Warning: This post has more obscenities than usual, as well as several lovely photos of some pretty gnarly road rash. Reader discretion is advised!

Yesterday Jason and I begrudgingly drove up to Lake Stevens to ride the 70.3 bike course a few times with our teammates. We have no intention of doing the Lake Stevens 70.3 since it’s too close to Ironman Canada and because I hate the race with the fire of 1,000 suns, but it was our group workout for the week and we needed to get in the mileage. Well, to summarize how the day went, we had the usual redneck obscenities screamed at us and had to cut the ride short one loop after Jason got in a bad bike accident. Needless to say, our feelings about Lake Stevens have continued to dampen.

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.

Much like Elaine’s boyfriend Puddy from Seinfeld, I picture this guy running around going, “We’re the devils! Eeeeehhhhh!”

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.

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...