7/19/08

19 days until the start to the Olympics!!!

Hello all. If you have made it this far I must start off by saying thanks for coming and checking my blog out. For those of you that dont know me my name is Mark Gangloff and I am a professional swimmer that will be competing in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I am going to do my best to keep everyone posted on what is going on leading up to the Games. I am a first time blogger so bear with me because my thoughts may be a little scattered. So much has happened in the last three weeks and I will do my best to let you know how it has gone.

For those of you that dont know after the Olympic Trials in Omaha, NE finished the whole Olympic team assembled in Palo Alto, CA for a training camp. We got here on the July 7th and will be here until July 25th. On the 25th we leave for Singapore for another training camp (if you can call it that; by this time most if not all of the athletes are tapering by now). The main reason we head to Singapore is probably to get our bodies acclimated with the time change. On August 4th we go from Singapore to Beijing and get settled into the athlete village. As most of you know the Olympics start on August 8th and then swimming starts on the 9th. The prelims of the 100 Breast is on first day so I will be competing on the 9th, 10th(semi-final), and 11th(finals) and then on either the 15th(prelims) or 17th(finals) I will be swimming on the 4x100 Medley Relay.
That is basically how the next few weeks look for me.

Taking a few steps back I want to let you guys know what it is like at the training camp here in Palo Alto. We are staying at a hotel pretty close to the pool which is on Stanford University's campus. For those of you that have never been to Stanford's swimming facility it is pretty phenomenal. The have two eight lane 50m pools, one eight lane 25yd pool (which contains a diving well), and there is also another 25yd diving well that has several power racks and power towers in it. I usually get a lot of questions on how training camp works, who trains with who, who coaches who, does the intensity of training go way up, ect. Basically every athlete is assigned a coach who is on the official USA Olympic staff. For instance I was assigned to Eddie Reese's group. Now Eddie has several swimmers on the Olympic team (Spann, Shanteau, Hansen, Peirsol, Crocker, Walters, Weber-Gale, Bernes) so those swimmers swimming in his group with the addition of me. Greg Troy, Bob Bowman, and Frank Busch are the other coaches on the Olympic staff and they each have their own groups respectively. Coach Troy and Coach Bowman for the most part take the athletes that swim middle distance to distance events. Coach Busch takes the sprinters for the most part. Hopefully you get the idea. Just because you were assigned to a specific group does not mean that you have to train with that group every practice or every day. If you or the coaches decide that it is better that you change groups then that day you change groups. An example of this would be Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte came into Eddie's group yesterday because they wanted to do a sprint set with our group (more on that later). Or if Eddies group was doing some longer more aerobic work and I needed to do some sprinting then I would probably go with Coach Busch's group or ask one of the other staff members to help me out with a sprint set.

Since there is only about five weeks between the Trials and the Olympics training is kind of strange because you have to increase the volume and intensity of the work that you are doing but not too much. If you increase the intensity or volume too much and get broken down then there is not enough time to get fully rested again. So a lot of the training is on how you are feeling every day. If you feel good then you can usually go pretty hard but if you are starting to feel fatigued then you probably need to back off some. This basically goes on until about two or three weeks out from the Games and then usually everyone starts their taper again.

Here at the camp I do have a roommate and it is Eric Shanteau. Most of you know by now that Eric was diagnosed with testicular cancer about ten days before the Olympic Trials. Eric was one of my best friends while we were at Auburn University so I was very upset to here that this has happened to him. Eric has assured me and everyone that he is being very safe about his decision to continue swimming. He is working with some very reliable doctors and is being tested every week to make sure that nothing is spreading or growing. I can tell you he is doing very well and training great.

By the way Eric has just called me and we are going to head to dinner so I will be back in the next couple of days to keep you posted on how things are going.

Mark