Eli Bremer

Welcome back faithful blog readers. It has been a while since my last post for which I apologize. As I forge ahead with a new season, there are some changes that will be coming to my blog. The biggest change is that I will be adding a new feature at least once a month called Winning with Shaklee. This is the first installment of my new feature so please keep reading to learn more about it.

Shortly before the 2007 Pan Am Games, Shaklee and I forged a partnership that would allow me to use their entire product line to enhance my athletic performance. The past two years have been a fantastic alliance between us that has been mutually beneficial. I chose Shaklee because of the quality of their products and their commitment to excellence. As I have expanded my usage of Shaklee products over the past few years, I have only become more impressed with the quality they produce.

My first contract with Shaklee ended a year after the Olympics. Our relationship has been great for both of us, so we began talks to extend my contract with them. During the course of our discussions, we decided it would be beneficial to expand the relationship between us. This is largely because of a substantial opportunity for joint marketing between “EliBremer.com” (my blog) and Shaklee’s massive family.

As part of my new relationship with Shaklee, I will periodically be writing a blog dedicated to my analysis and usage of Shaklee products. In exchange, Shaklee will be promoting my blog to nearly 750,000 new readers in the Shaklee family. Needless to say, I am extremely excited for the opportunity to expand my blog viewership to such a large and engaged audience. Blogging has become a big part of my athletic endeavors and a chance to share my experiences with tens of thousands of people. So with that said, I would like to introduce my first installment of “Winning with Shaklee.”

The beginning of a great relationship

Growing up, my family was fairly in tuned with health and nutrition. My mom has a PhD in human nutrition and my parents have always been into an active outdoor lifestyle. I’m the youngest of three boys in my family, and my two older brothers quit competitive sports around the time of high school. I was the butterball of the family and the last person you would expect to become an athlete. But around the time I turned 15, I decided to turn my dream of becoming an NCAA athlete and Olympian into a chance at reality. I started swimming twice a day and running as well. Soon, I became a standout athlete in high school and was an NCAA recruit in swimming and running.

As you become a better and better athlete, you start to pay more attention to the things that drive up your athletic performance. It was during this time that I started to take my personal nutrition much more seriously. Swimming 7-8 miles a day, I could no longer rely on my meals to provide all the sustenance I needed. So I started to look at sports drinks as a method to deliver nutrition mid workout.

Having a mom with a doctorate in nutrition quickly paid off as she was able to research the major brands on the market. After reviewing the most popular “sports drink,” she concluded that it was not much better than sugar water. Then we turned to some of the more sophisticated drinks. These were better than convenience store brands but still lacked some important elements of nutrition needed mid workout.

A family friend, Karla Kroeker, was a Shaklee distributor and suggested we research Shaklee’ Performance. She gave me a sample to try. I was immediately impressed with the drink, and my mom was equally impressed with the contents of the drink. Unlike other products which were formulated largely for taste and to drive up sales at convenience stores, Performance was developed to fuel the human body during endurance workouts.

Soon I was buying large quantities of Performance and its sister product Physique for workouts and recovery. My ability to sustain large workloads and intensity in practice went up noticeably as did my performance. My coaches noticed a marked improvement in my athletic ability. I demanded a lot out of my body, and I had found the products that enabled me to train to my fullest ability.

Twelve years later, Shaklee signed me as their first of two 2008 Olympians. They were also my first professional sponsorship and that meant a lot to me. Not only did it enable me to drastically expand my product usage (now virtually everything in my house is a Shaklee product), but it also symbolized the culmination of a relationship that started over a decade earlier. Shaklee had enabled me to become a good athlete, and they wanted to be a part of my Olympic experience as well.

So as we head into the 2012 Olympic cycle, I am proud that my relationship with Shaklee has grown to new levels. They are my first sponsorship of this quadrennial, symbolic of the fact that they were also my first sponsor ever. Furthermore, my wife and I recently decided to become Shaklee distributors after many of our friends have asked how to order the products. I take my reputation seriously and only endorse companies and products that I thoroughly believe in.

In my next Winning with Shaklee blog, I’ll explain some major concerns with supplement and health companies, and why I trust Shaklee products with my reputation.

Today was the women’s semi-final. Same format as yesterday; but with fewer women in the competition, there were only two groups. In each group, 18 make it into the final.

The sole women’s competitor for the US was 17 year old Margaux Isaksen. Margaux, affectionately nicknamed Mango by teammates, represented the US in the 2008 Olympics. This year, she has really come on strong, completing the World Cup season ranked in the top 10. She also won a bronze medal at the 2009 Junior World Championships. Given the outstanding season she has had, we did not expect much drama to unfold today. And we were right.

Margaux destroyed the field in the first two thirds of the fence, leading the pack with 7 touches to go. Then, she struggled and only hit one of her last 7 opponents, but still finished in the top ten. Swimming was next, and Margaux posted a 2:19 on my watch (the score board was broken, so I am not exactly sure what her official time was). That’s a bit slow for her, and I expect we will see a faster swim in the final. Finally, she entered the combined run/shoot in 6th place with a pretty large gap between her and 19th place. In shooting, Margaux had a really tough time, but her lead and strength in running were more than enough to overcome the damage done on the shooting range. In the end, she only ran hard the first two 1,000m laps and easily jogged her way into the final on Sunday.

Now back to my update from yesterday. Overall, it was a great day for the US Men’s Team. While I have taken the year almost completely away from training, some other athletes have really stepped up their training and it showed.

Will Brady gets the award for the biggest standout performance of the competition so far. Will has been living in Colorado Springs and training at the OTC for somewhere between three and four years, but has never broken into the top tier of international pentathlon… until yesterday. Battling two training injuries, Will posted career bests in his fence (nearly 900 points) and swim (2:07). Then, starting in 9th place in what I picked as the toughest semi-final grouping, he posted a solid combined time and secured his slot in the final of his first ever World Championships.

Sam Sacksen was in my semi-final group. He had a solid fence at a bit over 800 points, but clocked a disappointing 2:13 swim time. However, he has picked up the combined event really well already and was able to move from around 20th before the event to 11th. His first place performance in the combined event was enough for a berth in the final. That is his first World Championships final as well.

Dennis Bowsher was in the last semi-final group of the day. Struggling, but staying alive in the fence, he ended the event with somewhere around 750 points. Next up was the swim. I had predicted that he could go around 2:02 given that he has been absolutely crushing me in practice the past few weeks. However, he was out slow and never recovered, ending in a 2:06. But he was still alive going into the final combined run/shoot event, starting in 18th place. After the first round, he was within about 10 seconds of 12th place. But a poor second and third round of shooting dropped him farther back, and he finished in 20th place. Had he finaled here, it would have been his second World Championships final, but he will have to wait another year.

All in all, it was a solid day for the US Team. In 2005, the year after the Athens Olympics, the US Team had no athletes in the finals at Worlds. This year, we have two men and one woman. For our program, this is a great way to start a new quad as we push toward the 2012 Olympics.

Today was the men’s semi-final competition here in London. In the pentathlon, only 36 people compete in the finals events. At “open” competitions, World Cups, World Championships, and Continental Championships, we have to compete through semi-finals to make it to the finals. At the Olympics and the World Cup Final, only 36 are invited. (If you want to read more about semi-final formats, check out my blog from last year’s World Championships). So today we had to cut from a field of 96 athletes down to 36 for Saturday’s final.

There were three semi-final groups of 32 athletes. I was disappointed to learn that my group was the earliest, starting at 7:30 this morning. Not that I normally mind getting up early, but 7:30am here is 12:30am at home… and I am pretty much never up that late. So physiologically, it sort of felt like we were competing through the middle of the night. But since most pentathlons are held in Europe, and I have “hopped across the pond” around 40 times now, I’m actually used to that feeling. It still never feels quite right.

The first discipline for my group was fencing. And the word of the day for my fencing would have to be bipolar. I had a great start and was actually leading after 7 bouts with 6 victories and just one defeat. Then I lost 6 in a row and dropped to around 18th place by the 13th bout. Then it all clicked again; and on the last 18 bouts, I won 13 and only lost 5. For any pentathlon junkies out there, that equated to just over 900 points and put me around 6th at the end of fencing.

Then came the 200 meter swim. I had no idea how I would perform in the event. After getting pretty well clobbered this World Cup season in the new combined run/shoot, I decided to back way off of swimming and see if I could get a hang of the new format by Worlds. So I have only been swimming three times per week to total six miles per week since May. To put that in perspective, during the same period last summer, there were many days I would swim six miles. So chalk up lack of training to the prospects of a bad swim.

But there was a compounding factor that made me think I might have some speed in my swim. TYR sent us some of their new swim suits (you know the ones that have been making headlines and that swimming will not allow next year) before we left. They are every bit as fast, and fun, as I have heard from the swimmers who have tried them. At the Olympics, I swam in the LZR and it felt fast. These blow the LZR out of the water, so to speak, and thus have created the controversy. In a nutshell, they are buoyant; and buoyancy helps you swim faster. So I knew I was wearing technology that would make me pretty fast. In the end, I swam a 2:04, about what I expected to swim and fast enough to put me in 5th after two events.

Next up was the combined run/shoot. I wouldn’t say I was anxious or scared of it, but I wondered how my training would stand up. The last seven weeks have felt a bit like cramming for a final in college. It seems like you are getting a lot done, but you don’t know until you open the test how you will do. I have been shooting okay in practice, but I also knew that the competition and everything that goes with it can cause a performance breakdown.

There were about 35 seconds between me and the all important 13th place (top 12 from each group make the final) which is not a lot of buffer. My first shoot was pretty shaky and dropped me down to 12th. I made up ground in running the first 1,000m and knew that I would still final with two decent shoots. The second shoot did not improve much, and I dropped back to around 20th. Making up places again in the run, I headed into the final shoot. That was better, but not enough to put me in competition for the final.

My last 1000m was probably the perfect end to the season. Shortly after leaving the shooting, I easily cruised passed Andree Mosiev, the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist. He started the combined in 8th place today and would eventually finish around 24th. Shortly before the Olympics at last year’s World Championships, Andree and I were also in the same semi-final. We both had to run hard and finished 11th and 12th in our group. Later that summer, he went on to win the Olympics, and I had my lifetime best competition with a medal at the World Cup Final. (I would have much preferred his season to mine in case you were wondering.)

So as I finished up my last event of this season back in 20th place in my semi-final (at an event where I finished 12th in the final last year), it didn’t really bother me too much. For me, this year was about exploring the new format of the sport and exploring my interest in continuing on through the 2012 Olympics. If you had asked me 3 months ago, I would have told you I am retiring at the end of this season. If you ask me today… dream on, I’m not telling anyone yet!

(This will not be the last blog from London. Tomorrow, I’ll fill you in on the other US men’s athlete’s results and on Margaux’s quest to make it to the women’s final. I’ll also recap what I think about the new format and my potential to pick up the combined run/shoot.)