KIMbia Athletics

This is my last day in Dalian, and I must say I have really enjoyed it. It has been very relaxing, which is good, because I think if I had stayed in Beijing it would have worn me down. The excitement and anticipation that is built up in the village is great, but only in small doses. That is why it was good to get away so I can use that energy over the next week.

When we arrived in Dalian, we were pretty impressed with the setup. Right from the airport we were told to expect tight security, and it was, but did not affect us at all. Whenever we travel we have cop cars and SWAT surrounding the bus, with the street closed us just for us. Traffic is even stopped as we roll through intersections; that is pretty sweet. We can’t even leave the hotel to go run without someone on a bike or in a car following us.

Because of all the security, we are pretty much confined to the resort; it is not too bad because they have a lot for us to do. We have access to a swimming pool, bowling, ping-pong, golf simulator, movie theater, board games/cards and the Internet. Between all of that, running and eating, it keeps us occupied.

We went bowling the other night, and it was horrible—I bowled four games and broke 100 only once. Jorge Torres and I did a warm-up game, and he was trying to act like he had not been bowling in awhile; however, I knew from Ritz that the Torres brothers go bowling all the time. They even have their own bowling balls and shoes; he was trying to hustle me! Anyway, after I had bowled 87, and then backed that up with 84, I figured I could not get made fun any worse than I already had, so we got a little team competition going. I was with Torres, and we were against Galen Rupp and Brad Hudson. Well, I started lighting it up and bowled 140, but I wasted my good game on those guys, who only bowled a combined 110. My coach, Jerry Schumacher, got added to their team, and they were going to take the two best against Torres and me. I laid an egg and choked in that game and bowled only 96; it was a pathetic night. Torres lead the way for the night and bowled a high score of 164–not bad.

Schumacher and I have been playing a lot of ping-pong and I apparently suck at that too. No wait, I mean he is really good! We have played like 15 games, and I have not won one! The closest I have gotten is overtime, and still lost 22-20. He has this stupid spin serve so when I hit the ball it shoots off the right side table out of bounds. I cannot figure it out and I almost whipped the paddle across the room. As you can see we have been keeping each other company and entertained.

After all the working out and playing, we are hungry which is good, because there is never a shortage of food. USATF did a great thing this year and flew a chef over here to cook for us. We have a buffet for every meal, which is dangerous, and the food is great. I have had to try really hard going up for only one plate, and it doesn’t work all the time. It has been a little easier with Jerry around, because he gives me the evil eye, but that sometimes doesn’t even stop me! The chocolate chip peanut butter cookies always get me!

Oh yeah, that running thing. Running is good over here; the best USATF has ever set us up with, anyway. The golf course is there but you can’t really run on it because the ground is very uneven and it is hilly. Running on the cart path is not bad; combine that with the sea wall and it is a good mix of hills and flat. The best is going to a horse track, where they have rolled a 750m section of the infield so we can do loops on it. It is pretty flat, nice and soft, and actually goes by pretty fast. Then we also have the boardwalk, which is nice because the boards are soft and it goes a long way. I am not saying I would want to do base training (or marathon training, for that matter) here, but it is good enough for this time of year.

There you have it—USATF training camp. I am looking forward to getting back to the hustle and bustle of the Olympic village. I am feeling good and workouts are coming along great. I will be back in a couple of days!

5:15 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.—that’s the amount of time that we were at the opening ceremonies. Do I second-guess the decision to go? NO WAY!

The evening started out with Team USA arriving in the fencing hall for a message from President Bush and a team photo. It took a while for the president to arrive, so it was nice to get to mingle with the other teams. It was pretty impressive to see the amount of members that encompasses Team USA—I think we had close to 400 members walk, and that did not even include everyone. What was completely unexpected was the entire “Dream Team” arrived shortly before the president did; they were immediately swarmed with teammates wanting pictures. It was amazing to see how they took everything in stride and took pictures with whoever wanted one and there was time for.

Jorge Torres and I were pretty smooth with our attempts to get our pictures. Once President Bush arrived, every individual team had a designated spot that formed a horseshoe. President Bush was going to walk around and get a picture with each team. Basketball was first and we were like 15th, so as the president moved on, Torres and I moved on over to the Dream Team and were able to get our own individual pictures with these guys. It was awesome, and it is great to see that they just wanted to be a part of this special occasion just like everyone else. Once we got that important task out of the way we got our picture taken with the former and current President Bush. I can actually say that I got to shake both of their hands; what a great start to the night!

After about two hours Team USA was moved to the staging area across for the Bird’s Nest. This is where things get a little boring for the athletes; contrary to what most think, we do not get to see the show before the parade of nations. We were put in the upper deck of an arena, and it was so hot. We may have been the best dressed, but we also lost about three pounds from sweating. But everyone was in the same boat. It was a little sad that we did not get to see the show because of the rave reviews, but I have it recorded and that would not have replaced walking out into that stadium. I heard Greece was out in the stadium two hours before we walked in—that is crazy!! I have had people tell me that I got about half a second of airtime with they were zooming in on Tyson Gay. Awesome!

The rest of the night was realizing that I fulfilled my dream. At times it almost brought tears to my eyes, and for some it did. I was seriously acting like a little kid in the candy store running all over the place trying to get as much video and pictures as I could. I wanted to be able to keep this experience with me forever.

Funny little story: Dathan Ritzenhein did the opening ceremonies in Athens, so he knew once you are out on the field you can’t leave. That means no bathroom breaks unless you have a bottle handy or what Ritz brought—a rubber bag that you could pee into, and the pee would turn into a gel. Kudos to him for thinking ahead, and it came in handy for a bunch of the guys. (He had multiple bags.) The funniest of them all was when Abdi got us to form a wall, and he seriously went for about three minutes. When he was done the bag looked like it was going to burst—it was crazy how much came out. I wish I could put up a picture, but it is not allowed.

Obviously the lasting image for me will be the lighting of the torch, and it was great. We could not believe they took him around the entire stadium. I will leave you with this, though: Did this torch lighting top that of the ’92 Barcelona Games?

P.S. My roommate while over here is none other than the U.S. flag bearer Lopez Lomong!!!

Got to San Jose on August 5th and that was a lot of fun, mostly because we got about $5,000 worth of clothes from Nike and Polo. With how big this event is I cannot believe how smooth everything has gone. The USOC and the Chinese have done a wonderful job.

The following day, August 6, was the longest day ever. What a trip–12 hours on a plane that had the worst movie selection of all time. Talk about boring! Once we arrived in Beijing, though, everything was very quick. We made it from the airport to the village (and in our rooms) within two hours. And that was traveling with about 30+ people; just goes to show how good they are doing planning things.

Some of the guys got settled a little bit and then got a short run in; then dinner. (The food was great.) After that it went downhill fast. We had a meeting about village life, and I felt like I was back in school. I would be sitting there, and all of a sudden I would snap up because my arm slipped off the table that was supporting my head sleeping!!! Ah, jet lag!

I got great sleep last night and am ready to go do a workout today. Can’t wait for opening ceremonies tonight. I saw the stadium last night and it is going to be amazing!!! This is going to be a great experience. Hopefully I will be able to get pictures up tomorrow. I can’t believe this is finally here!

P.S. There is a thick haze in the sky, but it does not mess with breathing, at least not on easy days. I think we are going to be fine.

Is there anything Matt Tegenkamp can’t do? Here’s the first of what we hope will be many videos by him. Stockholm stadium footage, music selection and video editing by Matt; interview footage by Matt Taylor.

Beijing, here I come. I can’t believe that the time to leave for the Games is already here!! This season is different than most in that the travel has been broken up into short chunks. I really like it, and it almost feels like the season is just now getting under way. That is good, because now I will be gone for close to six weeks. That includes the Games and racing over in Europe after.

The time here in Madison has been well served since Stockholm. The weather here in Madison has cooperated (hot and humid), although not as bad as past years. I have a lot of snap in the legs and training has been going awesome. After Stockholm some might have thought that I was questioning my fitness, but I knew that Jerry had the plan for sharpening work once I got back to Madison; I was right! I wish I could go into specifics, but I can say Jerry summed up the last week of workouts as “the best I have ever had here in Madison.”

Hopefully that will translate into a big time performance in a couple of weeks. That’s the crazy thing about leaving so early for the competition–I feel like I should be racing in a couple of days, but really I have a couple of weeks to round into final form. I am very confident now and really looking forward to this opportunity.

I have some crazy travel coming up, so hopefully I will be able to get off another entry before opening ceremonies; if not, definitely after. Good luck to all the high school kids starting up their seasons, and keep the comments coming.

Teg

P.S. I was not at the Brewers game.

Q&A

What do you get to eat before regular training runs or track workouts? How long before do you eat and how much?

I have a pretty weak stomach so I eat pretty light on the day of a workout. Usually it is either Eggo waffles, oatmeal or eggs about four hours out. After that if I need anything else I just graze on crackers or pretzels until two hours out, and then I don’t eat anything. Training runs vary a little bit and usually I can eat 90 minutes to two hours before and be fine. I can pretty much eat anything before a training run.

If you are having problems you need to keep a log of what you are eating, and if you are hurting that day, mark it down. If your diet varies from day to day, you might be able to pinpoint what is causing it. It is good to treat your workout days like races, though, so you can figure out what food will work for you. That way you don’t have to worry about it on race day.

Could you explain the phases of training you have in a season leading up to this event? For example, you talk about base phase and sharpening work. How many weeks will this take place before, and what kind of stuff will it consist of?

Very general: Base phase started back in November and got serious in the middle of January. I kept the mileage up in the 100/week range until the first week of April. (Remember, these are Badger miles.) From that point on, mileage was up and down because of racing, but I tried to keep it around 80 until the middle of May. That allowed me to keep my aerobic system working, but still allowed recovery for the introduction of hard workouts.

From the middle of May until now I have been between 60 and 70 with heavy racing and workouts. Workouts from May to middle of July (Stockholm) were still trying to improve fitness and focus primarily on strength with little hits of speed. Over the last couple of weeks up until the Games will be the serious speed sessions. As you can see, it does not take very long to develop when you are fit. After the Games until the end of the season will be short maintenance workouts. Hope that gives you an idea and makes some sense.

Replacing light fixtures, painting doors/walls, moving furniture, cleaning—ah, the joys of selling a house. Since I got back from Stockholm, Michelle and I have been working hard to get the house ready. Not the ideal time, but it was important that we get the house up and sold so the transition to Portland in the fall is easier.

With all that work I have not even had a chance to really reflect on the race at Stockholm, so here it is. I was happy with the race overall! My only problem is that I am having a hard time getting comfortable in the middle of the race and just going with the flow. I feel like I am pressing the entire race, and that is never going to lead to fast times. Luckily the race was on the slow side and I was able to have some pop left in my legs at the end. With 500m to go, Mottram dropped the hammer and never looked back. To be honest I was not really paying attention to just one person in the race at that time, because I thought if anyone made a move the pack would go with it. Unfortunately, Mottram put close to 2 seconds on us in just 200m. With 350m left I was ready to go but as I started to move to the outside, I noticed Songok was already on my shoulder, and I was boxed in. It stayed that way until 70m to go, and finally a gap opened and I was able to unleash. I really moved well in the last 100 and that made me very happy with the race overall.

When I talked with Jerry about the race, he reminded me of the sharpening work that is still to come. I never really thought about it, but up to this point we have done everything at 61-62 pace, and that makes it really hard to settle into a race. Now over the next couple of weeks adding in a bunch of mile race pace work should make it easier to settle in to the slower races. I mean, if I do a bunch of repeats at 56-57 pace, and I need to race a 62 pace it should feel easier. At least in my head it does!

I am confident that our timing leading up to the Games is going to be perfect. I will be providing regular updates over the next few weeks, so check back and leave me some comments.

Speaking of which, answers to some earlier comments:

Does your wife ever travel with you to your meets overseas? Do you ever take a full day off of running or do cross training? What would be your ideal in how often you’d be running a race during the middle of a season?

Much to Michelle’s displeasure, she does not get to travel with me overseas. She was busy with grad school and now she is finishing up her dietetic internship, so that limits her ability to travel. She does, however, travel to some of the domestic events. And she will be going to Beijing, which is awesome.

I do take full days off, and they are not scheduled. I just read my body and take them when I need them. I do not do anything training related on those days.

I always want to race as often as possible in the summer. I do realize, though, that the races take a lot out of us and recovery is important. At least once a week for shorter races and every 10-14 days for 5Ks would be awesome.

I was curious as to where you train while in Europe. I mean, do you just go run on the streets around where you are staying when you are not on the track, or do you try to find trails when possible? When you are doing track work, are you able to use the track you will be racing on, or do you find other tracks in the area?

We usually decide in the spring where our base is going to be for the summer. I have been in Berlin, Teddington (London) and Hulst (Holland) in the past, and all have been great. We usually are able to find soft surfaces, which is always nice. At the meets it depends on the city—usually there are trails to run, but everyone once in a while it is city streets. Luckily we are only running 5 miles most days. The meet always provides a practice track to do stuff on, and we are never allowed to go on the competition track before the meet.

Matt Tegenkamp finished 4th in the 3,000m at today’s DN Galan meet in Stockholm, Sweden. Matt ran 7:40.75 behind Craig Mottram (7:37.73), Isaac Songok (7:38.97) and Daham Najim Bashir (7:39.45). (When he ran for Kenya instead of Qatar, Bashir was known as David Nyaga.)

As he describes below, Matt will now return home for almost two weeks before leaving for Beijing.

Results are here.

Things have been going very well since the Trials. That is a pretty easy statement to make considering what the weeks since Pre were like. Leading up to the Trials I only missed one workout, so I was not losing fitness, it just added a lot more stress (dealing with aches and pains) to an already stressful event. However, I was able to get 100% the week leading up to the Trials–I knew that I had put in plenty of work in the months leading up to the all-important Trials and was ready to go. Everyone knows what happened at the Trials, and I want to forget about that and move on!

Since the Trials Jerry has started the sharpening process, and I am responding very quickly. Part of that process was finding a 1500. It was supposed to be in Europe, but for a lot of reasons it did not work out. This year is a little crazy, and there were not quality 1500s when we needed them. Unfortunately, meet directors over in Europe follow the motto “What have you done for me lately?” I have not run a fast 1500 (or a fast time in any event for that matter) this year. That really limited my chances of getting into a good field. I was on the wait list for some but it is a long way to travel without having the race set in stone.

Luckily for us, our group is very strong and capable of getting in what we needed right in Madison. The one-event meet was an awesome experience. It worked out so much better than we could have planned for. It was perfect weather, an awesome crowd and no stress!! It was pretty cool talking to people after and they would be like, “I found out 30 minutes ago this was going on, so I hopped in the car and rushed down here.” It is great to know we have that support in our community and we are really going to miss it. Portland is going to be a great opportunity and we are looking forward to it, but we will not forget what Madison has done for us!

The 1500 in Madison was a great send-off for Europe. I am in Stockholm now getting ready for a 3k tomorrow. It is a great field, and ‘m really looking forward to competing. I am also glad that I am running early (12:15 CDT) so I can watch the rest of the meet. It is good to see a field of this quality leading up to the Olympics. I will need this because the Olympic 5000 is so stacked and going to be way harder than last year. Plus, I have a feeling that the runners are not going to let it come to a kick like it did last year, as we know how that will turn out!

This will be a one-and-done trip for me, so I better make it worth it. Madison will be good prep leading up to my departure for the Games–it will be hot and humid! I love that weather–that is what I grew up in and have always run well in. Also, I get to be with my wife, sleep in my own bed and relax with the dogs. I will get 12 days in Madison, and then head off to Beijing. Luckily, I get to go to the Opening Ceremonies, which is going to be awesome. I can’t wait, and I am very excited in my training progression.

Leave a comment for me so I know what I should be talking about!! More in the weeks to come.

The soon-to-be-ex men from Madison start the first part of their European tour, and as you can see from these photos, they are ready to roll, and then some.

Chris Solinsky opens tomorrow with a 5,000m in Heusden, Belgium. Matt Tegenkamp follows that up with a 3,000m in Stockholm, Sweden on Tuesday the 22nd. Tim Nelson and Sean Quigley have a 3,000m of their own on te 26th in Oordegem, Belgium.

As he has during past European outings, Teg will be filing periodic dispatches. Curious about something? Use the e-mail friendly version of askteg [AT] kimbia [DOT] net to send our latest Olympian your questions.

Wow, we knew Matt T. was good, but last night he outdid himself, winning every event at a meet in Madison, Wisconsin. Okay, so the meet had one event, a 1500m, but still.

In a field comprised of Matt, Chris Solinsky, Sean Quigley and Jonathon Riley, Matt held off a last-lap challenge from Jonathon to win in 3:37.94, the fastest 1500m ever run in Wisconsin. Jonathan (3:39.02), Chris (3:40.67) and Sean (3:43.46) followed, with Jonathon and Chris also under the old state record of 3:42.63.

Matt leaves for Europe on Thursday for a few larger meets than last night’s, then will return to Madison before heading off to Beijing.

You can read Madison publications’ reports on last night here and here. Video is available here, for now at least, by choosing the race video from among the options at the top right of the page.