What Can a Blind Man See? by Aaron Scheidies

A Typical Day in the Life of Ben Collins: Through the Eyes of Aaron Scheidies 

You all have read Ben Collin’s stories and accounts of his life. Well, I have been hanging around and training with him for the past weeks and I think I can give a pretty good account of what a typical day in the life of Ben Collins is really like.

Ben normally gets up around 6:30am and has a bowl of cereal, grabs about ten clif bars and a handful of quarters from his parents change bag before walking to catch the bus. As he is nearing t he bus stop he will undoubtedly see a bus coming and thinks it’s his 372 bus to University of Washington. He starts running and yelling for it to wait but to his dismay it’s the 312 to Downtown, and he has just held up a bus load of people. This mistake happens every morning. Once on the bus, Ben gets out his newest prized possession, his iPhone and starts listening to music to get motivated for his morning swim. One would think he would be listening to the likes of classics from Green Day, Metalica or Bon Jovi but this is not the case. Ben has his own genre [KEXP is a great radio station. -bc]. If I knew any of the songs on his play list I would tell you but none of them ring a bell, it’s like the b-side tracks from bands that never made it out of the garage. At 7:30am Ben arrives at the UW IMA. He normally takes 2-3 trips to the John in the morning before even beginning his swim. This is probably due to the amount of green leafy vegetables he takes in but I am not sure. He walks into the pool area and I am sure the lifeguards are eyeing him just wondering if he is going to get into a tussle with any of the other swimmers or potentially with the Pool Man. The story of the Pool Man has already been discussed on previous BC blogs but is definitely a must-read for humor. His most recent encounter was with a rather hairy man that probably shouldn’t be swimming in the fast lane but does so every morning. [In short, I asked the man to please stay a little farther to the right and he responded with some four letter words and a complaint to the pool management – bc]

Ben typically swims 5,000yds every day and pretty much laps everyone in the pool every 200yds or less no matter their speed. Ben loves his butterfly so on his recovery days he typically does more than half his workout butterfly. The others in the pool also love it when he swims butterfly because then they get to work on their ocean swimming simulation. He creates some pretty good chop with his dolphin kick. Following swimming Ben will have a Cliff Bar  in the shower and then go into the locker room to get changed. Ben has two lockers rather than one like everyone else because he claims to have too much stuff! [fins, paddles, running shoes and bike shoes do not fit in one little cubby locker! – bc] He puts on a K Swiss get-up and then heads up to the IMA Rec Office where Carrie, his boss, works. He cooks his oats in the small kitchenette using a random plastic bowl that is borrowed by many. The kitchenette has no table so Ben just sits on the floor. Others in the office walk by and look in as they pass and wonder who the random kid on the floor is and how he got into the kitchen.

After eating a full bowl of oats Ben gets sleepy and sometimes he asks to open his boss’s office so he can take a nap under her desk before she gets in. If he does this he normally sleeps until she comes into work (1hr) and then wakes up because she needs someplace to put her feet. Disgruntled from the rude awakening, Ben then gets ready to ride his bike. He teaches spin class at 12 but normally likes to ride for 2 hours so he starts spinning at 11am. For the first hour he listens to that same unknown genre that definitely does not pump me up, but I guess whatever gets you going you should roll with. The first spin class he tried to play his own music, and the class hated it, so now he plays mainly top 40 from the past decade and throws in just a few fillers from his own library. One day he had to change his play list a bit on the fly because some of his songs had inappropriate lyrics for a university class that he somehow didn’t catch:  “F- this and Kiss my ***”.  After 1hr Ben takes another Clif Bar. He likes the Maple Nut ones the best. Then his class comes in and he becomes very social and talkative. This is somewhat like a new Ben but it only lasts for the 12-1pm hour and then he goes back to the more reserved and witty BC.

At 1pm Ben changes from his biking clothes and then gets ready to run. At this point he has already worked out for 3 1/2hrs. I think he has yet another Clif Bar at this point but I am not totally sure because I kind of lose count at this point. When asked what his run will be today BC replies with, “Victor says I gotta run 8 miles today.” With his blue and yellow K-Swiss Keahou’s on to match the rest of his completely K-Swizzled outfit, Ben then goes out for his run. He also always wears his Garmin and HR monitor. I’m not sure what Ben would do on a run without his beloved  Garmin. Victor says he has to stay in his heart rate range, so throughout the run he keeps checking his watch to see his HR. When I run with Ben, he shouts out the mile times that his watch automatically records. He doesn’t seem to care how fast they are, just whether I’m pushing him over his maximum allowable HR. One day we were running up a long hill near campus, Ben yells “that was an 8 minute mile, but my HR is a few beats too high, can we slow down”. No Ben, we can’t go slower or it wouldn’t even be called jogging.

Upon his return to the IMA, Ben normally goes up to Carrie’s office once again but this time not for a nap. Instead, he shares with her what is on his mind for that day and explains any pool dilemmas he has gotten himself into earlier in the day. He does this until Carrie says she has too much work to do to listen to him anymore. At this point he gets his stuff from his locker and has a Clif Builder Bar. It’s about 2:30pm and Ben has to run to make it on time to a physical therapy appt for his knee (which is recovering very well). He typically goes into his PT appointment sweaty, which I am sure, his PT loves. At his PT clinic he is not known as Ben Collins but rather “K Swiss”. While doing his exercises you hear, “K Swiss make sure you are engaging those glute muscles.”

From his PT appt he typically buys a burrito from Qdoba and boards the bus back home. At about 5:30pm he eats an early dinner before going to a Biochemistry class at North Seattle that he is not even enrolled in. Evidently, they  messed up on his enrollment and it’s too late to enroll so he is not officially in the class [I’m waiting on a petition]. Ben still goes to class though and does at least some of the readings and homework. He always comes back with stories of one particular student in the class who thinks she knows it all and feels she needs to share it with the rest of the class. It will be interesting when the first test comes around and the teacher attempts to enter Ben’s score into the computer.

Ben returns home from his class around 8pm just in time for his second dinner that is ready to be eaten thanks to his dad, Robert. Ben tries to eat as many greens such as mustard greens, arugala  or chard as he can. He even puts greens in his Lasagna. As he eats, his dog Teisha (who is 14yrs old) is sprawled out on the floor. Most of the time Teisha knows when there is food being eaten but since her vision and hearing aren’t great and her mobility is limited she often is just passed out in the middle of the floor. Also, while eating, Ruth Anne (Ben’s mom) comes out from her office wearing at least 2-3 pieces of Ben’s K Swiss clothing. She asks how his day went to which Ben will say something like, “That’s where that sweatshirt is. I have been looking for that for like a week.” Ruth Ann typically responds with, “Ben you need to have K Swiss send some size 9 shoes for me.” While this is all going on and while eating Ben is playing around in some way shape or form with his iPhone.

[Here’s Aaron & Carrie eating my mustard green infested lasagna. Aaron doesn’t like the greens nearly as much as me -bc]

At about 9pm, Ben goes up to his room and talk on the phone for… Long enough -  I can’t give an accurate guess on this one, but he does it with those stupid white iPhone headphones on, so nobody that walks in knows if he’s listening to music or talking to somebody on the phone [why does everyone feel the need to walk into my room anyway? – bc]. While doing this he checks his email to see the workouts Victor has sent him for the next day. He also writes some of his “usually sarcastic” blogs that you have all read or you wouldn’t be reading this one. He logs his training hours that have been approaching 30hrs the last few weeks. He then gets ready to go to bed so  he can repeat it all again the next day. Normally Ben goes to bed about 10:00pm, but I am pretty sure I’ve heard him still talking on the phone close to midnight [a wise man once told me, “girls are trouble”. But I didn’t listen. – bc].

Thanks for the recap Aaron. You forgot to mention my yoga class, where I fall asleep and start snoring because it’s at the end of the day and I’m too tired to focus for another hour.  Or how we do such classic exercises as “the sideways zombie walk” and the “flamingo with poor balance” in the weight room after swimming in our matching K-Swiss apparel, while all the die-hard iron lifters look at us like we’re totally nuts. That’s my favorite part of the day.