mark barr

BLOG SHUT DOWN

2008-09-21T18:38:00.000-07:00

I just want to apologize to the people that were following my blog...once I got to China my blog was shut down and blocked by security people in China. They somehow put a block on my blog so that I could not make any posts during the games. This was a problem with a lot of people that had blogs.
But anyways my time in china was bitter sweet. The bitter part was the fact that I feel short of my goals of swimming best times and medaling. Instead I swam average swims and found myself having a hard time finishing races...perhaps due to the minimal amount of training that I had following my appendicitis and surgery but I'm not going to make excuses. The sweet part was the fact that I swam in the water cube in front of 14,000 spectators and my parents, brother and cousin and his wife. The most people that I have ever had the pleasure of competing in front of.
In the morning of the 100 butterfly I wore an blue 70 and in the ready room before my race the suit ripped in two places as I was stretching before my race...not the best way to start the meet. The entire race I was thinking about my suit and not the race my turn suffered from this mental block. The result was that I swam .50 of a second slower than my best time and made finals in 8th place beating out the 9th place person by .06 of a second. I ended up swimming the same time in finals and remained in 8th place.
The 100 free went about the same, as I swam a mediocre time at about .30 slower than my best and missing finals. In the 400 free I was able to drop 2 seconds off of my best time placing ninth and missing finals by only hundredths of a second. Then in the 50, my worst event, I was able to improve my time by a couple hundredths but missed finals. So as the meet moved on, my swims gradually got better.
I also competed on both the 400 free and medley relays which we set american records on both relays but still falling short of the medal stand.
All in all the memories that I take away from my competitions themselves are not the best but looking back I am fortunate that I can say that I competed in the 08 paralympics and that I gave it 100% in the water cube while representing my country in front of 14,000.
Thanks to everyone that has followed my blog and supported me through my travels to japan and china!! and sorry again that my blog was shut down.

WATER CUBE!!!!!!!!!

2008-09-02T19:58:00.000-07:00

I DON'T HAVE A VOCABULARY TO DESCRIBE THE FEELING YOU GET WHEN YOUR WITHIN A BLOCK OF THIS VENUE, LET ALONE NEXT TO IT OR INSIDE IT!! AS we approach the water cube, everyone on our buses jaw was dropped at the size and structure of it. We had to take a minute to stare before even taking pictures of it. And on top of this across the street was a building that had tv screens that were monstrous, not just one but several. i would say that the biggest one was probably 6-8 stories high and probably the same width. As we got out of the bus and walked along side the mote that surrounds the outside of the cube everyone was still at a loss of words. Even though we did not have training time in the competition pool, just the warm up pool, we all walked in to see what it looked like. It looked like a college football stadium. The size of the building makes the pool look like a 25 meter pool rather than a 50 meter pool. The stands that i counted are very steep and go up the the ceiling. The pool itself holds 14,000 people which is expected to be sold out!!! Everything about the facility is first class, a swimmers paradise for sure.
After we practiced it was dark out and the cube was lite up on the outside. Just when i thought that i had seen it all, they added this amazing light show to top it. The entire shell of the cube alternates colors starting with blue to purple to red. Next to the cube is the birds nest which is also lite up and looking amazing. After taking a look at the birds nest, i decided i would have to be mental to not attend opening ceremonies there. I can't wait until tomorrow when we get to train in the competition pool!!

To beijing

2008-09-02T19:46:00.000-07:00

Tuesday morning we woke up early to get a practice in before departing to beijing. As we were taxiing on the runway F-15's were taking off before us and practicing touch and go's, one last chance to experience the power of the F-15's. The entire flight line crew lined up and soluted our plane as we taxied the runway as a final goodbye.
Finally arriving in Beijing, as we exited the plane we were happily received by Chinese paparazzi and dozens of photographers taking pictures of us. Then again we were photographed when we passed through the immigrations. We got to our bus and started the 30 minute drive to the village. You could tell that we were getting close to the village when you began seeing Chinese military standing every 20 meters from each other along the chain linked fence as security for the games. Very impressive as they stand their for hours on end without moving . I got a picture of one of them as we passed through the gate into the village bus parking area. He saw me taking the picture and actually smiled a little bit, everyone on the bus joked that he was going to get fired for smiling.
The village here is 10 times nicer than the one in athens. The rooms are bigger and the bathrooms have a 5 star hotel feel to them. They even have full grown trees and ponds that all make for a calming atmosphere. As you walk around the village you see different countries interacting with each other and trading pins, my favorite thing to do. After we dumped our stuff off at our rooms it was off to the water cube for practice. this needs its own blog...

long time...no blog

2008-09-02T19:25:00.000-07:00

hey everyone, we were having alot of trouble getting online in okinawa because of the wi-fi connection. ill try to write a little bit about what happened each day.
Saturday- Our bus driver who works on with large trucks and hum v's took us to the hum v yard to go for a spin. AMAZING! he dressed us up with the whole nine yards, ammo hats and vests so that we could get the feel for what it really feels like to ride in the desert. The vests were 30 to 50 lbs each and i posed for some g.i joe pictures. Then we had the option to go to one of the beaches on okinawa and hang out but i decided to stay back and rest.

Sunday-We were finally aloud to go off base with our sponsors for 6 hours. I joined up with some people and we got a bus and traveled an hour to a pineapple plantation, which had everything pineapple that you could imagine and more. it was seriously like bubba gump shrimp from the movie forrest gump, because there were rooms filled with pineapple product for us to try. To bad i am here for a meet because they had pineapple wines that I guess are the main attraction.
Then we went to one of the worlds largest aquarium. This aquarium had tanks so massive that they could comfortably hold whales and massive manta rays. i got some great pictures and video to show .
Then after this we went to the famous sushi restaurant on okinawa where several celebrities have been and had their picture taken with the head sushi chef there, so we did the same thing. For the picture the sushi chef brings out a samurai sword and poses in front of you with it, kind of intimidating but made for a sweet picture.

Monday-after the night practice we got dressed up for the fairwell dinner that the base was putting on for us. This was a classy formal dinner that we all dressed up in the same uniform for. All of our sponsors and other important people on base accompanied us to the dinner to experience the Japanese isa dancers put on a 20 minute show during dinner. They also had the japanese dragon dancing around the room. The dinner and afterwards the paralymic track and swimming team presented about 20 framed posters that we had signed to show our appreciation of all the hard work that the base had graciously done on our behalf.

TV coverage

2008-08-29T00:44:00.000-07:00

The paralympics will be televised on NBC universal!! Ive never heard of this channel, big surprise...but I guess that it is available on dish if you have that.

flight line

2008-08-29T00:26:00.000-07:00

Last night our team held an ice cream social with the local kadena dolphins to show our thanks for letting us use their facilities and to give the kids a chance to take pictures with us and get autographs. Makes all of us feel way cooler than we really are when we get to make a kids day by signing our name or taking a picture with them. I guess that I made an affect on an entire family throughout the week as they brought a stuffed animal for me as well as a couple shirts from the local team. In return I signed numerous autographs and took pictures with the three daughters, again making me feel really cool.
Then I went to dinner with my friends sponsor and afterwards to his house on the base. Throughout dinner and after at his house the sponsor only 24 years old told us stories of his job in the Air Force. He told us that most of what he sees and hears is classified because he works in the reconnaissance planes that fly high and wire tap on everyone and anyone to gather information. His daily schedule made my life and experiences here seem extremely boring. He showed us photo albums of the history of okinawa from back in ww2 and one photo in particular of the actual japanese surrender of kadena and okinawa, pretty powerful picture!
This morning I had a very light practice, only about 2500 yards but all of it felt good. Then after lunch I got to head over to flight line, the airport, and get up close and personal with an F-15. I got to touch one, a 65 million dollar machine! pretty incredible seeing the plane up close. Then we got to go in a refueling plane and learn how those work. The coolest part was getting to walk out onto the massive wing of the plane and take pictures of ourselves being stupid.
The fun continues for all of us in Kadena, looking forward to the weekend when we get to ride in hum v's and go snorkeling.

kadena

2008-08-27T18:50:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone its been awhile since my last post because I have been so busy here on base. My camera broke on the trip over to Japan so I had to buy a camera at the BX on base here, no tax on any thing on base so that is pretty cool. I got my camera just in time to go visit the bomb dump with my military sponsor.
Because I had the afternoon off of practice I decided to call my sponsor up to hang out. He was very nice and went off base and picked up his favorite curry for me to try for dinner. It was amazing. Then he took me to the bomb dump which is twice the size of the actual base itself and is covered in thick thick jungle. Amongst all the jungle they have the bomb shelters and I got to see a couple missles, but couldnt take pictures because its classified. The cool part was seeing the tombs and shrines that the Japanese have left there since WW2. Throughout the drive he was telling me stories of how certain parts of the dump are believed to be haunted and how he has had personal encounters of hauntings himself. He showed me three of these and the last one we had to hike through a cleared out tunnel of the jungle about 60 yards to the shrine of the 7 gods. The sun was just starting to set and the deadly snakes, the habu's, are nocternal so this along with the fact that the shrine of the 7 gods is supposed to be the most haunted place on the island made me almost opt out of the chance to see the shrine. I dug down deep and decided that I couldn't pass up a chance to see the shrine so I had him go first as I followed closely behind. We got to the shrine and it was completely covered with tree canopy and dark and very ery. It reminded me of an Indiana Jones movie. I quickly snapped some photos and said lets get the hell out of here.
Then on our drive back to the hotel we passed the run way and I was lucky enough to watch 2 F-15's getting ready for take off. We were literally 100 yards away from them. Being that it was night time I got the full effect of the fire out the engines as well as the power and sound of the engines as they took off. JUST LIKE TOP GUN!! SO COOL.
O ya and my swimming is going good. Feeling strong in the water and getting stronger each day. Really excited and can't wait to see what times I am able to get. As for now its just a matter of getting my rest and focusing on my stroke work and everything else will take care of itself.

Kadena AFB, Okinawa Japan!!

2008-08-24T19:29:00.000-07:00

After sitting on a plane for 17 hours straight, 14 flying, and the rest was loading and refueling, we finally landed at the kadena AFB in Okinawa. As we taxied the runway, you could see the welcoming party of military personel standing on the tarmac awaiting our arrival. The military people were amazing, they unloaded all of our bags and equipment and delivered them to our rooms at the Shogun inn hotel on the base. As we got off the bus in front of our hotel, each athelete was greeted with their own "sponsor" our military assistant to help us to our rooms and answer any questions that we had. My sponsor gave me his cell number and said that he has been given permission to drop any task that he is doing to accompany my needs if I call him...really cool to have your own servant! haha. He works on the Bomb dump as an ammunitions person and will take me there this weekend. The bomb dump is HUGEE!! and it is located in the jungle so that tree canopy covers their ammuninition from planes flying above. I guess that I got lucky because you need to have someone sign you off to get into the bomb dump.
Then our sponsors waited for us to change and escorted us over to the officers club for our briefing of the base and dinner buffet. All of this was first class.
Every athlete has their own room at the hotel, that has kitchen, living room and bedroom. The meals that they have served us have been amazing as well.
I was able to stay awake for most of the flight so I got a good nights sleep in and feel better this morning. We took a bus ride to our training facility that was a nice outdoor 50 meter pool. Great weather at 8 in the morning...still trying to get used to the humidity but its nice to not have to wear sweatshirts at 7 am. I felt great in the water this morning, practice was just a warm up this morning, but it was effortless. Overall, I am loving Kadena and Okinawa by far the coolest place that I have been with paralympics!!

Japan

2008-08-23T08:12:00.000-07:00

Today started with a 430 wake up call for 5 am practice...We had to be on the bus at 715 to get to the airport in time. Now we are at the airport waiting to board out charter plane to Kadena Air Force Base in Japan. There are 310 seats on the plane and only 111 people so we get lots of leg room to stretch out, good thing because the flight is a 14 hour flight with one stop in Alaska to fuel up. Going to be a long day, at least there is no practice when we get there. We are all exhausted but aren't aloud to sleep on the plane (so they say) until we get there because it will be 5pm when we land. This way we will be able to get on their timeline quicker...I am notoriously bad at staying awake so we will see how I do. Next post will be from Okinawa, Japan.

tv coverage

2008-08-22T12:26:00.001-07:00

They just announced that it the next 48 hours they will be able to announce a tv station that will broadcast the paralympics for 3 hours a day!!! Amazing news, considering that we had no expectations of any coverage at all.

day 2

2008-08-21T19:10:00.000-07:00

After a long nights rest my day began at 7 am with a lite practice. Then it was straight to a meeting that lasted 4 hours. In the meeting we covered everything that you can imagine. We spent a century going over media and how to properly represent your country when a microphone is shoved in your face. Then we talked about the rules of blogging that are set in place by China, some of the rules are not including brand names, other athletes names, or pictures or video that shows any action that is taking place. Then we learned a little mandarin...and then I fell asleep. We also signed about 30 posters that we are giving to our sponsors and got fitted for leather jackets, had our picture taken. This meeting and petes practices were equally tough to survive. Everyone was exhausted after the 4 hours.

It is tough to transition from training at sea level in davis to training at 6100 feet in Colorado Springs. I get winded just walking around the complex, let alone when I am working out or doing breath holding sets. At sea level I can do 50's no breath fairly easily, at altitude i can hardly do a 50 with 2 breaths.

This evening I sat with a bunch of athletes from swimming, track and field, and volleyball and watched the Olympics on T.V. Watching the Olympics at the OTC is awesome because all of the atheletes get very excited and some of the people here know the athletes personally so that makes it fun and suddenly I find myself cheering a little bit more.

Well I'm off to bed tomorrow is another long day of meetings and swimming and then its off to Japan on Saturday.

Olympic Training Center

2008-08-20T20:42:00.000-07:00

Today was a really long day, traveling from SFO to Denver and then finally arriving to Colorado Springs and finally to the Olympic Training Center. Immediately at the airport we begin getting the first class olympian treatment with the team USA escort van that takes us to the OTC. Our schedule is so packed that I barely had enough time to grab a bite to eat at the cafeteria before my appointment at team processing.
Team processing beat my already high expectations. I was handed a clipboard and a shopping cart and off I went to processing. When I was done I had numerous t-shirts, sweatshirts, taylored blazers pants, diamond ring, watch, shoes, socks, and hats that filled our team USA suit case. The best shopping experience because it costs the athletes zero dollars. Then it was off to practice immediately where we got even more stuff, suits, caps with the US flag and our names, parkas and even more stuff coming tomorrow. I think that it is easy to say that today was a great day. The Olympic experience is starting to feel real and will continue to feel more real as we count down the days to opening ceremonies and the first day of competition.

First post

2008-08-19T21:28:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone this is my first post. Tomorrow I go to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado to do team processing and meet up with the team. We will get all of our team gear at processing tomorrow, can't wait.