Hey, remember when I did an Ironman? (Yes, I will continue to mention it because it’s a frickin’ Ironman, people. Braggin’ rights 4 life, yo.) It was 12 weeks ago. I was in top shape — trim, fast, splotchily suntanned, energetic. Now, just three months after that, I’m working on creating a permanent Becca-shaped groove on the couch, am afraid to step on the scale, and have eaten more crap in 12 weeks than I have in 8 months. Injuries + shitty weather = PIL: Post-Ironman-Lethargy. After Ironman Canada, I signed up to do the absurdly overpriced Las Vegas Rock ‘n Roll Marathon in December so I’d stay in shape and be able to continue training and working towards something. Unfortunately, my body was like, “What the hell, I thought you were supposed to let me rest,” and my left foot revolted by developing tendinitis. It’s probably my fault (though that foot is being a real asshole right now) because I held off on buying new shoes for so long that my old Kayanos deteriorated into something that probably came from the Derelicte fashion line. Not wanting to shell out the usual $125 for the Asics Kayanos I usually wear because I’m tired of being perpetually broke, I opted to switch to a cheaper but comparable pair of shoes, the K-Swiss Konejo IIs. Unfortunately, by the time I got my new kicks, I was already experiencing tightness along my left shin and the outer edge of my left foot. Then my right Achilles started to get stiff during runs. Combine all that with the freak toenail (more on that later) and I was starting to feel like my body was falling apart. At least I stayed healthy during my Ironman training, but still, what a fall from grace. Three months ago I was crossing the finish line with my arms in the air and a sense of accomplishment bursting from my every pore. Now I’m chowing down on See’s chocolates and am pondering whether I can fit in a second nap before my three hour stretch of TV starts tonight (The Walking Dead, Boardwalk Empire, and Dexter make Sunday evenings super awesomesauce). Coach T put the kibosh on running and made me go see Dr Perry. He assessed my injuries and determined that I have weak butt muscles. Apparently all that crap is connected somehow — my sad, sorry ass (which my mom refers to as my “pooch butt”) is causing tightness in some tendon that wraps down my shin and along/under my foot. He gave me my first ever acupuncture treatment and told me to foam roll, heat/ice my foot, and also gave me some super sad 80’s Jane Fonda jazzercise exercises to do, which amuse Jason to no end. Jas is also entertained by my heating and icing process. Dr. Perry told me to fill a large bowl with hot water and a second bowl with ice water, and plunge my foot in the hot water for three minutes followed by 30 seconds in the ice water, then repeat two more times. My sympathetic boyfriend has thus taken to calling me “Bucketfeet,” despite the fact that I constantly remind him that I’m using bowls and it’s only for one foot. Example dialogue: Me, wearing a baggy pear of sweatpants and one of Jason’s long-sleeved t-shirts while stuffing my face with some sort of highly caloric abomination: “I’m not very womanly…” Jas: “Awww, don’t be so hard on yourself, Bucketfeet.” Me: “It’s bowl plus foot! Bowlfoot!” So anyway, I’m doing all this crap for my non-Daniel Day-Lewis left foot. After my visit with Dr. Perry, I had to...

On Wednesday I participated in the Swim for Life swim across Lake Washington. Teresa wanted me to do it last year, but they always do the event on a Wednesday morning and I couldn’t get off work…plus I hate swimming. This year, I figured it’d be a good confidence booster before Ironman Canada so I begrudgingly plunked down coinage to swim 2.5 miles from Medina to Madison Park. I told myself it’d be for a good cause (the Puget Sound Blood Center) and for swimming peace of mind leading into Canada. Well, it was for a good cause, but the swim was sucktacular. Sigh. I woke up at 5:30 am and de-groggied as best I could before meeting my swim group at Madison beach at 6:15. The previous several days had been very warm and sunny in Seattle, so naturally the morning of the swim was gray, windy, and chilly. The Weather Gods seriously hate me. When we drove across 520 towards the swim start, we could see the wind whipping the water up against the floating bridge. Of course. The first time I do this stupid race, Lake Washington decides to release the Kraken and try to drown me. This is why I hate swimming. We arrived at Medina and picked up our packets, then watched the wind swirl the chop up so it was nice and terrifying. Docks were swinging, swimmers were chattering and shivering, and I stared across the lake convinced that the shoreline across from me was getting further and further away. There were four waves of swimmers distinguished by their swim caps: Fast, Less Fast, Respectable, and You Swim Like a Toddler with Raptor Arms (also known as the Pink wave). Naturally, Teresa stuck me in the slow wave because she wasn’t certain I’d even be out of the water by the time Ironman Canada started. The event itself started at 7:30, but since I was going last I got to watch a multitude of athletes crawl into the water and promptly get bitch-slapped by the waves. I killed time by trying to look bad-ass in my wetsuit that gives me the illusion of having muscle definition: Eventually it was our turn to climb into Lake Washingmachine. I lucked out since I breathe to my right and the chop was coming from the left, but that was the extent of my good fortune. The first half hour or so went decently — I swam fairly well with my group and sighted off our kayaker since I couldn’t see anything remotely sightable on the other side of the lake. Soon enough, however, I stopped thinking, “Hey, this isn’t so bad” and returned to my regularly scheduled “I hate this shit, this sucks so hard” mindset. I thought about how warm and cozy Jason was still sleeping in bed (all you have to do to get out of Swim for Life is launch yourself 30 feet off your bike) and cursed Teresa for encouraging me to do this. (I tend to curse her a lot when it comes to swimming-related activities. When will the day come where I curse her for buying me a giant delicious cake?) To make matters worse, the chop kicked up and I’d often find myself plunging my left hand into air as a wave would pick me up and toss me around like a rag doll. Even breathing to the right didn’t help much after a while — there’d be rotations where I’d try to breathe and end up catching a flood of water. Even worse than that was the fact that the kayak seemed to instantly disappear, leaving me with...

A couple weekends ago, Jason, his dad and I drove to Wenatchee to do a long ride through the hot and formidable canyons. We only managed to do about 50-60 before succumbing to the suckiness that is triple-digit heat waves. You suck, Wenatchee. Shove your applets and cotlets up your searingly hot ass.

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.

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...