Last week was the first time I swam since doing Ironman Canada at the end of August. There’s nothing quite like a 3 1/2 month break from doing something to really make you feel like you royally suck at it when you pick it back up again. I maintain that giving swimming the cold shoulder isn’t entirely my fault — when my coach puts “45 minute swim or bike” on my schedule, which option do you think I’m going to go for? The one where I can waltz over to my bike and do a spin while laughing at the poor decisions of the latest 16 and Pregnant girl, or the one where I have to dig out my swimsuit, drive to the pool, jam my crap in a locker, rinse off, hop in the pool, and swim back and forth while fighting off the limbs of Old Guy McLane Hog who’s frog kicking next to me?

Early in my first triathlon season back in 2008, I attended a transition clinic to learn about how triathlon transitions work. For those of you not in the know, a triathlon has two transitions, one from the swim to the bike and one from the bike to the run. The transition area is where you run into when you emerge from the swim and store items like your wetsuit, bike, bike gear, running shoes, extra water bottles, a large pepperoni pizza, one of those “Hang in there” inspirational posters, etc. Since I didn’t know anything about transitions (or triathlons, for that matter), I went to the clinic to learn how to ease from one sport into the next without looking like a complete asstard.

The rain gods must have read my post about crappy Seattle weather and decided to troll the entire city by unleashing torrential downpours and strong winds for the past few days. Good thing I live on a hill; otherwise, I could be running into flooding problems that are plaguing many of the city’s residents right now. I’m also finally happy to be on coach’s and doctor’s orders not to run until the Achilles tendinitis heals, because there’s no way in hell I’d want to run in the kraken-summoning tsunamis unfurling outside. No running, unfortunately, means that Teresa has taken this opportunity to remind me that I haven’t swam (swum? Swum looks weird) since Ironman Canada, so that fast little bastard has started adding swim workouts to my training schedule. Boooooo. Just when I was starting to begrudgingly psyche myself up and promise myself that I was going to work hard on my swimming this season by hitting all my pool workouts and not skipping any open water swims, my friend Mr. Oatmeal posted a link to this charming piece of news on my Facebook wall: “More than one million gallons of raw sewage backed up into Lake Washington over the weekend. The sewer system in Medina was unable to handle all the rainfall from the storm, causing raw sewage to back up into peoples’ homes and into the lake.” Oh, great. That should really get me excited to dive into the lake for some long swim workouts this spring. There’s nothing like practicing bilateral breathing while some kid’s pet goldfish rides a turd right past...

This photo was taken by my teammate Kathleen Jones at the Lake Stevens Olympic distance triathlon over the weekend:

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...