When you spend a decent amount of time training with fitness-oriented people, you often get sucked into extra-curricular activities that have an athletic or healthy twist. Like the time I went to my coach’s bachelorette weekend and ended up riding 80 miles through a canyon. Or the time I went to a dinner party that turned out to be gluten, dairy, chicken, various nuts, and egg-free. Or when a couple of weeks ago I did a “holidazzle” run with some of the fittest and fastest females in Seattle. It’s my fault, really. I accept these invitations knowing full well I’m in over my head and that these speedy chicks are going to mop the floor with this Mediocre Athlete. But I go anyway because I’m a glutton for punishment and because I think of myself as fairly easygoing (probably ingrained from “youngest child syndrome” and having grown up with two older brothers barking at me to get in the back seat without asking my opinion on the intricacies of vehicular seating charts). So, with some trepidation, I accepted Ms. Cathleen Knutson‘s invitation to partake in her annual “Holidazzle” pre-Christmas holiday run through Queen Anne. The plan was simple enough: dress up in your goofiest Christmas attire and meet at Cathleen’s apartment before running to a bar for some drinks, then running some more throughout Richy Richville before returning to Cathleen’s for food, booze, and merriment. I tried not to think about how I was going to be the slowest chick there (Cathleen, aka Female Rambo, was fresh off her second straight Ironman Kona appearance and regularly kicks my ass in age group placings [meaning she wins our age group while I’m finishing in the middle of the pack on a good day], and a bunch of other females were also Kona veterans or could outswim, bike, and run me any day of the week). Since I was sorely lacking in the “Christmas merriment” clothing, I settled on a glitzy run headband I received as a Secret Santa gift, a red scarf, and my beloved shark mittens, then waved goodbye to Jas and hopped in my car. Unfortunately, the dreaded Denny traffic ensured that I was super late in getting to Cathleen’s, so by the time I got to her apartment, the girls had already left. I knew that they would end up at the Paragon Bar & Grill towards the early part of the evening, so I looked up the address on my phone. Then I realized I didn’t want to run who knows how many miles with my phone and that I had the bare minimum definition of a pants pocket (thanks for the Lululemon run capris, Teresa!). After some head scratching, I found a clean Subway napkin in my glove box, scrawled the address onto it, shoved my car keys into the tiniest pocket ever, and took off for the bar. Cathleen assured the girls that this would be a “leisurely” run, but she didn’t account for the fact that some of us would show up late and spazz-sprint through Queen Anne to try and meet up with the main group. I ran up several hills, then would get turned around and double back to where I started. Eventually I came across the sketchiest and rapiest staircase in Seattle and reluctantly made my way up them, sporting my most convincing “You best not mess with me, muggers and/or serial killers!” sneer while simultaneously trying to look where I was going in the nonexistent light to avoid tripping and breaking my neck. I made it to the top unscathed and continued on, struggling to read my scraggly handwriting...

Every once in a while I make a return to yoga as if I’m trying it out for the first time and have forgotten how much I “nothing” it. It’s like forgetting how crappy candy corn is for 11 months out of the year, only to rediscover it in October and remember how waxy it tastes. Nonetheless, I thought I’d give hot yoga a try because I’m doing two tropical destination half Ironman races next season and figured the humid yoga room could potentially help a bit with acclimation. I’ve done hot yoga a couple times. It’s not bad, but since I’m naturally a sweaty person, I’m literally the only one in the room whose shins are sweating because I’m perspiring so much. I end up in my shame corner soaking wet while these yoga goddesses in booty shorts, sports bras, and 12-packs are contorting their bodies into pretzels without even a strand of hair getting frizzy. It’s lame. This time around I bought a Living Social (or Groupon, or whatever the daily deal site was) special for a hot yoga place in Capitol Hill and my friend Lauren and I met up to try it out. We showed up and filled out the “I won’t sue the facility if I sweat myself to death” forms, then dropped our stuff off in the locker room before stepping into the hot yoga room. The first thing I noticed (and smelled) was that the space was carpeted. Uh what? This is a 90-minute yoga session in which the room is heated to over 90 degrees and someone thought it’d be smart to carpet the floors? It stank like musty feet and stale armpit sweat. I was not thrilled. Lauren and I set up shop in the back of the room. I spread out my brand new yoga mat that I bought off Amazon.com because apparently forest green is an unpopular mat color (pink, on the other hand, would have cost me a monthly car payment). The sinewy instructor entered and started the group off with a ridiculously long series of breaths and shouts. Everyone began to moan as if they were zombies, and I instinctively looked for the nearest ax or blunt object in case I needed to peg someone in the head and make my sweaty escape. After the B.S. breathing, we began contorting and stretching and yoga-ing. The instructor kept firing off instructions one after another without pausing, making me wonder if she doubles as an auctioneer on the weekends. She’d bark at me and Lauren every so often whenever we didn’t contort to her liking, and she kept calling Lauren “Laura,” which got more and more awkward the longer we were in class. Pretty soon I was drenched with sweat. I couldn’t see because whenever I’d bend over, all of the perspiration on my face would dump into my eyes. My towel was all spongy so it offered little reprieve. I sighed and kept telling myself that somehow this would help me survive the hot and humid runs in Costa Rica and Hawaii. At one point I looked down and saw that I was so saturated with sweaty nastiness that the scab on my knee (which I got from scraping it on the bottom of the pool during the previous week’s swim class, another reason why swim class is dumb) had hydrated itself and fallen off. It was now perched on my yoga mat in a soggy little ball. My reaction: I was literally sous vide-ing myself to the point where parts of me were falling off. It was like shredding a slow cooked piece of pork. Four...

I’ve been forcing myself to go to the group swims held every other weekend in an effort to improve my swim splits this coming season from “abysmal” to “passably mediocre.” I went to the first one on dead legs thanks to two hours of workouts beforehand, then missed the second group swim because I was running on empty and needed a rest day. The third class was this past weekend, and as always, I dreaded it because it involved me getting into a pool and using horrible form to propel myself through chilly chlorinated water. For this particular swim class, however, Teresa decided to torture me further by announcing that we were all going to work on flip turns. Unsurprisingly, this mediocre athlete don’t do flip turns. I very obviously lack the coordination and skill to pull off a graceful somersault in the water and push off the wall in one fluid motion. Once I went to a flip turn clinic that Teresa was teaching at the Seattle Athletic Club, and not only did I burn out my sinuses from the military-grade chlorine that flooded my nasal passages every time I contorted my body underwater (Teresa’s shouts to “Tuck your chin!” did not help, as apparently I am incapable of scrunching my head in that manner), I would more often than not attempt to flip at the end of the lane and end up in the one next to me, having somehow maneuvered myself underneath the lane divider and crookedly emerging in some other swimmer’s personal space. “Just practice doing flip turns during your warm ups and cool downs!”, Teresa would tell me. Uh yeah, if I can’t even stay in my lane during a mostly empty swim clinic, I can’t imagine a pool full of lap swimmers would appreciate my flailing appendages slapping into them while I repeatedly apologize and insist to their bruised faces that practice makes perfect. So yeah, flip turns aren’t for me. It’s not a big deal–I’m slow and crappy enough as it is, so adding a flip turn into the mix isn’t going to be the deciding factor in me suddenly becoming as fast as Dara Torres. When I get to the wall I just turn around and push off, so it’s not like I’m taking a five minute break at each end. I’ve accepted the fact that flip turns and I will never have a future together in a pool with a yard and a white picket fence and 2.5 kiddie pools, and that’s okay. Or so I thought. Here T was trying to force flip turns on me once again. She’d have us swim for a bit and then do something dumb like somersault in the middle of the pool. Fortunately, she exempted those of us who “got dizzy” when trying flip turns, so I feigned vertigo and opted just to swim a couple laps instead. The next step was to have people swim to the end of a lane and attempt a flip turn, but I opted to splash around in the middle of the pool and daydream about the day when the swim portion of a triathlon would be replaced with something more practical like light stretching or cookie eating. After the flip turn nonsense, as the workout came to an end I thought I was in the clear. And then T did something especially dastardly: she combined my two most loathed swim activities, flip turns and relays. Teresa is a fan of concluding the swim classes with some relay bullshit, which I hate because it makes me irrationally stressed. She breaks us into groups and gives us some...

Before yesterday I had never actually run the Seattle marathon or the half marathon. I had tried to convince Jas that we should sign up in previous years, but he never wanted to because it sounded terribly unappealing to him. I don’t blame the guy; the race is three days after Thanksgiving during a supremely shitty time of the year to be running outside in Seattle. Despite his yearly disinterest, however, this time he finally agreed to sign up for the marathon since he cut his triathlon season short and wanted something to train for before diving into Ironman training. Meanwhile, since I was finally healed of my running ailments and was once again able to run relatively well, I wanted to do the half marathon. I hadn’t run a standalone half marathon since Eugene in May 2010, and since I had only been running strong for 2 1/2 months, I didn’t really have many expectations going into the Seattle half. It’s a tough, hilly course that isn’t typically PR-friendly, so although I was hoping to run 1:45 or better (my previous best was a 1:46:46), I figured I’d be satisfied with a sub-1:50. Jason, meanwhile, was hoping to finally have a “good” marathon (his words), as he usually ends up cramping towards the end and has to compromise speed for the last few miles due to his size. This time he’d be racing 40 lbs lighter and with a ton of mileage under his belt, plus he figured the cooler temperatures would mean he’d be less likely to cramp, so he was excited and nervous for Sunday to roll around. On Saturday we did our customary “Ugh, I’m feeling so tired ahhhh why does my foot hurt oh god I’m getting sick aren’t I man this race is not going to go well” freak outs and lazed around the house hydrating and acting like hypochondriacs. We also agonized over what to wear for the race. Naturally, since the weather had been relatively mild for the past few years, weather forecasts called for supremely shitty weather on race day because we were unlucky enough to sign up for the race this year (no joke, I was watching the news and the meteorologist actually said Sunday was going to be “sucky”). It was projected to be warmer than usual temperature-wise, but it looked like we’d have to battle rain and wind, so Jason and I were scratching our heads and putting way too much effort into what to wear: Underarmour shirt and a long-sleeved shirt with tights and gloves! Wait, no, just an underarmour shirt and a t-shirt with a pair of shorts Well hold on a second, what about a long-sleeved shirt and shorts No, tights and a t-shirt! Or I could do tights, pants, underarmour, long-sleeved, gloves, a hat, a parka, a hazmat suit, ski pants… This went on for about an hour before I ultimately muttered “Fuck it, I’ll just figure it out tomorrow when I’m half-awake” and we went to bed. The next morning we woke up at 5:45 and ate breakfast (I got my “race day” coffee, something I haven’t ingested since July’s Rev 3 triathlon). I went with the uber-dweeb getup of tights, run shorts, an underarmour shirt, and a TN Multisports t-shirt and also packed a cheap pair of gloves to wear. I grabbed my fuel and some dry clothes to put on after I was done because the genius organizers decided to start the half marathoners at 7:30 and the marathoners at 8:15, so I’d have to wait around for 2+ hours after my race for Jason to be done and didn’t...

I know it’s only November, but Teresa has me training like my “A” race is right around the corner (and it kind of is since I’m running the Seattle Half Marathon). I’m a bit nervous about having such a jam-packed 2012 race schedule after coming off a fat and injured 2011 season, but I’m feeling good and the coach seems pretty confident in me, so it’s game on, beeyotches. Behold, my 2012 race season (aka, the last year I get to race in the glorious 25-29 age group before being thrown to the fast and strong 30+ assholes): November 26th: Seattle Half Marathon This will be my first half marathon since the Eugene half in spring 2010, where I PR’d on a relatively flat and fast course. I’ve never done the Seattle half or full marathon despite having lived here for over 10 years. There’s something about the course being difficult and the fact that it’s during a typically shitty time of the year weather-wise that hasn’t struck me as being terribly appealing. However, a ton of teammates are racing the half and a lean and fast Jas is hoping to run a 3:30 or better in the full, so I decided to woman up and race it too. It’s hard to say what I’ll bust out on Sunday–I’ve been running well lately, which is a refreshing change from how slow and painful my runs were for the first half of 2011. I’d like to do 1:45 or better, which would be a PR for me (on a tough course, no less), but as long as I have a solid, strong race, I’ll be pretty happy. March 18, 2012: Rev 3 Costa Rica It’s happening, folks! Jason and I are going to kick off the tri season waaaaaaay too early for my tastes by doing our first half Ironman of the year in freaking March. I bet my first outdoor ride and open water swim will be the week we get there, right before the race. The trip will actually end up being relatively inexpensive since I used miles to book our plane tickets and we’ll be sharing a house rental with two other couples. The pricey part will be hauling our crap and the race registration. One thing I’m not thrilled about is that people complained the swim was way long last year (the top swim time was 10 minutes slower than typical, which means my slow-ass swim time will end up being like a half hour worse than usual if they don’t correct the course for this year’s race) and some swimmers got stung by fucking jellyfish during the race. WHAT. I wasn’t aware of this before booking my trip. Oh God. If I get stung by a jellyfish (and you know I will because I’m the Mediocre Athlete with the worst luck ever), that’s pretty much a race ruiner right there. Oh well, at least I’ll get to hang out in Costa Rica with my friends and boyfriend. May 2012: Mt. Rainier Duathlon Teresa will probably make me do this again. The only conundrum is whether I should try and defend my title one last time in the short course before I have to age up next year or if I should graduate myself to the long course since it’ll be better training for Canada. On one hand, the long course will be a better workout. On the other hand, GHETTO TROPHYYYYYYYYYY. Decisions, decisions. June 2, 2012: Honu 70.3 My second tropical destination race of the year. I fully expect the winds to be atrocious and the heat/humidity to be brutal. A lot of teammates will...

I’m 85 days into my “Questin’ for Abs” and thought I’d check in with an update. Since my fattest state (around the time of Rev 3 Portland) I have lost over 23 lbs (yaay!). I’m aiming to lose another eight and then see how things are looking. I figured that when I dropped all this weight, I’d unearth my awesome taut muscles and look lean and buff, but instead I’ve found that my appearance is closer to “small” and “scrawny.” Before, when I had some junk in my trunk, I’d look at my massive legs and think “Ooh, once I lose some of this fat my legs are going to look muscley and awesome.” Now that I’ve lost some of the fat, they look dinky (and stumpily Asian, of course). I’m not as muscular as I thought, which is lame. I was going for the “Coach Bridget” look but instead have achieved the “Bosnian refugee.” Guess I need to do more strength training. Jason, meanwhile, has lost a whopping 37 lbs and hopes to lose an additional 13 for the upcoming season. This is the skinniest we’ve seen each other since we started dating over seven (yeah yeah “why aren’t you guys married already lol tee hee”) years ago. He doesn’t notice the weight loss on him as much as everyone else does–his face is so much slimmer and we had to go through his entire wardrobe and weed out clothes that are now too gigantic for him to wear. I also made the mistake of buying some new jeans that are now already too loose for me outside of the post-dryer 15 minute window of snug awesomeness. It’s a good problem to have, I suppose, but not when you just plunked down money on new clothes and already don’t fit them. (BTW, I don’t have pictures of our transformation but will write a post once we’re at our goal weights and do a Maury-type “before and after,” minus the part where we bust through a paper screen image of our old fat selves). Since Jas and I are dropping weight faster than my self-imposed deadline of June 4th, maybe it’s time to take it up a notch. Coach Mark and I discovered that we can get to Costa Rica using airline miles, so we’re possibly maybe potentially planning on traveling to Costa Rica to race the Rev 3 70.3 March 18th. Unfortunately, that means instead of having 200 days to ab up, I would now only have 117. Shit just got real. Costa Rica would be a lot of fun, but seeing as how I’d be going with Teresa “My Abs Have Abs” Nelson and Mark “No Body Fat” Webb as well as Darin “I Literally Have a Barrel for a Chest” Smith and his gorgeous wife, I’m gonna have to be able to hold my own when it comes to the “hard body in a swimsuit” part of the vacation (which would be the majority of the trip). The pressure’s on,...