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...

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 woman from Tennessee swam from Pittsburgh to Illinois via the Ohio River. It took her two months to complete the swim, which totaled 981 miles. If my coach put this workout on my schedule, I’d punch her in the face. From the article: She often was in the water for eight to 12 hours daily, resting one day per week. Swimming 8-12 hours a day?! Eff that ess. I’d flail around for an hour, say “Screw this,” and drag my sodden ass out of the river to go get some frozen custard. (Speaking of which, the swimmer celebrated the completion of her journey with ice cream and a beer, which I wholeheartedly endorse, but also with a veggie burger. Really, a veggie burger? Swimming 981 miles should require you to celebrate with at least a couple tons of animal flesh, even if you are a vegetarian.) I can only imagine that Ms. Hughes emerged from her 12 hours a day, 2 month-long swim looking something like this: She did swim in the Ohio River, so I’m guessing she had to dodge quite a bit of discarded LeBron James merchandise. As much as I hate all things Ohio, at least she didn’t attempt her feat in the Detroit River. If she did, she’d likely have emerged depressed, gunshot, and looking for a...

If you participate in lap swim at a public pool (whether you’re at the Y, a community pool, or your fancy schmancy gym), you’ve witnessed a spat about pool lane etiquette. Every pool has its own rules that swimmers must adhere to, and every swimmer has his or her own interpretation of these rules. Below I’ve shared three pool scenarios that my friends and I have encountered. Hopefully you’ll learn from these anecdotes and remember to play nice while sportin’ your Speedo and goggles. Scenario #1: Getting in the Pool Scenario #1 was witnessed by fellow mediocre athlete and training buddy Beth Garrison. There was an incident at her gym between two irate swimmers. One swimmer was doing laps in a lane when the other one entered the pool area and wanted to begin his workout. Since the lanes were full, he decided to hop into a lane occupied by someone else. The only problem is this dumb ass decided to hop into the pool at the exact same moment the swimmer in the lane was doing his flip turn. As expected, this resulted in a collision and some exchanged words. The end result is that now multiple lifeguards need to babysit the lap pool. Yep, the lap pool full of grown adults is more staffed than the kiddie pool area. Lesson learned: If you have to share a lane with someone, make sure you hop in when he or she isn’t at the same end as you. Also, getting the swimmer’s attention and letting him/her know that you’re going to be sharing is a plus. (I recommend whacking the swimmer in the head with a water noodle, or maybe dipping your toe into the water and going “Yoo hooooooooo.” Or maybe not.) Scenario #2: Sharing a Lane Scenario #2 occurred when Jason and I arrived at the public pool near our house to do a swim workout. We showed up after work, so the pool was pretty packed. There were four lanes available: Easy, Medium, Fast, and Very Fast. The Easy lane had 2 swimmers in it and the other lanes had 4. Logically, Jason and I opted to go into the Easy lane because it was the least crowded. (Also, we’re slow swimmers. Don’t you judge us.) We started our workout and eventually the woman in our lane left, leaving us with an overweight older man sporting baggy red swim trunks, gigantic goggles and some ridiculous pool accessories. His workout consisted of “running” up and down the lane, and he was quickly getting irate that Jason and I were swimming and constantly passing him. He got so irritated that he stopped at one end of the pool, glared at us for a few laps, and finally resorted to complaining to the lifeguard that we were swimming too fast for the Easy lane. Yeah, that’s right, Jason and I got tattled on by an old man who was jazzercizing during lap swim. As expected, the lifeguard shrugged at the dude as if to say, “What the hell do I care?” Unsatisfied, the man waited until we swam back to his end and started whining to us about how we’re swimming too fast, dagnabbit! (If he had a cane he would have shook it at us.) Jason pointed out to him that this lane was by far the least crowded and that it’s not fair for him to hog a lane to himself just because he’s excruciatingly slow. They continued to argue back and forth (but thankfully refrained from angrily splashing each other), with the man eventually challenging Jason to guess how old he was. Jason’s response, logically, was...