Sunday was the Las Vegas Rock ‘n Roll Marathon, a race I signed up to do but unfortunately could not participate in because of my increasingly annoying Achilles injury. The last time I updated you on the status of my feet, it was the left foot giving me grief while the right Achilles was intermittently tight. Now my left foot appears to have healed but the right Achilles has gotten worse. It’s now instantly tight and stiff when I start running and is stiff in the morning when I wake up and hop out of bed (morningtendon?). At first I thought I could still manage to do the half marathon, but after realizing that I wasn’t going to post a decent time and would just end up risking further injury, I begrudgingly opted out of doing the race entirely.(Believe me, eating a $135 race entry is a tough pill to swallow. I can only imagine what it’s like to get injured when training for an Ironman and watching your $600 entry fee get flushed down the toilet.)

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...

Every month or so I head to Colorado for work. This time around, I brought Jason with me so we could attend my boss’s housewarming party (I use the word “house” loosely, as 12,000 sq. ft is less of a “house” and more of a “Xanadu”). We spent the 4th of July hiking and trail running in Colorado Springs. That may sound impressive at first until I tell you that I both fell on my ass in true Mediocre Athlete fashion and we got horribly lost and ended up going twice as far as intended. Never go hiking with us unless you want people to stumble across your squirrel-eaten carcass months later. Jason and I drove over to Colorado Springs (we held our breaths as we passed the Focus on the Family Visitor Center exit so we wouldn’t get our souls stolen) and parked at a 6.5 mile trail head so we could do a hike/trail run. We had an 18 mile run scheduled for that day but figured we could manage to do a 3 hour hike/jog in the high elevation (around 7,000 feet) and trail terrain and call it good. It was a hot, sunny day and the trail was virtually deserted. We ran when we could and walked when we felt like our hearts would explode. I snapped a picture of Jason as he tried not to look like he was drenched in sweat: I made him take a picture of me before we ventured on: After a little bit, we stopped so I could do the requisite “self-portrait attempt” with my long monkey arms. 10 times out of 10 this results in me cutting off the top of Jason’s head in the photo (stupid 11″ height differential). Here’s attempt #3: We ran a bit further and came across a little foot bridge that took us over a tiny stream trickle and some rocks: Since it was so hot outside, I splashed some of the cold water on my arms and neck. When I turned around, I saw a little butterfly. “OMG, NATURE! MUST TAKE PICTURE!” Jason patiently waited for his dorky girlfriend. When I was ready to leave, he jokingly said, “Don’t slip and get swept away by the strong current.” I was like, “Hurr durr, I won’t,” and then promptly slipped on the rocks, fell on my ass, and slid a few feet down towards the foot bridge. It was so ridiculously inept that I couldn’t help but laugh: Then: “Wait a sec, I didn’t sit on the butterfly, did I?” Thankfully, I did not have a squished butterfly corpse smeared across my ass. After laughing heartily at me for a few minutes, Jason helped me up, cleaned me off, and we finished our trail run. From that trail head we drove over to the Garden of the Gods, a park that has a bunch of cool rock formations and lots of intersecting trails. We got a map at the gift shop and decided to do a 4 mile loop. While running, we came across a couple who offered to take a picture of us in front of some rocks. It turned out pretty ridiculous: We had to dodge a ton of horse crap on the trails because a bunch of dooshers were riding horses and couldn’t be bothered to clean up the giant dung piles their animals left behind. Running amidst steaming horse shit on a hot, sunny day aren’t my ideal hiking conditions, but to each his own. Jas and I tried to head back to the car to complete our 4 mile loop, but since all of the trains intersect and...

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...

This coming Sunday I’m running a dinky little marathon in Goodyear, Arizona. It’s the IMS Marathon, and this is only the second year of the race (last year they scheduled it the same day as the Phoenix Rock ‘n Roll, so turnout was ridiculously low). I can think of no better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than to drag my stubby legs 26.2 miles in the arid southwestern heat.