Last year I bitched and moaned about having to do the Mt. Rainier duathlon because it was all the way over in Enumclaw and had a 2 mile hill that sucks ass to climb. Jason Jedi mind-tricked me into racing and I ended up taking 3rd in my age group. This year I did the duathlon again, and since I’ve been hitting my workouts pretty diligently and am training for a fatty Ironman, the race was one of my best ever. This year to prep for the duathlon, I ended up riding the course four times in one day (gotta love those long long long training rides) and got to know the Mud Mountain Road hill quite intimately. I also did a bike ride with some girls over Teresa’s bachelorette weekend that included an absolutely absurd 6+ mile hill that took me an hour to climb. After wimpily conquering that, Mud Mountain Road felt like a piece of cake. Throw in some good track workouts to improve my runs and I felt pretty good waking up at the butt crack of dawn on Sunday morning to race. Last year I raced a 1:36:37. My only goal this time around was to PR and to try and bike 50 minutes or under (I biked a 51:22 last year). Jas and I showed up and set up our transition areas. It was cold but sunnier than last year, and it ended up warming up fairly quickly so I just raced in my usual tri gear and threw on some arm warmers for good measure. Some of my training buddies raced in bike shorts, which I cannot fathom how comfortable it is to waddle-run with a huge cushy load near your ass and taint. Most of my teammates raced the long course but five of us represented Team Shorty. We started the race and I pushed myself to run a good but not super strenuous first leg so that I wouldn’t feel like collapsing once I got to transition. After the first 1.6 mile run I grabbed my bike and embarked as fast as I could. I felt pretty good and kept mentally telling myself to push it during the bike part of the race. When I got to the Mud Mountain Road hill, I had my best climb to date. Don’t get me wrong, it was still kind of crappy and I got passed by better climbers, but I felt pretty good and steady and was able to scale it without feeling like I was going to crap myself afterwards. (Plus, I re-passed just about everyone who passed me on the hill, so suck it.) When I got back to transition, a couple of my teammates who weren’t racing that day shouted some words of encouragement and told me, to my surprise, that I was the third female to finish the bike portion. I clickity-clacked into transition to rack my bike and pull on my Zoots, and Jason’s parents cheered me on. Jason’s mom said, “I think you’re the first female!” When I responded with, “I heard I was third,” she said, “Oh…those must have been some manly looking women then.” I chuckled and started run #2. My pace felt a bit fast but steady, and I just kept thinking push push push. I still felt good and just wanted to have a good race. At one point I passed a female and got excited, but then another female went blowing by me and I never caught up to her. She ended up beating me by about 30 seconds. *shakes fist* Anyway, I was maybe less than a mile from the...

This coming Sunday I’m running a dinky little marathon in Goodyear, Arizona. It’s the IMS Marathon, and this is only the second year of the race (last year they scheduled it the same day as the Phoenix Rock ‘n Roll, so turnout was ridiculously low). I can think of no better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than to drag my stubby legs 26.2 miles in the arid southwestern heat.

Good lord, this post is so belated that it’s probably not even worth publishing. Oh well, deal with it — I’m pretty sure Jason poisoned me with the lunch he made, so before I wither up and die I might as well share my recap of Ironman Canada 2009. In August Jason and I headed to Penticton, BC, to watch some of our training buddies race the full Ironman and so Jason could sign up for the 2010 race (you basically have to sign up for full Ironman races on-site because they sell out so quickly). He had been badgering me non-stop to sign up as well, and I kept vehemently shooting him down, telling him again and again that I didn’t think I’d be ready and that I wanted to improve my half distance times before even thinking about tackling a full. Eventually Jas stopped hounding me and figured he’d just go it alone next year. We packed up some things for the weekend and were just about to leave when Jason randomly decided to call his dad and see if he wanted to tag along. Brief aside: Jason’s dad is awesome. He’s the kind of spectator you want watching you race because he’s genuinely interested in athletics and sports. He’ll show up at 5 am to watch things get set up and will wait around all day until the race ends. Best support system ever. Anyway, surprisingly enough, Jason’s dad wanted to tag along at the last minute so we headed to his parent’s house and picked him up for the long haul to Penticton. (Or, rather, we drove to Jason’s parents’ house and Jason’s dad drove from there. Woo hoo, free ride!) The area in and around Penticton is gorgeous — huge lakes, rolling hills and valleys, wine country galore. I’ve also never seen a town embrace the Ironman like Penticton. There were signs everywhere welcoming athletes and advertising the Ironman. Hell, the town Subaru dealership is even called “The Ironman City Subaru.” After coming from the most redneck, anti-Ironman Ironman race I’d seen, Penticton felt like I’d died and gone to athlete heaven. When we got into town, we made our way to the house that we were staying at for the next couple days. My friend/chiropractor/fellow triathlete Nathan was racing Canada and had rented a house, and he had an extra room to spare. What I didn’t expect was for the house to look like the family who owned it had just left hours before we got there — personal photos and whatnot were left out, making me feel like I had just broken into someone’s house and decided to crash there, Goldilocks-style. Undoubtedly because Nathan despises me for canceling so many chiro appointments, he decided to save this room for me and Jason: Not only was this girl obsessed with Zac Efron… …she also seemed to side with Team Brown: Jason’s dad opted to sleep on the floor since he was a last-minute house guest, so the three of us spent the night inside a 13-year old girl’s room, surrounded by glossy two-dimensional teen heartthrobs, nightmare-inducing clowns, and a lavender phone shaped like a pair of lips. Race day arrived, and we awoke to find an amusing checklist left on the counter top by one of the racers staying in the house: We headed to the start to watch the race and to support our friends. I was absolutely blown away by the crowd of people who showed up to support the race. There were groups of spectators everywhere, and they cheered just as loudly for non-pros as they did the pros. It...

Recently Jason and a number of my triathlon teammates raced Ironman Lake Stevens 70.3. I had been training for the race but decided at the last minute not to do it because I had traveled to San Francisco, Napa Valley and San Jose the week before and had too much booze and horrible food sloshing around my system to feel prepared to tackle a half Ironman. Nonetheless, I watched the race anyway to cheer on my friends and the BFG. A word of advice to any triathletes out there reading this: if you’re thinking of racing Ironman Lake Stevens, don’t. First of all, Lake Stevens sucks. If Washington state had a hillbilly cousin, Lake Stevens would be that hillbilly cousin’s poo-crusted butthole. It’s such a crappy town that the only thing the official Ironman race catalogs can advertise about the area is that it has a Buzz Inn Steakhouse, which looks about as classy as the bar where Jodie Foster got raped in The Accused. The town literally consists of this skeezy restaurant, a Subway, a crappy foodmart, a burger shack, and, inexplicably, a town museum (maybe they wanted to commemorate the day they scored a Subway franchise). To answer your next question, no, there are no hotels in Lake Stevens, so if you’re thinking of flying in to do this race then lucky you, you get to stay in Everett or a neighboring city. (And no, Seattle is not “twenty minutes away,” as I heard one race official tell someone over the phone; it’s more like 50 minutes.) Secondly, the “lake” part of Lake Stevens is filthy. It smells terrible and is full of garbage. When Jason swam in it the day before the race, he said the bottom of the lake was littered with beer cans and junk. Teresa said she spotted an old rusted chair while swimming. Jason and his dad once saw a half-submerged mattress in the lake after they finished a bike ride, and I had the pleasure of experiencing an obese kid with a rat tail throwing firecrackers into the lake as I was standing in it for a post-workout ice bath. This lake is the town’s urinal — they don’t give a crap about it and they certainly don’t take care of it, so excuse me for not wanting to pay a couple hundred dollars to do a race that involves swimming in it for 1.2 miles. Thirdly, the bike course is horrible. It’s two loops and is a challenge for sure, with a few tough hills, a lot of false flats, and many twists and turns. However, what I hate most about the course is that the town’s inhabitants are so mean and inconsiderate to cyclists that it makes for a stressful, miserable ride. Every time I’ve ridden the course I’ve had some redneck in a Ford F-150 angrily honk at me as he passes me at 50 mph. And surprise surprise, Ironman didn’t close off the course during the actual race so my friends said they kept getting passed by jerks in cars who would angrily swerve and honk at all of the cyclists who were racing. Jesus Christ, this race is one day out of the year — you’d think that these a-holes could show some courtesy and put up with a few hours of inconvenience, but no, they’ve gotta get to Walmart or a monster truck rally or a Larry the Cable Guy viewing party or wherever the hell they’re rushing to. The cherry on top of this turd sundae was the expo hall for the race. Race organizers had the expo hall in Everett, because, as I’ve...

Jason and I signed up for the inaugural Seattle Rock ‘n Roll Marathon that’s happening this Saturday. We wanted to do the full but when we ran it by Teresa she gave us an “Are you serious” look and convinced us that tackling a marathon two weeks after doing a 70.3 isn’t the smartest idea we’ve had this year. We begrudgingly settled for the half, but after shredding my feet in Boise I’m thinking I made the right decision. I’d like to finish in under 1:50, having done a 1:52 and change at the Vancouver Half Marathon nearly two months ago. However, I haven’t run much lately (I wouldn’t call my Boise lurch much of a training run since I was going pretty slow, and since then I’ve been in recovery mode and letting my feet heal) so I’m not sure how well I’ll do. Jason’s itching to do a sub 1:40 and I think he’ll pull it off because he’s pretty stubborn and has been doing great with his training this season. Plus, even if he does pass out, at least we’re in our hometown so I can just drag him over to Harborview, get him pumped full of IV fluids and head home. So…those are our Saturday morning plans. I’ll post another entry letting all five of you who read this blog how well we did. If you’re watching the race, be sure to cheer on the TN Multisport runners and give us plenty of encouragement....