Conditions were pretty tough for Soelden which says a lot, cause its normally pretty tough already!  It was snowing and raining a bit a couple days before the race, so the conditions were less than great, but they broke through a tiny bit.

Skiing was ok for me.  It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but it’s good to get back up to speed, and I felt really comfortable, just not super fast.

I’m looking forward to some relaxing and recharging in Maui!  I will be back on snow the 14th in Colorado!  and then we race in Aspen! yay.

I love races on home turf!

Each was a gold medalist in track and field. Each had earned high rank in the British sporting scene. All had played significant roles in London’s 2012 campaign — Coe, of course, chairman of the 2012 bid committee.

The conversation in the room turned to this fascinating question: Would you swap that gold medal for winning the Games?

Unhesitatingly, the answer from each came back: yes.

“We’re on track. We’re on budget,” Coe said Thursday in a conference call with reporters in advance of Saturday’s 1,000-day countdown to the start of the 2012 Summer Games in London.

“The venues are taking shape … there is nothing that we should have done that we haven’t done,” Coe, chairman of the London 2012 organizing committee since that 2005 vote, added Thursday on the call. “We are absolutely where we want to be.”

Of course, there are bound to be stumbles along the way — that’s the lot of any organizing committee — but if the London 2012 crew is where it wants to be, and they are, there’s sound reason for that.

It’s leadership and values.

This is by no means intended to diminish the contributions of the government, the 23 domestic sponsors signed to date, the thousands of workers who are even now building Olympic Stadium and the signature aquatics venue that are re-shaping east London — the changes on the ground manifestly obvious from the air on the traditional glide path down and onto the runway at Heathrow.

Rather, this is a recognition of the common denominator among all those contributions and the buy-in that has elevated 2012 from a happening in London alone to a national undertaking.

It’s all about leadership and values.

Among all major sports enterprises, only the Olympic movement is premised on a series of values. It is not in business to make money. Indeed, that very phrasing illustrates the shortcomings of language. It’s not really in business.

There are, of course, numerous business aspects to the Olympic movement but the money is, in theory, a means to an end — to the promotion of values.

Coe is living proof of the import of such values.

Track and field, as he has said many times over, changed his life — from the time he first confronted those values in earnest, when he was what we in the United States would call middle school.

The London bid was, indeed the London organizing committee is, premised on the notion of precisely that — that sport not only could but can change the lives of young people.

Not make them perfect, or saints, or immune to mistake — not kids and not Coe, now or then.

Instead, the idea has simply been to offer to young people both a measure of hope and the vision of a better way in a world marked with an unprecedented array of choices and complexities.

Many senior figures within international sports could be speaking out now about such values might help light the path to that better way — particularly amid the economic crunch of these past few months, the business climate the world over exacerbated by a far different sense of individually oriented values.

Intriguingly, Coe is one of the very few speaking out.

To be clear, he has not been doing so from some moral soapbox. He has not been preachy. Nor has he been vainglorious or egotistical or driven by the pursuit of another office within international sport — though his name has naturally surfaced when talk turns to the IOC’s next presidential election, in 2013.

There’s a lot that would have to happen for Coe to challenge seriously for the presidency, much less win. For one, the 2012 Games have to be great. For another, he would have to become an IOC member, which he currently is not.

Even so, the reason his name keeps coming up in recent months, and with increasing frequency, is that because, in significant measure, Coe gets the values thing. And that’s why he’s speaking out. It’s the right thing to do.

At an international sportswriters’ convention this spring in Milan, he said the time had come to affirm the “ageless and timeless” values on which the Olympics rest, defining them as “fairness, respect, fair play, courage, determination and, of course, equality.”

On a return trip to Singapore this past July, he told Reuters that Olympic values “are the very antithesis of the things that have got us to this position now,” a reference to the global economic challenge, adding, “I don’t believe there has ever been a better moment for the Olympic movement to drive those values.”

In Copenhagen earlier this month, at the IOC congress, he said, “Throughout history, great political, technological or artistic movement has come out of periods of great adversity: the United Nations from World War II, satellite technology from the Cold War, great jazz from the Great Depression.

“We meet today in another time of adversity,” another reference to the financial collapse. “But in that adversity lies opportunity. The Olympic movement has a once-in-a-generation opportunity, I would say a responsibility, to better define and imbed its timeless values.”

On the phone Thursday, he said, “We rattle off values … do we ever get behind them?”

In Copenhagen and again on Thursday, he told the story of a schoolboy he encountered last month who was standing up to others who were bullying a classmate. That, Coe said, is courage.

That’s not some abstract talk about “values.” That’s living proof, and that’s why — again, for those tempted to dismiss talk of values as naive or abstract  — it’s why London 2012 was able to nail down its top tier of sponsors even before the Beijing Games last year, why it already has raised roughly $900 million in sponsorships, the target $1.1 billion eminently achievable with 1,002 days to go.

Of course businesses want in — because they want themselves to be identified with a proposition that, rooted in values, adds value.

“We have to understand,” Coe said Thursday, “what those values mean and how we can help them live and breathe within the Olympic movement. That is a really essential ingredient for an organizing committee to understand and enshrine in the way it delivers the Games.”

It is, indeed.

And it’s why London 2012 is on track.

–

Meanwhile:

The U.S. Olympic Committee on Thursday announced the make-up of the nine-member search committee charged with finding a new chief executive.

It includes representatives of various USOC constituencies. Predictably. This is the USOC way.
Nine people is way too many. A working group of three to five could get this done. Simply put, it’s unreasonable to expect consensus from nine people around anything – in this case a search, and more so this particular search, because it is, among other matters, so politically charged.

Some further observations:

The USOC is in a bind – of its own doing, let’s be clear. It has engaged a search firm because of the obvious – the braying from any number of stakeholders that would predictably follow what should happen here, the short-listing of the few truly qualified candidates and the picking of one of them.

Two, the search had better go quickly. Which, odds are, it won’t. There’s supposed to be a new CEO by the end of the year. It’s nine weeks from next Monday until 2010. And, of course, one of those weeks includes Thanksgiving and the other Christmas.

Three, and this isn’t in the press release, the USOC won’t pay the search firm, Spencer Stuart, until 18 months after the chief executive is in place. Even then, payment — not just the when but the amount — will be at the USOC’s discretion, USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky said.

In the typical case, a search such as this one might well run to $200,000, perhaps even north of that. If you were, say, at U.S. Speedskating, suddenly facing the loss of $300,000 in sponsorship money because of a bank failure, wouldn’t you be keen to keep tabs on how much this search will end up costing?

–

According to an Associated Press report, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, speaking at the opening of a gym and cultural center in Rio de Janeiro, said Wednesday of his expectations for the performance of the nation’s athletes at the Rio 2016 Summer Games, “Brazil won’t host the Olympics [and allow] the gringos to come here and win our medals.”

Earlier this year, Lula had said of the global economic downturn, “It is a crisis caused and encouraged by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything, but are now showing that they know nothing.”

Please, sir, Mr. President: are these sorts of racially tinged comments truly in keeping with the aspirational ideals the Olympic movement seeks to advance?

Imagine, if you will, the outcry were President Obama to make such statements.

If there’s thus a double standard at issue here, one final question — is that really OK?

So the season is underway. We had our first World Cup GS race in Soelden, Austria last week and the season is off to a start. As far as my skiing went, it was ok. I got out of the start strong and had a good top section but then I got a bit lost half way down and started skiing way to round and over thinking it so I had no speed coming onto the flats. I have to be happy with it though because I had not started in a GS race in two years. Since the Lienz world cup that ended GS skiing pretty fast. So I am happy with finishing and getting that out of my head but I am ready for the next one. Too bad its not till Aspen. But I have some work to do. I need to start training more like I race. Strip down to the downhill suit and get after it on my first two training runs. Maybe work on my inspections a bit more. I always enjoy having the first race down, that way you know how you stand. It can be a bit nerve racking though when you are not on your top form. But just another little thing in the back of your mind to get you down the hill. All in all, the training and racing in Switzerland and Austria went great.

I am home in Jackson now enjoying some serious weather. It’s freezing cold one minute and dumping with snow the next to beautiful blue sky. I am only home for a few days but it might be my last for the year so I am happy to just lay around eating and hanging out with family and friends. As we speak I am having a food baby on the couch. My father cooked up a great meal and now I can’t move. It’s nice to get away from all the hype for a few days and just relax. Let the body detox and release and let your mind do something other than sleep ski eat train ski sleep eat. We are headed to Germany for some indoor skiing and then up to Finland for the Slalom race on my Birthday! Oh man I’m getting old. I better get on it! he he Enjoy the new snow wherever you are!!!!!!!!

On a Saturday night, two weeks ago, at the Race for Tara 3, I awoke with a start from a bad dream and I couldn’t get back to sleep.  In the dream (bear with me here, ‘cuz I hate hearing about people’s dreams just as much as you do) I was at the upcoming Mt Hood Rally with my dandy co-driver, Adam Craig.  And things were going well.  Adam had improved his pacenote reading and we were driving faster than ever, and enjoying a level of teamwork unachieved at earlier events.  With better communication, our level of commitment was rising, as our stage times were dropping.  More thumbs up in the pits, more stage wins, more groupies hanging out at the AC/CD service area (hey, it’s MY dream, don’t ruin it).  And then something happened.  Adam missed a note and we flew off the road.  I awoke before we hit the ground.  My heart was racing.  And I couldn’t sleep for a couple of hours as I realized that I was anxious about Mt Hood.

(Editor’s note - I saved my rally anxiety dreams for the night before the actual race; mine were more along the lines of “we’re not fast enough, but why, is it a turbo issue?” - AC)

Everything intact at the Gilhouley start.

I wasn’t anxious because of the dream; I dream about all sorts of stupid sh*t that doesn’t come true.  But the dream did awake me to the fact that the better we became as a team, and the fewer mistakes we made, the more exposed we would be to risk when the mistakes were made.  The more I trusted him, the more committed I became; and the more lucky/skilled I’d need to be to keep us on the road.  For the first time since our first rally 3 years ago, I was nervous and losing sleep.  At least until I got outta bed at 3:30 a.m. and ate Adam’s entire tub of KozyShack pudding.

Yes, we’re dejected. But at least the WOT is right side up.

This year, the Mt Hood Rally would be a one-day event, with two pass recce (i.e., “reconnaissance”) on Friday afternoon.  Adam and I had seen most of the roads here before in earlier rallies, but this would be our first time racing on our own pacenotes. Pacenotes are a shorthand way of describing corners and how quickly they can be driven.  The driver dictates them on the first pass of “recce” and the co-driver reads them back on the second pass, making adjustments along the way.  This would be a typical pacenote:

R5>4offcam 70 L6nc 50 L5vlg 100 foc 50–!R4oc/exp

Which reads: “Right five (approximately 5th gear) tightens to 4 off camber, 70meters (straight), Left Six do not cut, 50meters, Very Long Left Five, 100, flat(throttle) over crest 50meters into Caution! Right four over crest (exposure)”

This represents about 1/3 of a mile of pretty open gravel road, which you would cover in about 15-25 seconds.

The co-driver is responsible for feeding these instructions to the driver one or two corners ahead of where you’re roosting.  If reading all of that in 20 seconds with perfect timing sounds easy, try it while riding a rollercoaster — a rollercoaster that is following a track that doesn’t exist until you describe it, just as you need it.

Since AC and I are getting better at this rally thing, we had the highest speed factor of all the NW based teams at the event, and would be “first on the road,” racing all the stages with no fresh tracks to follow.  With cleared skies and drying mud on Saturday, we were excited to leave some ditch-to-ditch tracks that would surely earn the respect of the racers following us.

Stage 1 of 7 was Gilhouley, the shortest, slipperiest, and most technical stage of the day.  We lined up to the start board, engaged the launch control, and blazed away.  First car on the road!  Hell yeah!  After a couple Km feeling around for grip, we started carrying the mail, as Adam was reading the notes at just the right moment, and having the notes in our own words and our own descriptions made them very easy to absorb. By stage end, we’d put 6 seconds into second place (Bend’s Brian Svedin) and were only 2 seconds off of the stage record held by Carl Jardevall since 2004.  High-fives.  And some talking, and then another High-five!  That was fantastic!  With the second pass of all the stages coming in the afternoon, the track was sure to get quicker and it looked like we’d be battling with the NW’s best for stage records.  Kick-ass.

Stage 2 was the Road 17 Stage and was another great one.  After a Km of tarmac, it turned to flowy 4th and 5th gear corners with beautiful foliage and even more beautiful roads.  AC fell behind a second or two once, but was otherwise spot-on and we were going places with haste.  About half way through we were driving through a 150 meter straight, right 5 tightens to 4 into a left 4.  Those 150 meters felt awesome, as we were deep into 5th gear and having a great time.  And then Adam was about 2 seconds’ late calling out the “tightens to 4″ bit.  At first glance, it looked like this would be another one of the close call “moments” that we usually have once or twice a rally. We were overcommitted by about 20mph, but we were sideways (the best way to scrub speed and the safest way to drive on loose surfaces - no, really!) and I thought we’d just bump the rear tire.  Maybe de-bead the left rear tire, maybe do a little wall ride on a leafy berm, and have a crappy line into the following corner.

We’re OK. The WOT, not so much.

Turns out the outside of the corner was covered in clay and wet leaves, and we caught more of the berm than we hoped.  And we somehow (my video camera wasn’t rolling, or running, so we don’t know how exactly) we tomahawked the crap out of the Wheels of Teal.

AC and I just tried to do a CSI recreation of the crash on my kitchen table, and still are unsure of the motions involved.  The end result was us, and what used to be a very nice little car, going trunk first down the road at 50mph.  On our roof.  I was still thinking about what gear I’d need for the upcoming left turn when I realized that we were upside down and backwards.

When we came to a stop, AC tried to show how strong he was by opening his door.  Since the car was in the middle of the road on its passenger side, this proved difficult, and he began freaking out.  Just a little bit, and mind you, the ground was only 14″ from his head and there were no windows anymore.  We crawled through my door and ran up the road to put out our triangles and “O.K.” sign so that others would continue on but miss our car.  Between cars racing by, we spent the next 30 minutes trying in vain to jack and lever the car back on its feet with some big branches.  At one point, I saw AC running towards me with a massive 2 foot by 1.5 foot round of wood under his arm.  I was impressed that his shock and adrenaline made a bike racer able to carry around a giant piece of wood as if it were a down pillow.  Then we tried to use it as a fulcrum and it crumbled into a feathery mess.  And then I was just as impressed that his shock and adrenaline had made him (a Mainer!) think that that 15 ounce round of wood would make a good fulcrum.  Anyways, we had a pretty good time and had a lot of laughs trying to get our battered car back into the race.  We didn’t, of course.  It took 5 men to turn it over (or 3 men and 2 bike racers) when the sweep crew caught up to us.  They towed us off the road and one of them patted me on the back while the other stuck a “You’ve been Swept!” sticker on one of the two remaining windows.

Daylight reveals a bit of work ahead…

So our race was over, and after a couple of hours of day-salvaging, by riding around in the hills on our TCX cross bikes, we loaded up what was left of the WOT and headed home.  Life’s never easy for the Wheels of Teal, but this summer’s been particularly rough.  Carl’s shopping list this week includes:   roof, right rear quarter panel, right doors, front, rear, and side glass, a fender, a bumper, some frame straightening, a strut, roof vent, paint, decals, beer, razors and salad dressing.

Good thing we’ve got our day jobs.

Thanks for coming along,

Carl Decker

Team AC/CD

Giant Team 4 Fun

In the meantime:

1. U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Larry Probst met Tuesday at Electronic Arts headquarters near San Francisco with a number of U.S. sports federation leaders, the meeting not exactly secret but not exactly publicized, either. Probst made it abundantly clear he intends to stay in the post.

He also spent a fair amount of the meeting, which started at 9 Tuesday morning and went for a little more than two hours, listening to those on hand relay their observations about what’s right and what’s not with the USOC.

The meeting produced a positive vibe — the sort of thing Probst probably should have done a year ago, when he took over the chairmanship from Peter Ueberroth, whose term expired.

Even so, the meeting Tuesday also raised a number of questions. Among them: the topic that perhaps emerged as the meeting’s primary focus, the new CEO — whoever he or she turns out to be. Stephanie Streeter, the acting chief executive, has announced her intent to depart.

Probst has detailed a list of qualifications for the CEO job. It includes a lot of travel on behalf of the USOC.

Whoever the next CEO is and however much he or she travels — that’s all well and good. But reality will remain that the chief executive will be seen in international circles as the “secretary general” of the USOC and thus of secondary importance to the “president.” Who is, given USOC nomenclature, the board chairman — who is of course now Probst.

Probst has declared that he’s now all in. Is he?

2. A retired Chinese sports minister says in a recently released memoir that Chinese officials promised to support Jacques Rogge’s 2001 bid to head the International Olympic Committee in exchange for European backing for Beijing’s bid for the 2008 Summer Games, also decided in 2001.

The IOC denies there was a deal.

An Associated Press account says Yuan Weimin wrote in the memoir that while there was no deal in writing, multiple meetings yielded a mutual understanding of support if Rogge won the election.

“The Beijing Olympic bid committee decided on a tactic of strategic alliance-making. We would link Chinese support for Rogge in exchange for European committee members’ support for Beijing,” Yuan said in his memoir, according to AP. “Of course, we also made some promises to link up with some of our friends in supporting Rogge. This tactic was our overall strategy.”

Reaction: Why this memoir, and why now?

It adds — what? It was undeniably Rogge’s time in 2001, just as it was Beijing’s. Both he and Beijing were clearly going to win, and both did, convincingly.

Also this: The bid city election came first, on July 13, 2001. The presidential election, at the same IOC assembly in Moscow, followed three days later, on July 16. Maybe something has been lost in translation — but just wondering if there isn’t a cart-before-the-horse issue? How could there have been a deal to swing support to Beijing upon the election of Rogge if the election of Rogge came after the vote for the 2008 city?

3. The upswing in violence in Rio de Janeiro since the city’s election to play host to the 2016 Summer Games, including the downing by drug gangsters of a police helicopter, has drawn front-page headlines.

In a column shortly before the IOC vote, I wrote at length about the security issue in Rio, citing a provocative story by Jon Lee Anderson in the New Yorker magazine.

Anderson has written a follow-up. It is worth reading.

4. It is melancholy, indeed, that Jack Poole, who helped lead Vancouver’s bid for the 2010 Games, has passed away just weeks before those Games open. Poole, 76, died last Friday from pancreatic cancer.

5. It is all the more melancholy that he died just hours after the Olympic flame was lit in ancient Olympia. The flame is due to arrive Friday on Canada’s West Coast. It will travel back across and through most of the rest of Canada before arrival Feb. 12 at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Games.

6. The IOC was granted observer status last week at the United Nations. It’s a significant step. Yet it drew comparatively little press coverage. You wonder why.

USOC international relations efforts helped the IOC gain such status. Yet that, too, drew comparatively little press coverage. Again, you wonder why.

7. Also worth reading: Harvey Schiller’s latest blog entry about Chicago’s unsuccessful 2016 bid.

8. Chinese swim coach Zhou Ming, supposedly banned for life after doping-related scandals in the 1990s, was seen on deck at the recent Chinese national games, coaching swimmers, according to an account that could be found, for instance, on the Swimming World web site, photos included.

As the story points out — and as anti-doping officials presumably must now address — what, precisely, does it mean to be banned for life yet show up on deck?

9. Swim star Dara Torres on the mend from knee surgery, on Twitter: “Bored. My doc’s PA gave me 1st season of Gossip Girl…can’t believe I just admitted I”m going to watch this.”

10. Finally, this, too, from Twitter: “@London2012team: Oct 31 will be 1000 days until the London 2012 Games. What do you want to have achieved 1000 days from now?”

However, realizing that you were wrong isn’t enough when your choices caused others pain. When someone is convicted of a crime, in addition to being removed from society, as a condition of their return they sometimes are on house arrest or have community service and a parole officer to answer too. Some never get all the their rights back. Maybe they can’t vote or live within a certain distance from children. Bottom line is after time served they don’t just slink back into society unnoticed.

I feel this is the same way offenders of the sports world should have to pay retribution. At this time there is nothing in place to make an athlete do any community service after having served a suspension.

Last week, I got a chance to check out a program Justin Gatlin voluntarily created with USATF where he is going around speaking openly about his experience. I am elated that the first building block is in place to make my idea a reality! Hopefully USADA will get on board in turning this into something more concrete for all Olympic sports.

The main question people ponder when they hear about someone’s doping violation is whether or not the offender meant to do it. They listen to the gossip, rumors and news and try to decide for themselves how guilty the person is in their eyes.

The reality is that intentional or unintentional becomes irrelevant once you have tested positive because the policy of USADA is that your are responsible for what enters your body, PERIOD.

The main point of accountability is key. Regardless of whether you meant to or not, when you think of all the people affected by your positive test, at the bear minimum you feel responsible for being naive if nothing else.

Here are a few of the messages I took away from the event:

* A strong support system is key, especially at a young age when you forced to grow up quickly. We have people turning into professionals as early as 18 years old. Though that is what the government recognizes as an adult, you are hardly ready to make the decisions that come along with making hundreds of thousands of dollars.

* One moment can forever be a part of your past, present and future. It is important to consider this every time you make a decision. As a doping offender there will always be skeptics discounting your performance creating a cloud you can’t get out from under.

* It is incredibly humbling to go from the top to rock bottom, but as long as you have the will you can find the strength to start climbing again learning a lot about yourself along the way.

* No matter your intentions, you have to be ready to except responsibility for what appear to be your actions. My dad often said it like this, “Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are.”

*Character is built day by day and can take you far even when you have a damaging blow. It is important to be the best you you can be daily so that even if you stumble ALL will not loose faith in you as a person.

*Knowledge is power. Ignorance is not an excuse for any mistake you make. Educating yourself is priceless. If you don’t know something pick up a book or ask.
Surround yourself with the right people you can trust to help you find the right information and make your own decision.

It is my hope that in the days to come, instead of criticizing Justin, those who love this sport will take some vulnerable athlete either current or up-and-coming and show them that there is a lesson to be learned from Justin’s experience.

Last week, I finally got a visit from the USADA man. I can’t remember what his name is so I’ll just call him Jeff. The doorbell rang at 7:15 in the morning and I was still sleeping. The hour that I pick for a random visit is from 6:00-7:00AM so I know I’ll be there…sleeping. My girlfriend, Suzanne, was the first one to the door. She just went through a recent surgery, so she was loopy on pain meds and she had a catheter strapped to her leg. We had spent so much time discussing USADA and the possibility of a “filing failure” that she couldn’t contain her excitement that the USADA man showed up and I was actually there. I heard from a distance in her excited, yet scratchy tone “Oh my god, he’s here. The USADA man is here. I can’t believe it. Go pee in the cup!” she said as she climbed back into bed.

In my stupor, I got up to greet Jeff. Lance Armstrong just recently moved into the neighborhood so I wanted to say, “You’re at the wrong house. Lance is about 10 blocks that way.” But I held my tongue and introduced Jeff to the bathroom. I’ve been tested many times in my career so I wasn’t surprised by any of the procedures. Jeff was very professional and business like. I made sure all the numbers on the bottles matched up. I was grateful that we were doing this in the morning because I had a full bladder. If I would have relieved myself before he got there it could have been hours before I could work up another sample.

Then, it was time to pee. Jeff said, “Lift up your shirt to above your belly button, and pull your pants down so that I can see the urine come out of your penis.” Again, this was no surprise. This is always the procedure. But this time, I locked up. I got the dreaded stage fright. I held the cup out ready to receive my sample. I was holding my pants down and my shirt up. Jeff was silent…watching; and there was no pee. I called on my years of using sports psych to help me. I tried to relax, get in the zone, breathe; no pee. The more I tried to relax the more I tightened up. Then Jeff spoke. “Do you want me to run some water?” As if he had seen this a thousand times before. “Yes, please.” I knew I could do it. “Just relax,” I said to myself. Then, I figured it out. I pretended I was the only one there and I pulled the cup to the side to look at the water like I do every morning. I relaxed, and the urine flowed like the waters of the Colorado River. I was relieved.

We wrapped things up and I sent Jeff away with my pee sample. It was on the start of its journey through rigorous testing procedures to confirm that, yes, I am, and always have been, a clean, drug-free athlete. Jeff, and many like him are part of an army of scientists on a mission to ensure clean and fair competition. I may not like the 7:00am visits or the whereabouts filings, but I know, for the moment, it has to be done.

Competing at Ironman Kona first entered his mind in February of this year.

Universal Sports president Carlos Silva ran his first two marathons in 2008 – Boston and New York - and he also finished a half-marathon and five triathlons during that time. In reality though, he wasn’t sure that doing Kona 2009 was a realistic goal.

“I sorta started training for it but honestly, I wasn’t really sure that I’d do it,” Silva said recently. “And, I also wasn’t sure that I wanted to do it. I started doing some longer runs and longer rides and I started thinking, ‘Do I really want to go that far?’”

Eight months and thousands of miles later, Silva turned that far-fetched thought into a reality.

A few weeks ago, Silva competed in the world’s most famous triathlon, Ironman Kona. His time was 13:07:08 – more than respectable for someone competing in his first Ironman-distance race. And, although that initial seed was planted in February, Silva realized in June that he could actually finish what would become the longest workout of his life.

“I did an Olympic-distance tri in the beginning of June [in Washington, D.C.],” he said. “I kinda had it in my brain that I was gonna do Kona at that point. Olympic distance is not short. I had a really good run, I think I ran a 7:08 pace. It was a really fast run for a 10k for me. I just decided that I felt good and I could step it up. I think the run at that race really showed me that I could push hard. I said, ‘You know, I can do this.’

“That was the moment where I really started putting in longer [training] weekends. That’s when I said, ‘I’ll do it,’ and I started training harder for it.”

However, it wasn’t as if Silva went from running two marathons and a handful of multisport races to doing Kona. He’s been a runner since winning cross-country races as a seventh grader, and started biking 10 years ago. He started swimming about four years ago, the same year he began doing sprint and Olympic triathlons.

His breakout year, however, was 2008. Finishing two marathons – he did New York in 3:21:46 - one half-marathon and five triathlons (including a 70.3, half-Ironman race) gave him the confidence that he could keep climbing the ladder of endurance races. Following his performance in New York – which left him “really sore for three solid days” – Silva got right back to training.

The now 45-year-old Silva said he worked out for all but two days between New York and Kona, minus his taper that came two weeks before the big race on Oct. 10. They weren’t your basic 10- or 15-mile runs, either. Nor were they a typical 50-mile bike ride.

“Post-New York my longest run was probably 15 miles, but my hardest run was actually a 14-mile run from 500 feet to 3,500 feet up Wintergreen Mountain [in Virginia],” Silva said. “Which is usually a climb I do on my bike, but I decided that it would be painful and that I needed to spend two hours in pain because it’s pretty much uphill the whole way. It was a 2-hour, 15-minute run. It wasn’t fast, but I knew that grinding like that would feel a lot like it would in Kona. And it was a hot day, it was the summertime. It was one of my best mental training days.

“My longest ride was probably around 85 miles, and it was also on a hot August day down on the beach. It was windy; I tried as close as I could to simulate Kona. I started at Ocean City [Md.] and I rode to Delaware on the road, down and back. At the end of that ride, I also transitioned with my car in the parking lot into my running gear and ran nine miles. I tried to simulate feeling tired and having to do another leg a couple of different times.

“And the next day I went out and rode another 70 miles. I wanted my body to work when it was tired because I knew that’s what it would be like when I was over there [in Hawaii].”

Silva normally rides his bike to Universal Sports’ East Coast office in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, stretching the short trip into an 18-mile trek each way. When he’s at the Los Angeles office, he wakes up at 5:30 a.m. and goes for a run – usually for an hour to an hour and a half.

At home on the weekends, Silva made use of his pool by doing his own triathlons – swimming a mile-plus, transitioning to the bike in his garage, going for a bike ride, transitioning to the run in his garage and then going for a run. Instead of giving his body time to rest the following day, he would work out again.

All of this work chiseled Silva into an endurance machine. He had punished his body for months and months with one goal in mind: Finish Kona in around 13 hours.

The 2.4-mile swim in Kona was the longest of his life – his previous high was about two miles. He said the distance did not bother him, but having to go in a straight line for 1.2 miles created a mental obstacle he needed to overcome. But once he turned for the homestretch, it wasn’t nearly as bad.

Swim time: 1:26:47.

Silva used the first 40 miles or so of the bike course as a warmup, not pushing himself too hard. There were 112 miles on two skinny wheels between him and the run course, so he needed to conserve his energy and settle into a nice pace. At 80 miles though, Silva said he nearly hit a wall.

“I think I’m a good biker but I don’t think I really realized how tired my bike legs would be at 80 miles,” he said. “There was no way to factor in how windy it was. There were times at the 85th mile where I was like, ‘I’m not moving anywhere.’ Between my legs being tired and the winds blowing so hard, I really felt weak; and I really don’t feel weak that often on the bike. But I’m also a lot stronger climber than a grinder. I’m a lot happier going up a steep mountain and maintaining bursts of energy versus grinding it in a time trial.”

He gutted it out though, and with his bike-course nutrition plan of peanut butter crackers and Gatorade, he managed to make his way back to the transition area, lace up his running shoes and head out to the run course.

Bike time: 6:53.11.

A runner since his adolescent years, Silva suddenly felt in the zone when he started the 26.2-mile run. And, he said it was a strange feeling to run a marathon but not think of it as a marathon. It was simply part of the race.

“It’s a weird thing to think about that I ran a marathon,” he said. “I never told anyone I ran a marathon; when I ran the two marathons [in 2008] I was bragging about how I ran a marathon. I haven’t told anyone that I ran a marathon [in Kona], and I did.

“But I didn’t really think of it as a marathon; I thought of it as 26 miles. I even counted it that way. Every time I ran past a mile marker I told myself, ‘One down, 25 to go. Six down, 20 to go.’ I did it that way and it worked, mentally.”

He said that mile 18 was the toughest portion of the run course for him. He had just left the Energy Lab, a government research facility located shortly after the halfway point. From there, Silva still had another 6.2 miles left in the race. He had survived the run on Gatorade, three goo packs and a few cups of cola (offered at the hydration stations to give runners sugar and caffeine).

Starting at mile 15 though, race volunteers began offering another item at the water stops – dinner rolls.

“About mile 15, they started doing chicken broth – maybe for the sodium?,” Silva said. “But they had little egg dinner rolls with the chicken broth, so I tried one and it was awesome. Throughout the next few miles I started eating rolls, slowly in small bites. I abandoned goo at that point, I was done.

“I didn’t eat the last five miles of the race, I was done. I was done drinking, I was done with everything. I couldn’t drink anymore Gatorade.”

With 1.5 miles left, Silva relaxed and allowed himself to enjoy the moment. He ran the last mile in 8:50 as he pushed with everything he had left.

Run time: 4:37.41.

His painful day was over 13 hours, 7 minutes, 8 seconds after it began.

He was an Ironman.

“I feel like I’ve done three of the greatest races: I’ve done the Boston Marathon, I’ve run the New York Marathon and I’ve done the Kona Ironman,” Silva said. “It’s three of the great races in the world.

“It feels great to say that I did an Ironman. It’s not that I just did an Ironman, I did the worst, hottest, most brutal one. If I never do anything else I’ll know that I’ve done that.”

I am on twitter! Follow me at Triathlon_Jason.

Supporting cancer research is a cause very close to my heart. When I was 10, my aunt Susie was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Susie was in her mid-30s, she was a nutritionist, she biked and hiked regularly. She was not the type of person that you would ever imagine could be sick. She only noticed her tumor in the first place because she had recently lost some weight due to a new exercise routine. She had her tumor and one ovary removed, did everything in her power to stay healthy, and was in remission for 7 years.

It all came as a shock to us when the doctors told us that her cancer had returned. Unfortunately, her surgery did not go as smoothly the second time. The cancer cells had spread all over her abdomen, creating too much of a battle for her body to fight. Susie survived another 6 months, but in the end we lost her. In a world where we are taught that there is a reason for everything, it is still hard for me to find any sort of meaning in such a senseless disease.

The fact that my friend Tyler has pancreatic cancer also boggles my mind. He ran at Cal and was the image of health. He was diagnosed three years ago, at the age of 25, and he only discovered his tumor in the first place because he was playing soccer one day and he thought he pulled a muscle in his stomach. When they did an ultrasound, they discover a grapefruit sized tumor which had already metastasized.

The last three years have been full of ups and downs. He has had periods of living a fairly normal life and then periods where he was in the hospital every day getting his plasma exchanged.  He has had his spleen removed and he is now on dialysis 4 days a week because the chemo has basically destroyed his kidneys.  He has seen his weight fluctuate by as much as 60 pounds.

Nevertheless, he has tried to live a normal life,  even going back to work for periods of time. But the important thing thing about Tyler, the thing that amazes everyone who has had the pleasure to meet him, is that despite all of these things he has continued to make the lives of those around him better.

Seeing someone like Tyler makes me wish I was smarter (so I could develop a cure) or richer (so I could fund someone smarter than myself to do so). Since I am neither, I will fight this disease in any way I can, and at the moment that is through raising awareness with races like the LA Cancer Challenge.

My aunt Susie never did radiation and/or chemotherapy because she found that none of the studies on ovarian cancer treatments proved that the drugs available at the time were effective in fighting her disease. Tyler has tried a few different chemotherapy treatments, but as he says, “basically it’s just a fight against time for me now, how long can I hold out, and hopefully I can hold out until something comes through that will be able to address this disease.”

Unfortunately for him, at the moment Pancreatic Cancer is greatly underfunded and decades behind in research. Please join me in this fight to change that.

On Sunday I will be running for Susie, for Tyler, and for all the men and women who’s lives have been touched by cancer. The more small victories we achieve, the closer we get to winning the war.

If you want to donate to Team Tyler, click here: DONATE TO TEAM TYLER

I will be hanging out after the race, so if you want an autograph card, a picture, or just want to talk, come find me and say hello!

For more information on Pancreatic Cancer and to hear a few words from Tyler, check out this video.

Because I like it:

1. Required reading: Doug Logan’s newest blog entry at the USA Track & Field website, a vivid first-person encapsulation of the point I have been making repeatedly, that American sports officials must learn to play international sports politics the way others play the game.

Thought: Doug Logan for USOC chief executive? Let’s see: He has experience in international sports (track and field as well as soccer). He’s fluent in Spanish. He has extensive business experience.

Hmm. Aren’t those precisely the requirements for the job as laid out by USOC board chairman Larry Probst?

Those who might suggest Logan’s age (66) works against him — let’s match your schedule against his. Probst says he wants someone who’s willing to travel; Logan is genuinely, as the saying goes, a road warrior.

Those who might persist in suggesting Logan’s age works against him — Logan is the same age as Mick Jagger.

2. The U.S. Olympic Committee ought to take the opportunity afforded by Chicago’s unceremonious first-round exit from the 2016 race to assess the realities and perceptions of itself being located in Colorado Springs, Colo., or as it might well say on the map, middle of nowhere.

Keep the training complex. There is real value in having a center for high-performance altitude training. Indeed, the USOC will play host this week to a high-altitude training symposium in the Springs at which, among others, Bob Bowman, Michael Phelps’ coach, is due to appear.

The issue, though, is whether the USOC’s executive office ought to be in Colorado Springs, arguably as insular a place geographically and in many cultural respects as one might find.

The answer: No.

Move to (take your pick) Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago or New York.

Any of the four would make for an appropriate and emphatic affirmation in a long-term USOC plan to redefine itself.

3. The world artistic gymnastics championships, just now finished up in London, produced five American medals on the women’s side, including a one-two by Bridget Sloan and Rebecca Bross in the all-around. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Americans Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson went one-two in the all-around.

Can we all now acknowledge the obvious?

First, that USA Gymnastics’ women’s developmental system is a first-rate partnership. It relies on local clubs and coaches to identify and work day-to-day with talent, and then wraps in the national-level camps and high-level training at the Karolyi ranch in Texas.

Second, that if Martha Karolyi, the women’s team national coordinator, is demanding, and she is, it’s because she demands excellence. The athletes respond. Isn’t that the mark of a truly great coach?

4. Phelps will be among those on the U.S. team when it takes part Dec. 18-19 in the Mutual of Omaha-sponsored “Duel in the Pool,” in Manchester, England, featuring four teams: American, British, Italian and German.

It’s a “short-course” meet, meaning a 25-meter pool, and it ought to be intriguing to see Phelps swim at that distance.

The Olympic distance, which in swim jargon is called “long course,” means 50-meter laps.

The Manchester complex is the same one used at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, and it’s where Ian Thorpe went 3:40.08 in the 400-meter freestyle, the world record that Germany’s Paul Biedermann broke by one-hundredth of a second at the 2009 FINA championships in Rome.

Look for Phelps as well at meets in Stockholm Nov. 10-11 and in Berlin Nov. 14-15 — serving in essence as the U.S. national senior team rep at these meets, which are on the junior-team calendar. Those are both short-course meets as well.

Phelps has quietly asserted in recent months a desire to assume an entirely appropriate role — given that the 2008 Olympics were his third Games — as one of the senior leaders of the U.S. team. The European swing in November and December: evidence.

5. Alberto Castagnetti, the longtime head coach of the Italian swim team, recently passed away, most unexpectedly. I sat next to him for a good chunk of one session at the 2008 U.S. Trials one and now, not even a year and a half later, he’s gone. He was 66.

“He certainly was the face of the Italian national team for a long time and had done an outstanding job,” said Mark Schubert, the U.S. head coach. “It’s a great loss to the swimming community.”

Castagnetti will be long remembered for his description of the plastic-oriented bodysuits that helped contribute, some say significantly, to the rash of world records over the past two years in the pool. “Technological doping,” he said.

6. Perhaps Channel News Asia is not high on your daily reading.

It is a sure thing, however, that a story on its website in recent days was made available to each and every member of the International Olympic Committee, which daily distributes selected clippings from around the world.

And that story once again is sure to contribute, right or wrong, fair or not, to perceptions of the United States within the IOC — because it says that American swimmers will not be competing in the inaugural Youth Olympic Games next summer in Singapore.

The story also says that U.S. cyclists and shooters won’t be taking part in the event, designed for teen competitors. That’s interesting but not key. The key is the swimmers because the U.S. swim team, with Phelps in particular, has played a lead role at the 2004 and 2008 Summer Games and is likely to reprise that role in London in 2012.

The story is not new. The Washington Post, for instance, had it more than a month ago. It’s news again now because two senior IOC members, including Ser Miang Ng of Singapore, now an IOC vice president, were quoted as urging the Americans to show up.

It’s relevant but difficult indeed to explain overseas an entire range of perfectly legitimate set of domestic considerations — how, for instance, YOG falls at an awkward time in the U.S. swimming calendar, with the American effort already aiming in 2010 for London and 2012 and thus focused next summer on the national championships and on the leading international meet of the year, the Pan Pacific.

The calendar itself underscores such considerations. The nationals are due to be held Aug. 3-7; the Pan Pacs Aug. 18-22; YOG Aug. 14-26.

It’s also worth noting that it’s entirely unclear whether YOG is going to achieve the very thing its boosters assert, which is connecting young people to sport and the Olympic movement.

Again, that’s of interest but not key.

Here’s what matters to readers of the IOC’s daily digest: YOG is a, and perhaps the, priority of Jacques Rogge, the IOC president.

To close the circle:

When it comes to choosing the cities that get to stage the Olympic Games, the only voters who matter are the ones reading the IOC daily digest. And the primary way to impress such voters is to keep impressing them time and again, and particularly when you’re not asking or seeking anything — which is assuredly the position the United States is in now, at least in Olympic bid circles.

This matters, too, and it illustrates how certain figures within the U.S. Olympic scene get what the movement is all about — because when asked about the situation, Chuck Wielgus,the executive director of USA Swimming, said Monday in a telephone interview, “We’re happy to revisit it.”

7. There won’t be a U.S. bid for the 2018 Winter Games. That’s surely disappointing to would-be organizers in Denver and in the Reno/Lake Tahoe areas but let’s be blunt — no U.S. bid could win.

Only three cities are in the 2018 hunt, the IOC to decide in 2011: Pyeongchang, South Korea; Annecy, France; and Munich.

Munich would seem the early front-runner.

Then again, Thomas Bach of Germany is also believed to be a front-runner for the IOC presidency, to be decided in 2013.

If you are the Munich bid: what are the odds the IOC is going to give Germany the  Games in 2011 and then elect a German member its president just two years later?

8. Austria’s Hermann Maier announced his retirement from competitive skiing. Watching Maier ski was like watching New Zealand’s Jonah Lomu play rugby — here comes the hammer, and at full speed.

Here’s to the Herminator. No one ever had more courage.

9. Steve Lopez recently won his fifth world championship in taekwondo. Lopez also has three Olympic medals, two gold. Staggering. If Steve Lopez played in the NFL, he would be a star on the order of Brett Favre or Peyton Manning.

10. Headline: “Springsteen Rocks the Pessoa/USEF Hunt Seat Meal Final at the 64th Pennsylvania National Horse Show.”

That would be 17-year-old Jessica Springsteen, who defeated 237 other riders to win the nation’s top equitation prize.

Jessica’s famous father is the one and only Bruce. Jessica’s famous mother is Patti Scialfa, often seen with Dad onstage with the legendary E Street Band.

For those wondering, given the E Street concert schedule: Both Mom and Dad were on hand to cheer their daughter on, according to the U.S. Equestrian Federation release.

Of course. Because as Mick might have said, or maybe even Susan Boyle, wild horses couldn’t drag them away.