A week after the huge steaming dump known as Ironman Boise, Jas and I embarked to Mt. St. Helens for a “redemption ride,” as we affectionately referred to it. We signed up for the Tour de Blast, an 82 mile ride that consisted of climbing 42 miles up Mt. St. Helens and then turning around to fly back down it. We were all gung ho about making this ride our beeyotch after Boise’s wind gusts slapped us around. Unfortunately, for the second weekend in a row, things didn’t go according to plan.

Hey, check it out, it’s my 2010 Boise 70.3 race report! I know, I grumbled last year about how I probably wouldn’t do the race again due to a multitude of factors (crappy weather, annoying late start, double transition), but wouldn’t you know it, I found myself once again driving 8 hours to Boise for another year of crappy weather, the annoying afternoon start, and the double transition. I must be a glutton for punishment.

Last week I spent four nights in New York City, came home for a day, went to Penticton over Memorial Day weekend to train, came home for less than 24 hours, and flew to Denver (where I am right now) for work. Despite all of the jet setting, I managed to get in a decent training weekend. I have tasted Ironman Canada, and it tastes hilly and challenging. Jas and I drove to his parents’ house to carpool up to Penticton. On the way we stopped at REI so I could pick up some leg warmers because I realized it’d likely be ass cold over the weekend and I had forgotten to pack tights. We arrived at our hotel in Summerland, unloaded the bikes, and enjoyed the overcast views of the lake. On Saturday Jason, his dad and I woke up and prepped everything for our ride. We parked a few miles from the transition area and started setting everything up when I realized that the black rolled up wad of fabric I grabbed and shoved into my bag wasn’t arm sleeves like I thought, but rather compression sleeves for my legs. Fudgers! It was going to be a gray, chilly day, and my wimpo arms were surely going to freeze without some sort of cover. Jason suggested I just wear my compression sleeves as arm warmers. I didn’t have any better options, so that’s what I did. I ended up with 90 miles of compressiony goodness, but unfortunately I realized two things after the ride: The sleeves, which typically go from under my knee to my ankle, weren’t long enough to cover my entire arm. Even though the sun wasn’t out, that doesn’t mean the rays weren’t poking through the clouds. As such, I ended the ride with this B.S.: The watch tan I’m used to. The half-forearm tan? Not so much. (I’ve grown accustomed to the hairy arms though, so deal with it.) Anyway, I started riding for a whopping minute before realizing that, no fucking way, my bike computer’s cadence sensor wasn’t working again. What the shit, I just replaced this stupid thing two weeks ago! I angrily fiddled with it for a while, and it went from not reading my cadence to not reading anything. Great, now I was going to ride 90 miles with no indication of my speed or cadence. Frustrated and fueled by rage, I took off and anger-rode for an hour. After a while, Jason appeared next to me, slightly out of breath, exclaiming, “It took me forever to catch up to you! You need to slow down!” Apparently I was averaging about 24 mph and was climbing rollers going 20. To be fair, the first 30 or 40 miles of the Canada course are pretty fast, with lots of flats/downhills and a few inconsequential hills. I pouted a bit more about my broken computer but decided to slow it down in anticipation of Richter Pass. Before we got to the pass, Jason’s dad got an epic flat by running over a huge kinked wad of wire. He wrestled it out of his tire and changed the tube but wanted to stop at a gas station to properly fill the tire with air. While he was fixing his bike, I stopped inside to use the bathroom and buy more fuel. When I came out, I saw Jason barely hiding his irritation while a filthy grifter with roughly four teeth peppered him with questions about our bikes. Apparently this Canadian mountain man had been marveling at how nice our bikes were and said that someone should build an eight person stealth bomber...

Have I mentioned that triathlons are an effing expensive sport? Oh how I miss the “I only run” days — $120 for a good pair of running shoes a couple times a year is a laughable expense compared to what I bleed out every season for triathlons. Today Speedy Reedy happily took $270 from me. Between my time trial bike, countless fuel purchases, new tubes, and other paraphanalia, I think I single-handedly financed their move into a new building. Why was I at Speedy Reedy this time? Well, seeing as how I’m one of the unluckiest cyclists on our team, earlier this week I noticed a chunk missing from my rear tire. You’ve got to be kidding me — last year I blogged about how I had to replace my front tire after I shredded it on a B.S. ride in Lake Stevens. One year later and wouldn’t you know it, I have to replace the rear tire too. Son of a bitch. By the way, let me interject by saying that after nearly three years of this sport, I’ve gotten seven flats and have ruined three tires (the first of which was for a bike that wasn’t even mine — I had borrowed it from a former coworker). Jason has had one flat that happened during a training ride, and he didn’t even have to change it because his dad did it for him. I call epic bullshit on this, which makes him mad because he’s convinced I’m jinxing him for the biggest bike fail ever when we race in Canada. Anyway, back to the rear tire. There goes $40 right there. I also had to buy a new bike computer because my old one has been acting on the fritz lately and the cadence sensor stopped working. When you start training with a bike computer, you quickly become unnaturally attached to it. I mentioned before about how I almost forgot it before Boise 70.3 and went into a panic because I wasn’t going to know my cadence while racing. I replaced my bike computer with a new wireless one that cost $110. Pricey, but necessary in my opinion. Where’d the rest of my money go? Frickin’ fuel. I’m starting to spend more on training fuel than on actual groceries. You’d be surprised by how many stupid gels we consume in a week. This crap never seems to last very long. I shelled out a dumb amount of money for drink mix, Rocktane, and Hammer gels. One time someone mentioned to me how he doesn’t understand why I need to refuel with calorie drinks and gels during workouts because he never does and he seems to do fine. I had to remind him that exercising for 1-2 hours at an easy to moderate pace isn’t the same as a four or five hour workout and trying to prep your body to be able to carry you through a several hour-long race. It’s easy to forget that the general public isn’t as insane as us endurance athletes. So just like that, I dropped nearly three hundred bones in a short amount of time. You’d think that’d be the end of the spending, but I still need to get a new helmet, replace my sad, pathetic bike trainer, and hopefully spring for a new pair of sunglasses and recovery tights sometime this season, not to mention the perpetual wave of team gear that Teresa seems to always be ordering. *shakes fist* I actually have most of my receipts from each season, so maybe if I’m feeling especially depressed, I can add them up to see how much I spend annually...

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...

K-Swiss has a new commercial that I stop to watch whenever it airs (quite a feat considering I buffer most shows so I can fast-forward through ads). Here it is: Aside from how jaunty and fun it is, I love that K-Swiss is giving triathletes mucho love in this commercial. My favorite moments: The triathlete warming up his arms before the swim The K-Swiss-clad dude sprinting with a bad-ass look on his face The swimmers emerging from the water, with one sporting a cheeky shark fin attached to his back The pack of triathletes busting it out on their bikes, with the guy in red passing a group and looking behind him before turning back with a wry little smirk on his face (so adorable) And, of course, Chris Lieto coming down the chute towards the finish, pointing up towards the sky and starting his victory celebration. My heart swells and I get a lump in my throat every time I see this part as I think about my (hopeful) finish at Ironman Canada this summer. I think this ad is a great branding effort by K-Swiss to show consumers that they offer a vast array of apparel and footwear aside from standard tennis shoes (which is what I thought they primarily specialized in). Showing tennis players, runners, triathletes, young people having fun and looking stylish, and other scenarios mixed in paints K-Swiss as a fun company that can help you train hard, have fun, and look good. So far I’ve taken the bait — I’ve bought a pair of blue Ironman running shoes (the K-Ona S) that are pretty awesome, and I want to follow suit with these bad boys (Jas already has a pair — I call them his ruby red slippers). So good on ya, K-Swiss. Way to give triathletes some love and make yourself look like a fun, energetic company. You’ve done what few commercials have accomplished nowadays: busted through my formidable...