A good teammate pays it forward when her crew comes up to support and cheer for her as she’s dragging her tired legs 140.6 miles, so that’s exactly what I did the last Sunday in August in Penticton for my TN peeps. My Becca Sense had been tingling all summer thinking that the Ironman Canada athletes would have a hot race day since I got lucky last year with the weather (minus the pockets of rain and wind on the bike), and I was right. Of the five days I was up in Canada, the “coldest” day was in the mid-80s and race day crept up to the mid-90s. I tried to do some workouts while I was up there, so I flailed around in the lake for about 15-20 minutes and called it a swim, and I ran with Teresa a couple days. (And by “with” I mean “behind,” as even in her weakened state she’s still faster than me. Sigh.) One day we ran along an old railroad track that’s been converted into a trail, and although it was hot, the run was pretty nice. At one point we ran by a cottage on the trail that was advertising the following: I would have sold my soul for a slushie at this point on the run, but we didn’t have any money so I had to soldier on with my stupid unflavored water like a chump. The next day we did another shorter run along the run course, and it was so freaking hot that I was running slower than usual at a higher heart rate. I started whining to myself about how hot and shitty it was before remembering that I was running slower than this pace last year and had traveled 135 miles further, and that my teammates would have to run an entire marathon in this heat tomorrow so shut up and finish your stupid little run. Sometimes you’re not allowed to complain no matter how crummy you feel, because you know that other folks will have it worse and that you yourself have been in worse situations. The morning of the race eventually rolled around and I sprang out of bed, giddy with excitement and adrenaline (Jason said I was over-stimulated). I had volunteered to be a sherpa for two of my teammates and friends who were racing with no family support, so I wanted to make sure they were taken care of before and after the race. We packed up our racers and Jason and I cranked “Welcome to the Jungle” for them because it’s the song that played last year for us when we were driving to the race start. Naturally, the day was long and hot and the race was tough. Although bike splits were faster than last year, runs were obviously slower due to the heat. Our team did the best they could under the conditions. One had to drop out due to injury, one dropped out because of a bike malfunction, one got pulled with heat stroke, and one missed the bike cutoff. They all battled hard and gave it an admirable effort, and the athletes who did finish did great, too. Instead of a full recap, I thought I’d give out some “awards” via photos that my teammates and I snapped throughout the day. Enjoy! The “Bad-Ass with Braids” Award goes to Kylee. She battled the barfies all day (from the swim to the bike to throughout the run) and still managed to become an Ironman. I remember how awful I felt for five miles during the Rev 3 run and can’t imagine throwing up for 15...

I signed up for Rev 3’s inaugural Portland 70.3 race way back in December along with about a thousand of my TN Multisports teammates. We were all pretty excited to try a non-Ironman branded race that was close to home, and Rev 3 had a reputation of being a challenging series…until they were forced to switch the venue at the last minute due to permit issues. Poop. Instead of a challenging course taking place in downtown Portland, we were treated to a flat, boring course out at Blue Lake Park, where a bunch of triathlons are already held each year. Most everyone’s reactions to the change: My reaction: Some of my teammates who are racing Ironman Canada next month were bummed because they wanted Rev 3 to be a challenging training race to help prepare for the big one in August. I, on the other hand, have had a season plagued with injury so news of the course change had little impact on me since I’d long given up on kicking ass this year and was instead trying to focus on having fun instead of beating myself up over factors I can’t control. I was more bummed that the race was less convenient to get to since our hotel would have been right in front of the old transition area, but oh well, shit happens. Week of the Race Naturally, leading up to the race I developed a last-minute hamstring injury because my body hates me, so before we left to drive down to Portland, I popped into see our team’s sports medicine doc for some last-minute TLC. (Yes, I know that’s a picture of my thigh, not my hamstring, but I wasn’t exactly limber enough to turn around and snap photos of the back of my leg when I was told to turn over for Round 2…wait, that sounds kind of dirty. It was a rape-free treatment, I swear.) The only other thing I could do for my hamstring all weekend was to alternate straddling a heating pad and a bag of ice like I was trying to hatch an egg and hope for the best. Day Before the Race On Saturday Jas and I woke up and headed to Blue Lake Park to meet with our teammates. As we drove by the transition area, I gawked at it and exclaimed, “Uh, that’s just for the pros, right?” I was mistaken. Apparently about 800-900 people dropped out or deferred their registration to next year when they found out about the venue change, leaving less than 500 people to race on Sunday. The transition area and registration set up was super dinky, giving this whole race a “small town” vibe. I felt like I was doing the Olympic distance Apple Capital race in Wenatchee instead of a fancy schmancy half Ironman. Even better was that my team’s 31 athletes represented over 5% of the race, so there was going to be a lot of blue and yellow out there on the course. Speaking of the team, we met them at the swim start, which is a lovely 0.5 miles away from the transition area across the street from the park. As we drove past numerous large parking lots and huge grassy areas, I kept sarcastically thinking, “If only Blue Lake Park had a spot big enough for transition!” Why they set up the actual transition area so far away from the swim is beyond me. Since the lake was roped off for pre-race swimming, all we could muster was a sad 30ish meter looping swim along the rope. I pulled on my Zoot suit and received an odd compliment from...

Recently I did the Issaquah sprint for the first time since 2008. It was my first triathlon of the season and the first race I was doing without my Big Friendly Giant racing alongside (meaning ahead) of me. Jason had signed up to do the Boise 70.3, which was a week after Issaquah, so he served as my cheering squad and gear sherpa for the day. I signed up for the event when I arrived, so no awesome shwag for me. Oh well, I have enough crappy finisher’s t-shirts to last me a while. I puttered over to my transition spot to set up my crap while the race organizers blasted the sleepiest “pump you up” music ever. After hearing Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends” and a mini-marathon of Police songs, I wondered whether I should be racing or watching an end-of-the-episode, post-breakup clip montage from Dawson’s Creek. The girl racked next to me realized she didn’t have a pair of goggles, so I lent her an extra that I had. We joked about the less-than-stellar music playlist before I headed out for a warm up run. I jogged down to the swim start and realized how different the race was set up this year compared to when I did it back in 2008. For one, we were swimming at a different beach. The transition area was also set up pretty far away from the swim exit, so it was going to be a longish T1. After getting lubed up and pulling my wetsuit on, I got in the water to do a half-ass warm up swim. Sweet jesus, that lake was cold. It was colder than Greenlake, which I had swam in earlier that week. Rebecca no likey. “Oh well,” I thought, “I can survive a measly 400 meters. Remember when you swam 2.4 miles in August? Sure, you were 10 lbs lighter and in better race shape, but this won’t be so bad! Plus, it’s not even your ‘A’ race so stop giving a shit and just get this nonsense over with.” Roughly fifteen hundred wave starts later, it was finally time for my group to get in the water. I squirted out one last pre-race pee before the air gun went off. Time to race! Swim Summary I took off amid a cluster of females, my nerves and adrenaline propelling me along at a fast (for me, anyway), unsustainable pace. I swam for a while, and when I eventually looked up, I realized that the group I thought I was keeping up with had, as usual, left me behind. Boo. My swim felt kind of tired and lethargic, which was a big ol’ bummer because I had a good pool workout earlier in the week and a decent open water swim. Of course my arms chose race day to be all, “Screw this, we’re tired.” It was at that point I decided that 400 meter swims suck. I only have one swim speed, which is “mediocre.” That speed becomes more embarrassing the shorter the distance. Swim time: 0:09:22 (2:20/100 meters) Wow, talk about tragic. Even though I was faster than my first attempt at this race three years ago, I was really disappointed when I crawled out of the water and glanced at my watch. I had expected to be a minute to 90 seconds faster (even 30 seconds on the slow end). Later, however, I found out from a couple people that the swim course was most likely measured wrong and that we had swum more than 400 meters. My teammate Kim compared swim times from this year to previous years and...

Before I put up my Issaquah sprint triathlon race recap, I thought I’d crank out a delayed recap of the Mt. Rainier Duathlon, which I did on May 1st. Enjoy! Until recently, I haven’t been focused on races and have instead been trying to get my right Achilles tendon healthy. Now that it finally seems as if it’s mostly on the mend, Teresa has taken advantage of my newfound health and has been bugging me about my 2011 race season. First up was the Mt. Rainier duathlon, which I wasn’t thrilled about because I wasn’t optimistic about how well I’d do (especially since I was fresh off an injury, hadn’t been running much lately, and had gained a shame-inducing amount of weight in the offseason). My grumblings fell on deaf ears, and both my trainer and my somewhat bullying boyfriend peer pressured me into signing up. (Well, technically Jason signed me up, but he used my credit card. Bastard.) Because of my running handicap, I got out of doing the long course for the third straight year, but Jason opted to finally pop his long course cherry. I wasn’t optimistic about posting a PR this time around and instead opted to focus on not embarrassing myself. Since I didn’t expect to run better than last year, I figured I could at least improve my bike time. Jason’s goal was to take the big descent back to transition confidently since he was still a bit shaky after last year’s bike accident. We got to the race and although the rain had held off and it was remarkably sunny, it was also ball-shrinkingly cold (if I had balls, that is) and holding steady at about 36 degrees. I began to immediately fret over what to wear: should I have gloves? Should I wear the team windbreaker? Is a t-shirt and arm warmers enough or do I need to don a parka OH GOD I’M GOING TO FREEZE TO DEATH OUT THERE. I reminded myself that I often race warm and ended up going with the “Screw it, it’s a short race that I don’t really care about” approach to getting ready. Jason and the other long course racers started five minutes before us shorties, so I gave him a hug and a kiss and wished him good luck. I stood around with my teammates until it was our turn to get started. Let my first race of 2011 commence! Run #1 I wasn’t sure how hard to go out on the first run leg, so I just took off like a spaz and ran as best I could. I had to dodge several horses since this year we were sharing the area with some Enumclaw horse show nonsense, but it wasn’t too annoying because the first run is so short. I thought about trying to chase down Jason’s sister who was also doing the race before remembering that she had just done the Boston Marathon and I was newly uninjured, so unless I wanted to keel over and die on the bike portion of the race, I’d better give up on unsuccessfully trying to catch someone who’s quite a bit faster than me. Boo. You just wait until I’m healthy, Danielle! …healthy and a much, much better runner. (Also, in this stupid run fantasy can you stop getting faster so I can catch up to you? K thanks.) Run #1 time: 12 min 33 seconds (7:51 min/mile pace) — not bad considering I had barely done any running (and haven’t done any speed work) in the past six months. T1 This year they changed how you enter and exit the transition...

Tomorrow I’m doing the Issaquah sprint triathlon. Fun fact: the Issaquah sprint was my first-ever triathlon three years ago. In typical Mediocre Athlete fashion, my first race didn’t go so well. Basically, I should be able to PR tomorrow by about 45 minutes unless my leg falls off or I get abducted. I thought I’d offer up an exceptionally belated race report so you have an idea of how my first-ever triathlon went way back in 2008 — enjoy! Back in 2008, I was training for my first half Ironman, the not-quite-half-Ironman-distance New Balance race in Victoria. I was a sorry sight, riding on a borrowed road bike with mountain bike pedals and swimming even more terribly than I do now. I was basically the Tai to Teresa’s Cher if this were the movie Clueless. Teresa urged me and Jason to do the Issaquah sprint triathlon so we’d have a little bit of race experience going into the Victoria half Ironman. Since it was my first tri, I was ridiculously nervous. Swim Summary The swim was a teeny tiny 400 meters — it would take you longer to get your wetsuit on and off than it would to actually swim that distance. Of course, I was convinced I was going to drown. I swam with a handful of other girls in my age group, stopping at every buoy to gasp for air and gaze longingly at the shore. Swim time: 10:29 (2:37/100 meters) As embarrassingly crappy as my swim was, it marked the only time I’ve beaten Jas during the swim portion of a race. Since this was his first ever open water swim, he panicked and flailed in the water and I ended up edging him out by a minute or so. (Check out the only Mediocre Athlete post my lazy boyfriend has ever written for a recap of his swim from that race.) Transition 1 My transitions have always been decent, even from the get-go, and my first race’s T1 was a respectable 2:14. I think I’m just anxious to get out of my stupid wetsuit as quickly as possible. No matter the reason, my transitions aren’t that bad. Bike Summary I hopped on my borrowed bike and made my way along the 15-mile course. It’s an out and back and I just puttered along with all the other racers. I didn’t have a bike computer at the time, so I had no idea how fast I was going or what my cadence was (it was probably pretty shitty). I momentarily went the wrong way when I followed some schmohawk who took a wrong turn, but thankfully the race volunteers quickly corrected us. When I was a few miles from transition, I was descending a hill when I noticed an odd noise coming from behind me. “That doesn’t sound normal,” I thought, so once I got to the bottom, I got off the bike and checked my rear tire. It was dead flat. Great, I’d gotten a flat tire during my first triathlon and not only did I not know how to change a flat, I didn’t have any tools or spares with me so I couldn’t even attempt to figure it out. I kind of stood there for a while, not knowing what to do, before eventually click-clacking down the road while pushing my neutered bike. Eventually my teammate Beth came along and, bless her heart, stopped to try and help me. She had a spare tire and tools, but the only problem was she didn’t know how to change a flat, either. We both fumbled around for a bit and got as far as taking...