been grinning for at least a full hour.  It was a lot like that moment on your wedding day when you realize that you’ve been smiling for a long time because the muscles in your cheeks hurt.

After we got through the clothing section we were taken to a room where we got measured for commemorative Olympic rings.  Now I’m not a jewelry man, but it’s hard not to appreciate a ring that looks like it could be used for a Roman Empire style signature.  We won’t get the ring until after we get home from the Olympics, and I’m sure I’ll never wear it, but it felt rather stately to pretend to be Ben Hur for a brief moment. 

I left the USOC processing having achieved a longtime goal.  Former Olympians always talk about the day they got their shopping cart and filled it with Olympic stuff, and for so many years it was a fantasy that I feared would never become a reality.  After the processing I did the math: averaging 30 hours a week for 50 weeks a year I have been training for 62.5 days of every year for the last 15 years.  Sometimes, when the practice got really lonely I would question the motives for it all.  Why?  What’s the point?  Is it all worth it?  I don’t want to be callously materialistic and say that my experience on Saturday was the point for the struggle, but I will say that because of my experience over the past 2 weeks, I am more appreciative of the struggle itself.  I don’t know if I would have appreciated Saturday if it had been an easy road to get there. It was something that couldn’t be bought with money, only with time, pain and sacrifice.  I’ll cherish it because I know it was difficult to get there, not just because I was there. 
           
When we got back to the hotel we were told that we had more stuff than we could possibly wear in China and that we had the option of sending some of it home.  I packed up a box and sent it back to Santa Barbara because I knew that there was a very good chance that something might get stolen or lost in China and I wasn’t about to let that happen.
           
I’ve got some stories on other topics that I’m working on, but I thought I’d share that one for now.
 
mdw

Mark is second from right.

Writing from Palo Alto on the campus of Stanford University
 
July 13th 2008,
 
I would like to send out a few e-mails over the next couple of weeks.  Hopefully I can find a computer in Singapore and Beijing to continue the posts up until the closing ceremonies on the 24th of August. 
 
Post 1
 
The USA Swimming Olympic Team training camp officially began on Monday the 7th here in Palo Alto.  I was the only swimmer that hadn’t just spent the previous 2 weeks at the exhausting Olympic Trials and so I was a bit more alert than my teammates upon arrival at SFO.  Most of the swimmers were pretty emotionally drained by the Trials, and the first day was more about recovering than anything else.
 
USA Swimming is having an extended domestic training camp together as a team before we leave for Singapore on July the 25th because the coaches and team leaders don’t want us to go back home and swim on our own.  There is a very real fear that without supervision we might lose our focus and not prepare ourselves properly.  This is a problem because there are so many swimmers that are just excited to be going to the Olympics at all.  USA Swimming, on the other hand, doesn’t care WHO made the team, they only care about winning medals at the Olympics.  So, we have a 3 week training camp where we all swim 2 times a day and we keep our competitive edge by racing each other on a daily basis.
 
On Tuesday we were taken to the pool where we had a short meeting to determine what training group we would be broken into.  Primarily there would be 2 sprint groups and 1 mid-distance group.  Since I’m the only 10K swimmer on the team I don’t have anyone that wants to train long distance with me.  The result is that I join the mid-distance group for their training session and then swim an extra 2,000 meters after everyone else is done.  My training partners in the mid-distance group are a veritable who’s who of the American swimming world: Michael Phelps, Erik Vendt, Klete Keller, Peter Vanderkay, Ryan Lochte, and Larsen Jensen.  I am, without a doubt, the slowest swimmer in the group. 
 
Tuesday night Pete Carroll, football coach at USC, was brought in to give us a bit of an impromptu motivational speech.  The gist: he was excited for us.  I would say that he’s pretty much always excited. 
 
Wednesday was the first day that the intensity of the practice started to increase.  It feels rather momentous to be training in this group because I know that at the Olympics the athletes I’m swimming with are going to get the bulk of the primary TV coverage.  I won a few of the swims, got beat on a majority of the swims, but I held my own for the most part.
 
Thursday was Christmas.  I’ve often said that the reason I didn’t quit swimming 3 years ago (when I probably should have quit) was because I wanted to get a T-Shirt that said I was on the USA Swimming National Team.  Well, Thursday I got the T-Shirt that said I was on the USA Swimming Olympic Team.  In fact I got an entire bag of stuff that indicated I made the Olympic Team: shirts, shorts, sweatpants and jackets all with the USA Swimming logo’s on them.  It was Christmas.
 
Thursday night was our first official team meeting.  We all introduced ourselves and told the group one interesting fact that no one else knew.  I told the group that I’ve had a series of accidents in the past few years, but none was more memorable than cutting my leg with a chainsaw.  After the introductions Erik Shanteau (who qualified for the Olympics in the 200 Breaststroke) made the announcement that he was recently diagnosed with testicular cancer.  He said that it appeared to be under control for the time being, and that he intends to swim at the Olympics.  He’s going to get tests done weekly leading up to the games.  It was shocking to hear that he was diagnosed the week before Olympic Trials and then he competed and made the team under the circumstances. 
 
In between practices on Friday we had a meeting called “Being a good Ambassador” where we learned about how to be good visitors to China, how go give good interviews, and more importantly what NOT to do over the next month.  The Olympics, on such a big stage, are a stage for incredible high’s as well as incredible lows.  Stupid decisions and bad interviews can have some pretty significant implications if everything goes the wrong way. 
We also learned how to speak Chinese - it only took about 45 minutes.  The Ambassador program included a Chinese lesson from a teacher who gave us a crash course in the language.  The problem, as is often the case with crash courses, is that the pupil retains very little information.  This pupil remembers “Hello” which is pronounced “Knee-How?” and absolutely nothing else.  I will be a very friendly visitor and I intend on saying “Knee How?” quite a bit. 
 
Another rather special event on Friday was when the entire team signed a flag adorned with the letters “USA” in big letters above the Olympic Rings.  Actually, the entire team signed about 150 of these flags.  Some of the flags will go to donations and charities and some will go to “big shots” at various sponsors.  All the athletes were promised that we would each get 1 for ourselves to keep, and as a result I made sure to sign my name legibly on each flag, just in case that particular flag would end up at my doorstep. 
 
Saturday was the final practice of the week.  The media and fans had been told that Saturday would be the only day for interviews and autographs during our stay in Palo Alto, so the pool deck was packed.  Microphones, cameras, reporters, and hundreds of kids running around trying to get close to Dara Torres and Michael Phelps.  The problem is that Michael can only sign so many autographs and Dara can only give so many interviews at one time.  The result of the logjam is that autograph seekers started looking for other Olympians until the Dara and Michael line died down.  This is where I step in.  I happened to be one of the guys that facilitated the fans with a picture or an autograph while they waited for someone else. 
I also got interviewed - by one reporter.  During the interview another reporter walked up and interrupted the interview to ask the first reporter “Who is this?” “Mark Warkentin, he is our Olympic10K swimmer,” came the reply.  The second reporter stood there for a moment pondering whether it was worth it to stick around or not.  Fairly quickly he decided that it was not worth it and he backed away and tried to find someone else.  (I don't write this with any bitterness, I'm really just happy to be apart of this whole thing, but it was a rather awkward moment that I can now chuckle about.)
 
It’s been an eventful week up to this point.  Today, Sunday, is a day of rest and we don’t have any swim practices so I went to Menlo Park Presbyterian Church and enjoyed the service.  Next week begins another week of swimming and whatnot.
 
mdw

Post #2 From Palo Alto July 16th, 2008
 
This post has a bit more swimming info than the first post but I thought that the swimming readers would appreciate some specifics.  I also included the first post (from last week) below in case you didn’t get it.  attachment is of my golf team.
 
Sunday night the men’s team and the women’s team had separate dinners at the homes of USA Swimming supporters in the Palo Alto area.  When one team breaks up into two teams and embarks on separate adventures, there is always the question as to who is going to have a better experience.  In this case the men’s team dined with the family of Ted Knapp, assistant swim coach at Stanford, and had an excellent Mexican themed BBQ.  Good food, good people - no complaints.  The women (based upon the breakfast conversations Monday morning) had the enviable night though.  The shrimp cocktails and a live Mariachi band tilted the scale in their advantage.  While still being perfectly content...
Report from the pool.  Practices are exciting.  When I was at USC I remember practices being exciting, but it wasn’t like this training camp.  Competing against Michael Phelps and Erik Vendt and Larsen Jensen and Peter Vanderkaay is intense because I MUST be on top of my game every practice.  I can’t have a bad day because I’ll look like a novice swimmer.  (For example: Kick set on Monday 5x200 on 3:40 with 2,4,5 fast.  I went 2:58, 2:54, 2:52 on my fast ones - all fairly decent times.  Larsen, Erik and Michael were in the low 2:20’s.  That’s about 35 per 50 on a kicking set with a board.  The technical term, for those non-swimmers out there, to describe what that means is “stupid fast.&rdquo 
At the same time, the downside to exciting practices is that you eventually become emotionally drained.  When you have to be perfect to win a workout, you often find that you lose more than you win and there is nothing that hurts a swimmer’s confidence more than losing. 
 I think that my personality thrives in competitive environments for short periods of time, and then prefers a little bit of solitude.  This training camp is a perfect situation for my personality because I am going to get to compete with the best in the world for about 3 weeks.  Then, at the end of the training camp, when I am going to be a bit drained, I get a break from the competition and get to do practices alone for the last few weeks leading up to my race. 
Monday afternoon was a good practice.  The main set:
2x400 moderate on 4:40 went 4:28, 4:22
2x300 moderate/strong on 3:30 went 3:15, 3:12
2x200 strong on 2:20 went 2:07, 2:07
30 seconds rest
10x100 strong on 1:30 started at 1:01 moved down to 1:00 towards the end
  5x100 almost fast on 1:40 went 59, 58, 58, 59, 58
  5x100 fast on 2:00 58, 58, 58, 58, 57
Did the first part of the set with Erik, Pete and Larsen.  When we got to the last 2 sets of 5x100 Larsen and I were the only ones still swimming and we had a fairly good audience of swimmers and coaches watching us go head to head on fast 100’s.  It was simultaneously very painful and exciting to be doing all out 100’s next to America’s best distance swimmer (and holding my own) in front of an elite coaching staff.
Monday night we had a team meeting.  The highlight of the meeting was a 3 minute music video featuring an up-tempo rock song with the chorus line “How Many People Want to Kick Some A**?”  Let me explain: USA Swimming periodically makes music videos with inspiring race footage from the past 20 years of Olympics.  The clips are usually of Matt Biondi, Janet Evans and other legendary swimmers winning dramatic races at the Olympics.  Basically, for a swimming junkie like me, it’s really, really cool.  I almost always end up with blurry vision because the emotions of the Olympics become very real.  This particular music video did the trick again, emphasizing a few races from Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney, but culminating with the dramatic 4x200 Men’s Freestyle relay from Athens where underdog American squad out-touched the Ian Thorpe Australian team. 
After the video the men’s team had a separate meeting and Frank Busch gave a speech about gang mentality.  Frank’s point: there is tremendous power that a group of men, all working together for a cause, have at their disposal.  Use that power.  The combination of the music video and the motivational speech made me want to do something.  I had already swum 2 hard practices, but I felt like I was ready for my race right then.  How many days until the 21st of August?  5 weeks?  Can I wait that long?
 
We also elected captains:  Erik Vendt, Brenden Hansen and Jason Lesak. 
 
Tuesday afternoon practice was pretty good.  Coach John (SBSC coach) gave me this workout by myself because the rest of the mid-distance group was doing a lot of fluff and very little meat.  The entire set is on a 1:10 per 100 base.
800 swim moderate/strong went 8:48
3x1000 buoy only moderate went 11:18 on all
800 swim went 8:42
600 swim went 6:29
400 swim went 4:12
200 swim went 2:02
100 swim went 57
 
Tuesday night we did a bit of team bonding.  We went to miniature golf and broke up into teams of 4.  My Team: Jessica Hardy, Margaret Holtzer and David Walters.  There’s a six stroke limit on each hole, and our group pushed the limit pretty much every time.  Jessica Hardy is a great swimmer and an awful golfer.
I was pretty beat up after Monday and Tuesday, but I fought my way through a tough Wednesday morning practice with Larsen even if I didn’t feel top notch.  Here’s the set and my times (all swim):
3x400 on 5 went 4:19, 4:15, 4:13
3x100 on 1:20 went 1:02, 1:02, 1:01
1 min rest
2x400 on 5 went 4:17, 4:15
5x100 on 1:20 went 1:02, 1:01 remainder
1 min rest
1x400 on 5 went 4:15
7x100 on 1:20 went 1:03, 1:02, 1:02, 1:01, 1:01, 1:00, 57
This afternoon I was supposed to go to a nearby reservoir to do some “Open Water Training.”  Instead I elected to do a sprint quality set with the fastest swimmers in the world.  
Next post: BEAN in warm-up with the entire National Team coaching staff on deck.  Getting beat by A LOT on a sprint quality set.  Getting a post-training session massage.
 
mdw

This Ugandan child is most likely dead by now. Interviewed by Dennis Prager, author Ian Murray explains why in a radio interview, the audio of which follows.

From Hugh Hewitt we have the campaign in a nutshell:

John McCain is a given.  He's an American hero, a tough, ornery nationalist, a centrist maverick, strongly in support of victory in Iraq, hell on porkbarrel spending, not much on the social conservatism of the evangelicals but against abortion rights and gay marriage.  He's not, as he likes to joke, as "old as dirt and as scarred as Frankenstein," but he's been a force in national politics for nearly three decades, and there is no doubt about his character or his courage, though many conservatives doubt his attachment to issues that drive them.  He will fight for immigration reform, though this time with a much stronger set of border security measures.

The key: McCain will pursue victory in the war, deter our enemies because of his reputation for strength and defend the country via aggressive pursuit of terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever they are, and get most of the judicial nominees right.  He'll keep taxes where they are if he can.

Obama, on the other hand, is just now coming into focus for other than the already committed Obamians.  He had a stumbling, bumbling close to his primary campaign, and the opening weeks of his general campaign have been marked by flip flops and lurches left.

Here's the core of Obama:

He's hard left.

He wants the marginal rate on total federal taxes, including his social security tax hike, to immediately rise at least 57% on the highest earners.  Obama wants to raise taxes even in a weak economy, though this is a recipe not just for recession but worse.  Obama also wants to raise taxes on dividend income and to return the death tax to its highs of eight years ago.

Obama has proposed more than a trillion dollars in new spending.

Obama wants to cut and run from Iraq, with withdrawals of crucial forces beginning immediately upon his entry into office.  Obama has never met one on one with General Petraeus and has not been to Iraq in more than 900 days.  He is indifferent to the incredible progress made by our troops and the Iraqi Defense Forces and the Iraqi government in the last 18 months.

He supports the decision extending habeas rights to Gitmo detainees and he thinks the most liberal member of the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is a great model for future Supreme Court appointments.

Obama supports gay marriage, and opposes the California constitutional amendment to restore marriage to the definition overturned by a 4-3 vote of the California Supreme Court in May.  He supports abortion on demand, including partial birth abortion.

Obama has the slightest grasp on history, and routinely makes the sort of errors about basic facts that shock knowledgeable observers, like arguing the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit in Vienna was an example of the benefits of one-on-one diplomacy.

Obama is not a strong friend of Israel.  He spent 20 years in a church that was openly hostile to Israel, and he reversed himself on Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel after one day of criticism by Palestinians.

Obama is running a dirty campaign, and the serial assaults on John McCain's service, most visibly by Wesley Clark but by many others closely associated with Obama, is repulsive.  These are not hits by independent 527s but by close associates and advisors of Obama.

Michelle Obama's campaign rhetoric has been very divisive, is full of anger and resentment about "moving the bar," and not being proud of the country, and has led to her high negatives with the public.

Obama's close friends, mentors and associates are deeply troubling: the radical pastor Jeremiah Wright, the unrepentant terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, the convicted swindler Tony Rezko, and now a long line of "public housing developers" who took the money and failed to deliver on promises of safe and secure housing for Obama's poorest constituents.

Obama's judgment on key appointees is suspect, and he has had to fire the head of his vice presidential search team because of ties to the subprime mess and dump numerous "foreign policy advisors" for their hostility to Israel.

Obama, like the other leaders of the Triple D Democrats --the Don't Drill Democrats-- doesn't care about the price of gas, and refuses every initiative to increase supply and thus bring that price down.

Obama has broken his word on his commitment to public financing of the campaign and to meet John McCain in frequent debates.  Obama can't be trusted to keep even high-profile promises he made even only weeks ago.

Away from a teleprompter Obama stumbles and stutters and lapses into a closed circle of cliches that betrays almost no reading or curiosity about the world around him,and a massive ignorance of the war in which we find ourselves.  Even when he works from a prompter he says nothing at great length with wonder phrasing but zero substance.

His crowds are enormous and his coffers overflowing, the products of a highly energized and vitriolic left that expects --believes it will be owed, in fact-- the spoils of the election.  If Obama wins, the sharpest lurch left in American history is ahead of us.

Barack Obama is not only the most radical nominee of a major American political party in history, he is also the least prepared and the least informed.  He has spent less than four years inside of the United States Senate, and much of those years have been spent away from his job and away from the capital he wants to lead.  But he is protected and his campaign nurtured by a MSM that swooned for him long ago.  The prolonged and serious scrutiny of his background and his proposals will not be forthcoming in any consistent way between now and November.

That's where we are on the eve of the 4rth of July, 2008.