Catching Up With Mark Warkentin

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By Jason Marsteller

PHOENIX, Arizona, October 29. MARK Warkentin, the winner of the 2007 USA Swimming Open Water World Championships Trials in Fort Myers, Fla., took time out of his schedule to speak with SwimmingWorldMagazine.com as he began the initial stages of his preparation heading into the World Championships in Seville, Spain next spring

Warkentin pulled off what some have seen as an upset when he won the Trials race. However, Warkentin has been biding his time waiting for the right moment to strike as he attempts to make a run at Olympic gold.

Here is Warkentin's interview with SwimmingWorldMagazine.com:

With all the fires going on in Southern California and you training in California in Santa Barbara, have you been directly or indirectly impacted by it at all?
My in-laws live in Fallbrook, a town in northern San Diego. They were evacuated because of the fire, but their house is not in danger anymore – even though the fire came fairly close. My brother-in-law is a firefighter in Riverside County, and he's been working for the past week straight, sleeping in short shifts on people's front lawns as he fights the fires.

As for myself, personally, I haven't been directly impacted. Although, back in 1991, my house burned down in a major fire in Santa Barbara. It was an interesting experience, because my parents figured we had 20 minutes until our house was gone. So, they said to grab anything I could as we tried to save as much as possible. At the time, it was a bit like a game show or a shopping spree feel.

You spent your college years at Southern California. What was that experience like, and what are some of your best memories from there?
USC, back around 2000, was the place to be for swimming. My training partners were Lenny Krayzelburg, Lindsay Benko, Erik Vendt, Klete Keller, and Brad Bridgewater. I had a bit of an inferiority complex, because all of my training partners were Olympians. I met my future wife in class, and I lived for one year in a house that was almost exactly like "Animal House." There were lots of good memories there.

Can you elaborate on some of those good memories?
Probably the most memorable moment in college was my freshmen year when we went up to the Bay area for the Cal/Stanford dual meets. Coach [Mark] Schubert told me I had to win the 1000 and the 500 if we were going to have a chance to win. Against Stanford, it was miserable – it was raining, windy and cold. I won all my individual races, and we beat Cal but lost to Stanford on the last relay.

Can you talk about the USC-Stanford rivalry, and just the overall Pac 10 rivalries in general?
Because USC doesn't have the cross-town rivalry with UCLA, we had to create enemies with the teams up north. Some years, the rivalry with Cal was greater than with Stanford, but it always seemed like when we raced the teams from the Bay Area, someone was breaking a pool record. It started to get redundant.

Let's talk about open water. How did you get into the sport?
We had a local race here in Santa Barbara, and my coach pointed out that I could probably win it, considering I would be competing primarily against Masters swimmers. I hadn't won anything in a long time, so I decided to try it out. It turned out that I could in fact beat Masters swimmers in that race.

One thing we've noticed about open water is that it can breath new life into a career. Would you say that is true in your case, and what are your thoughts about the sport overall?
Swimming in the pool had gotten stale for me. I couldn't break 1:50 in the 200 free, and I couldn't figure out how to execute a fast flip turn – seriously. Open water swimming affords the athlete a race against the field rather than the clock, so you don't have to worry about measuring yourself against a time. Also, there are no flip turns. Put that together and I felt like an athlete reborn.

You are somewhat of an unknown factor with swimmers like Chip Peterson usually getting most of the U.S. open water limelight. What is it like to be a bit of a latebloomer busting out right before Beijing?
Can you be a latebloomer at 27? I was actually pretty interesting during my first international race. I met Petar Stoychev [a top name in the open water community], and he looked at me and said "You are not Chip Peterson." I agreed that I was not Chip. That's all I could do.

Speaking of Stoychev, he recently just broke the record for the English Channel. Have you ever thought about trying to make that crossing?
No way. I'd freeze. If I put on about 40 pounds I might consider it, but that wouldn't be until after my competitive career.

What are your thoughts about the physicality of open water swimming?
The main skill in dealing with the physicality of open water is to not allow it to affect your heart rate or your emotional well-being. When you get into an inevitable altercation with someone, you have to manage your emotions or else you're going to waste a lot of energy trying to win the fight instead of trying to win the race. It's a skill that is sometimes difficult to master.

Let's talk about your coach and training. Your coach, John Dussliere of the Santa Barbara Swim Club, will serve as a team manager on the Worlds trip. Are you excited to have him along, and how do you two work together?
John is very good at reading my emotional status and managing the workout accordingly. That's one of the great things about being on a club team – flexibility in the workout. If John can see that I'm ready for something big, he pulls out a challenging workout. If he can see that I'm struggling, he reworks the practice as a recovery. I really value his approach to coaching.

Speaking of your workouts, do you do anything special during them that new open water swimmers in the sport could learn from?
When I officially decided to get into open water swimming, I woke up the next morning at 4 a.m. and did 20×1000 LCM in 4 hours. After that morning, 10,000 never seemed like a big deal anymore. My advice would be to do something big that makes a long race seem short. You only have to do it once, then you'll have a lot of confidence.

Confidence is huge in open water swimming. You have to trust your training and your training has to be incredible. There are no short cuts in this sport and talent is a distant second to consistent hard training.

What are your expectations heading into Worlds, and beyond?
This past week was the prelims of a huge race. World Champs in Seville is like the semi-finals and Beijing is obviously the finals. To be successful, I have to go back to training and try not to get overly excited too soon about the possibilities in 2008.

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