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...

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.

I’m finally getting around to writing my race recap of Ironman Boise 70.3. In a nutshell, it didn’t go great. In fact, everything that could go wrong pretty much did go wrong, except for the fact that I didn’t have any mechanical problems on the bike or any flat tires. Other than that, Boise was a bust but I still managed to PR by 20 minutes. Prologue The half Ironman was on a Saturday and boasted a point-to-point bike course (meaning two transition areas instead of one) and a 2 pm start. On paper that sounded awesome — you got to sleep in instead of getting up at butt crack of dawn o’clock, and you could get a proper meal instead of choking down oatmeal. Huzzah! I put off signing up until the week of the race because I had been having knee problems lately and wanted to make sure my body felt healthy before shelling out a couple hundred dollars for the race. Unfortunately for me, they closed online registration the week of the race so I had to sign up in person. Traveling to the Race Jason and I loaded up the Subee, strapped our bikes onto the hitch and drove the 8 excruciatingly boring hour drive through eastern Washington, most of Oregon and into Boise. The drive pretty much consisted of the following: brown nothingness brown nothingness brown nothingness ridiculous thunderstorm brown nothingness Pre-Race Preparations We finally got to Boise, and the next day Jason and I headed to the Expo Center to pick up our registration packet. I had to sign up in person and was forced to bequeath my unborn child over to the Ironman brand (Jesus Christ, race-day sign up is so freakin’ expensive). I also decided to rent race day wheels to see what they were like. They were kind of pricey but still tons cheaper than buying a set of race wheels (which can cost $2,000 and up). After Jason and I finished up at the Expo Hall, we drove over to the swim start so we could drop off our bikes at T1. After a test bike ride, we got in the water for a 10 minute swim, and holy hell was that water cold. I flailed around for a couple meters before running into a group of idiot kids who thought it was a good idea to take a dip in the sub-60 degree water in bikinis and swim trunks. I had the following conversation with one of them: Him: “Are you still cold even in your scuba suit?” Me: “Yeah, this water is pretty cold.” Him: “I’m freezing! How much did your scuba suit cost?” Me: “It’s not a scuba suit, it’s a wetsuit.” Him: “Oh…how much did your wetsuit cost?” Me: “$650.” Him: “Really? I only have $5…how much does it cost to rent a wetsuit?” At that point I was thinking, “Screw you, junior, I’m not lending you my suit,” so I swam off and finished my miserable workout. Race Day The next morning we woke up and went downstairs to eat breakfast in the hotel’s dining area. I grabbed a bowl of cereal but upon looking down at it, I felt a sudden wave of nausea overtake me so I only managed to poke at it with my spoon and not eat anything. When we got back to our room I promptly threw up. Twenty minutes later I yakked again, barfing up water and foamy stomachy goodness. Jason looked at me with a mixture of empathy and disgust, asking if I was feeling okay and if I should race. I called Teresa for advice. Teresa:...

A couple weeks ago I was all gung-ho about making my triumphant return to working out (once you get to know me you’ll realize that I have a lot of “triumphant returns” to exercising). After my last race at the end of September, I took a couple months off to sit on my ass and get fat (I succeeded too!). I wanted to get back into serious training for the ’09 season, so I started running, cycling, and killing my triceps in order to get all aggro about exercising again. That lasted about a week until Jason and I both got sick at the same time. I pretty much caught whatever had been circulating around our office for the past couple weeks (ah, the perks of working in a confined environment). You know how it is when you’re sick — you want nothing to do with any sort of physical activity whatsoever and are content to curl up on the couch and watch The Price is Right, sniffling and shouting at the contestants for bidding too high. While we were sick Jason and I pretty much sat on our asses and watched various terrible reality TV shows (we recently discovered the train wreck awesomeness that is The Bad Girls Club and holy shit, those girls be crazy). Once we were both on the mend Jason and I were all “Time to get serious, yo.” I was all geared up to go to Tuesday’s evening track practice and make my triumphant return (cue the trumpets). Jason went in the morning and gave me the following feedback: It was freakin’ cold It was really freakin’ cold A stretch of the track was covered in ice, making running quite treacherous Seriously, it was cold. Jason had to borrow tiny Tracy‘s gloves so his fingers wouldn’t freeze off. I’m pretty sure the gloves are now stretched beyond repair. I had miserable expectations for the evening track, but I didn’t have a chance to experience how cold and icy it was going to be–the extremely low temperatures prompted Teresa to cancel track. (Postpone the trumpets.) Attempt #2 at our Triumphant Return was on Thursday. Jason and I signed up for an early morning interval cycling class and dry land swim conditioning. We set our alarm for 6 am and got everything ready the night before. At 5:40 am we were both awakened to the loudest fricking clap of thunder imaginable. We both sprang out of bed and uttered a simultaneous “Whoa.” He got up and looked out the window but saw nothing. We figured it was going to start raining and would probably freeze and make the roads slick. After climbing back into bed we heard another huge clap of thunder and anticipated the sound of falling rain next…but instead it was silent. Hmm… A minute later my phone vibrated. It was Teresa texting me to say that it was snowing like crazy over in West Seattle so she was canceling classes. I said, “That’s weird, how is it snowing in West Seattle but not here?” Jason’s response: “Holy crap!” I looked out the window and saw blurs of white. In the 5 minutes between our first glimpse out the window and checking my phone, it had started snowing buckets. It was as if the sky farted and started pooping out snow. We got a crapload of snow on Thursday and couldn’t work out because the Y closed and because we couldn’t run anywhere without rolling an ankle or slipping and cracking our heads open (which I’ll fully admit is something I’m prone to doing even when the weather is perfect). Aside from a...