I’ve been trying to get back into training after Ironman Canada, but it’s been slow and infrequent. First I had to heal up from my Ironman Canada crash, and after that I’ve struggled with juggling my workouts with a demanding work schedule and the fact that Borderlands 2 came out, turning me into a gaming couch potato whenever I have a free moment. But now that I’m bigger, slower, and more lethargic, I figured it’s time to get off my ass and commit to training once again. The first thing on my schedule: the Snohomish River Run. The race is this Saturday, October 27th, at Rotary Park in Everett. There’s a 10k and a half marathon option available, but since I haven’t been running a whole lot lately, I’m just doing the 10k. I haven’t run an official 10k before but I imagine that it’s a pretty crappy distance–if the amount of misery I feel when running a 5k is any indication, the 10k should feel not-quite-as-shitty but over a longer distance. My stumpy legs and I are no good at these short-to-mid distance races. I’m all about duration: the longer you stretch out a race, the less mediocre I am thanks to sheer stubbornness. So yeah, I’m running the 10k on Saturday. I’m not going into the event with an “OMG gotta race this” mentality; I’ll likely just treat it as a training run since I’m planning to do either the Phoenix Rock ‘n Roll Marathon or the Arizona IMS Marathon this January or February. My goal at that point is to try and qualify for Boston since Jason qualified at the Portland Marathon a couple weeks ago (that way, when we travel to the race in 2014, I’ll be able to run it too instead of standing on the sidelines inhaling donuts like I did in Portland…which, admittedly, wasn’t a bad way to spend my morning, but it did make me feel like a guilty fat-ass). The Snohomish River Run is sold out, unfortunately, but if you’ve already registered and plan on running this weekend, hopefully I’ll see you there and will avoid collapsing before the race is over, gasping and asking for someone to bring me an almond croissant. (It’s pretty sad how quickly out of shape I’ve gotten in less than two months.) As always, I’ll follow up the race with a little recap, so stay tuned for...

So I survived Day 1 of the Ironman Canada training camp despite getting blinded and nearly being taken out by a car on the highway. I was still nursing raw eyes when I woke up for Day 2, but I was happy that I wouldn’t have to ride another 112 in the crappy heat. Unfortunately, I’d succumb to the heat in other ways, although my downfall was more due to my poor breakfast choice than the heat alone. (Still, I have to blame something other than my own dumb self, right?) With that said, let’s kick off Day 2 of my 2012 Ironman Canada Training Camp recap. Day 2: Eggs Benny is Not My Buddy My excitement for not having to swim on Day 1 was short-lived, as Day 2 started off with a 30 minute dip in Okanagan Lake. The swim wasn’t too bad, though–the water temperature was nice and I bullied a less-than-thrilled Steve to swim with me despite the fact that he’s not even training for anything (“I just like camps!”–Steven Hooper, 2012). After our dip in the lake, we had to change quickly and hop on our bikes for a 30-ish mile easy effort ride. I headed out with my peeps and immediately discovered that my ladybits wanted nothing to do with the aero position whatsoever. The crotchal region was pissed at me for yesterday’s century-plus sufferfest, so I resorted to sitting upright and catching wind like a human sail for the entire ride. My teammates left me in the dust but I was content to stay comfortable since I didn’t want a horrible sequel to Crotchfest 2012, plus I was trying to leave enough gas in the tank for my long run later that day (insert ominous foreshadowing here). When I got back to the parking lot, I was told by Teresa to rest a bit and eat a good meal before the team was going to start their run workout. She wanted us all to wait until the afternoon to begin running so we could hit the course at the hottest part of the day. Since we had a decent amount of downtime, we could eat a legitimate lunch. Teresa, however, being all Cautious Coach, gave us some guidelines for eating. T: “Eat something light and easy on your stomach before your long run. It’s going to be hot and you don’t want to aggravate your system.” My interpretation of what she said: After a full day of workouts Friday and two hours of workouts already under my belt on Saturday, my body was in a perpetual state of feeling ravenous. Jason and I wandered around trying to find a place to eat and ended up at the resort hotel/casino restaurant overlooking the lake. Waitress: “What can I get you?” Me: “Can I get the potato hash?” Must eat smart! Long, hot run ahead! Waitress: “Sure thing.” *scribbles it down* Jason: “I’ll have a blueberry smoothie and eggs Benedict.” Me: “Ooh, that sounds good.” The waitress left but returned after a few minutes. Waitress: “I’m sorry, we’re out of the potato hash. Can I get you something else instead?” Me: “Screw it, I tried. EGGS BENEDICT, PLEASE!” My meal consisted of eggs Benedict (ham, poached eggs, English muffins, and Hollandaise sauce which is made from craploads of butter, lemon, and egg yolks), breakfast potato wedges, ketchup, generous sips of Jason’s dairy-rich blueberry smoothie, and chunks of buttery croissant that we got as a side order. The stomach felt great since it was all full and happy. By the time we got done eating, we pretty much had to return back to the hotel...

I’ve officially hit “burnout” phase of Ironman training. You all know the feeling–you just want to go into hibernation mode after logging into Training Peaks and seeing what your week’s worth of workouts looks like, and even a one hour recovery spin at an easy heart rate feels like a two and a half hour threshold sufferfest. Not helping matters was the fact that I started a new job right when my last big training ramp up hit, so balancing a demanding (yet thus far exciting) work load with over 15 hours of training has left me exhausted and cranky. August 26th can’t come soon enough. Last week I was faced with a two hour run that I very much did not want to do, but since I hadn’t had a long run on my schedule in a while (minus my Rev 3 Portland run off the bike), I forced myself to grab my running shoes because I figured the workout was crucial. Plus, since I was already mentally and physically drained before even starting the run, the workout seemed especially beneficial since it’d probably emulate how craptacular I’d feel at around mile 18 of the Ironman Canada run course. I took off from my house rockin’ a pretty wicked running shmood (that’s “shitty mood” for those of you who aren’t hip to the Mediocre Athlete lingo). My legs felt heavy, various body parts ached, I felt like I needed to sleep for 14 straight hours, the sun was too bright, it was hot and muggy out, my stomach ached, you know the drill. Every ten minutes I contemplated throwing in the “Fuck this” towel and heading back to my house, but I forced myself to run further out and intentionally place my groggy ass far enough away that I’d have to run back without being able to cut the workout short. You’ve all had one of those days where you feel like ass and just want to get through your workout–you’re not in the mood to talk to anyone or put up with any bullshit. All you want to do is stick your head down and swim, grit your teeth and bike, or squint your eyes and run, and you don’t even want to do the stupid workout but you’re making yourself anyway, so you’re already in a shmood before you get going and a mixture of exasperation and general irritability is all that’s fueling you to get through it. That’s how it was for this run. So perhaps the minor altercation I had with a dude in front of the Seattle Tennis Club could have been avoided or handled better, but I had been hit hard with the running shmood and my tolerance was at an all-time low. I was running on the sidewalk approaching the Tennis Club when I saw a grubby guy who looked very much like Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force loading items from a delivery van into the building via a side entrance. I would have paid this man no mind were it not for the fact that he was blocking the entire sidewalk with boxes and a hand truck. Not a big deal, he’s clearly working on moving supplies from the van into the building–it’s not like he’s intentionally blocking the path or anything. As Carl pivoted from the van towards the building entrance with his hand truck of boxes, I said, “Excuse me” and ran in front of him on the sidewalk, between the entrance and the van. I couldn’t run off the sidewalk onto the street because the van was blocking me, and I wasn’t about to stop and...

On Saturday Jason and I woke up early-ish to meet our teammates for a trail run over at Cougar Mountain. It was a nice sunny morning that gave way to thick fog and decreased temperatures as we puttered across I-90 to the park entrance, but by the time we arrived it was sunny again (albeit a bit humid). You gotta love Seattle and its schizophrenic weather. I had only done the Cougar Mountain trail workout once before and I was a lot chunkier and slower, so I was looking forward to attacking the trails in my leaner, meaner state. The last time I did the run, I wheezed my way up the hills feeling miserable and bloated. I don’t have a picture of myself from Saturday’s workout, but I estimate that I’m about 14 lbs lighter and considerably faster than I was in the above chunkeriffic photo. Hooray for eating like a normal human being for a change! We waited for our squadron of teammates to arrive, and I figured I’d have plenty of peeps to run with. My hopes were dashed when five people showed up: Tom, who just did Ironman Canada and wouldn’t be taking the workout seriously Amanda, who also just did Ironman Canada and also gave zero shits about the workout Brent, who has qualified for the Boston Marathon Coach Bridget, who is much faster than me Coach Kim, who is much much much faster than me Awesome, so that leaves the fast group (Kim, Bridget, Jason, Brent), the “We just did an Ironman so fuck you” group (Tom, Amanda), and me, the cheese, left to run by herself yet again. I’ve either got to get a hell of a lot faster or just give up and sandbag it from now on, because this middle of the pack nonsense is getting pretty lonely. Before we got started, Bridget inexplicably thought it would be a good idea to attach her $400 Garmin watch to her dog’s collar to see how fast and far her pooch would travel during the workout. We didn’t think it was the smartest idea considering Zoe started chasing the watch’s reflection across the parking lot as soon as Bridget strapped it onto her collar, but Bridget’s gonna do what Bridget’s gonna do. And thus we took off. Almost immediately we settled into Fast Group, the Mediocre Athlete Team of One, and the Ironcouple. Zoe shot off like a rocket, weaving in and out of the woods and crashing through trees like a sasquatch on angel dust. We had been running for less than ten minutes when the dog returned to Bridget, panting happily. I heard a loud “MOTHER FUCKER” and immediately knew the cause of said expletive. By the time I caught up to Fast Group, the look on Coach B’s face pretty obviously identified the problem: Zoe lost the Garmin watch. Surprise! Bridget left Fast Group to try and find her watch, so they took off without her while I chased them to no avail. Pretty soon they dropped me like I was a holiday flavored gel (seriously, mint chocolate? Eggnog? Nobody likes that shit) and I found myself alone on the trail. My run felt really good and I stayed steady and strong, albeit ridiculously sweaty as I trudged through the thick, humid air. At one point a guy and his buddy passed me twice going the same direction, causing me to double-take and say, “Didn’t I just see you guys?” the second time we crossed paths. Either there was a glitch in the Matrix or those dudes were lost. The run went tons better than the first time I...

A couple days ago I had a hill repeat run workout scheduled in glorious 83 degree heat. My hamstrings were already screaming at me from a tough week of strength training so I wasn’t really looking forward to the run, but I knew it needed to get logged so I HTFU’d and pulled on my running shoes. After a 15 minute warm up that consisted of the shortest strides ever thanks to too-tight legs, I made it to the bottom of the hill I would climb six times. Jason had a hill repeat run too, only he had eight climbs because he’s more beastly than I am. We both started at the Volunteer Park Cafe on Galer in Capitol Hill and would run from there up a steep 200 meters until we reached the entrance to Volunteer Park, then we’d turn around and jog back down. The hill is somewhat crappy — it’s a steady climb for most of the way up and then has a nice and shitty steep finish. My hamstrings actually felt less sore when I climbed so the repeats actually weren’t too bad. I was running up the sidewalk during my last repeat when I glanced across the street and noticed two absolutely stupid looking Boston terriers running up the sidewalk too. A mild wave of annoyance crossed through me as I thought the owner was probably behind the dogs and had let them off the leash like a douchebag. When I got to the top of the hill, I turned around to descend but saw nobody in sight. At this point the dogs had reached the top of the hill and were darting all over the place in a spazzy little frenzy. Some random dude who looked like Wilford Brimley emerged from the park, saw the terriers, and exclaimed, “Well where did you two come from?” He fended off oncoming cars while trying to shoo the dogs out of harm’s way. The terriers turned around and started shooting back down the hill. By now Jason had realized that I was more interested in the dogs than in doing my cooldown, so he looked on in annoyance while I tried to flag the dogs down. He and I are mostly compatible with a few exceptions: He hates when I make hard-boiled eggs or eat tuna fish because they’re stinky I get annoyed every time he washes his face and flings water all over the bathroom mirror He’s not a big “pet person” Regarding #3, Jason and I are like the Sharks and the Jets from West Side Story. I grew up with a plethora of animals — since childhood, I’ve had a pet hamster, a bunny, a guinea pig, a cat (pre-allergies), and a wild assortment of dogs I’ve loved (my brother’s beagle) and loathed (two stupid, high maintenance chows). He, on the other hand, grew up in a pet-free home, so he’s never had much interaction with furry critters and is therefore pretty “meh” about them in general. I want to get a dog but he’s very eye-rolling about the matter. Since we’re at a standstill regarding bringing a dog into the household, I have to get my doggy fix with random pooches I come across. Okay, back to the Boston terriers. The big one shot down the hill on the other side of the street but the little one started to run towards me. I clapped my hands and coaxed it over, then spent a few minutes chasing it around until I managed to half-tackle the damn thing (I should have logged the extra time and distance with the rest of my workout...