In an effort to get rid of my food baby, I went for a run “with” Jason last week (“with” meaning we left the house at the same time, then I promptly waved goodbye at his back as he shoomed away). I’m heavier and slower than my lean-yet-nightmarishly-tanned version from last summer, but I tried to stay positive as I set out to conquer the hilly 6.5 mile loop. My pace was slow but steady, and I settled into a decent groove, enjoying the crisp air that was warm enough to warrant running in a t-shirt, yet chilly enough so I wouldn’t overheat. I quickly zoned out into my “zen mode,” where I let the stresses of the day dissolve and let my thoughts wander to and from any number of topics. I used to run with my old iPod “Classic,” but after I left that bad boy on a plane, I got used to running without music and just let my inner monologue keep me company. I trudged on, totally zonked out, and soon approached the Pagliacci on 10th and Miller. I was staring straight ahead down the sidewalk and wiping some sweat off my nose when I noticed someone standing off to the side. I’m not sure if he was waiting for a bus or getting ready to cross the street, but when he saw me his face lit up and he shot his hand up in the air. Confused, I focused on him and my brain, thinking this guy knew me, searched its reserves for a name. Who is this dude? Is he a TN Multisports teammate? Have I worked with him? Brain: “Scanning for recognition…scanning…scanning…scanning…” Me: “…well? Do I know him?” Brain: “…scanning…” Me: “Ugh, brain, you are the worst.” Brain: “Don’t rush me! You’ve got a lot of useless shit in here. Do you really need to know the theme song to The Golden Girls?” Me: “I don’t need your judgment. And I will not thank you for being a friend right now because you’re seriously letting me down here. How the hell we got through college is beyond me.” Brain: “Whatever…anyway, yeahhhh, we don’t know this guy.” After finally establishing I did not know this man who was standing on the sidewalk with his hand outstretched, I hesitated, not exactly comprehending what he wanted from me. My eyes flickered up to his hand, which he held rigid, and he exclaimed, “You rock!” And then I realized that all this dude wanted was to high-five me because I was out running. I smiled, smacked his hand with mine, and shouted, “Thanks!” As I ran off, he called after me, “You’re doing great!” and I grinned all the way down the street. Of course, as I replayed the scene back in my head, my warm fuzzies gave way to intense neurotic shame as I remembered one crucial detail: I scratched my nose to wipe the sweat away, then I used that same hand to high-five him. OH CRAP, HE THINKS I PICKED MY NOSE AND THEN WIPED IT ON HIS HAND!!! HE IMMEDIATELY REGRETTED OFFERING ME THAT HIGH-FIVE, I KNOW IT I AM A DISGUSTING HUMAN BEING!!! I MUST SEQUESTER MYSELF IN MY HOME AND NEVER RUN OUTSIDE AGAIN OUT OF SHAMEEEEEEE And then I couldn’t stop thinking about this scene: So for the remainder of my run, my emotions alternated between feeling happy over a stranger’s random act of awesomeness and embarrassed by the potentially misunderstood nose itch. But ultimately, my happiness edged out over the shame (barely), so I wanted to author an open letter to the Guy Standing in Front of the...

I’ve mentioned my post-Ironman weight gain with much exasperation, but I haven’t been entirely honest with you. There’s a reason why I’ve been packing on the pounds lately, but I didn’t want to say anything just yet. Now that a few months have passed, however, it’s safe enough to finally let the cat out of the bag. First, let me preface my announcement by saying this isn’t something I expected to happen so quickly after Ironman Canada, but when you’re suddenly faced with a lot of free time, you’ve got to fill it somehow, amirite? Nonetheless, I wouldn’t call the situation an “oops,” more like a surprising side effect of too much “recovery” time after a long, grueling season of training and racing. Even though this has been completely unexpected, Jason’s been incredibly supportive throughout this period. He’s a good guy. Totes love him. Anyway, without dragging it out any further, I’m just going to come right out and say it: I’m having a food baby. Like I said, this wasn’t really planned at all, but when you spend September through January gorging on various delectable treats with insufficient exercise to balance things out, you end up incubating a little food fetus. It’s hard to say exactly what makes up this little miracle, but if I had to guess I’d wager it’s comprised of pizza, pad thai, ice cream, nachos, Moscow Mules, burgers, and an irresponsible amount of poutine. I’m already starting to show and none of my pants fit. This little guy is growing so fast! My resting heart rate has gotten higher and I’m easily winded during simple workouts, which goes to show how much bigger my food paunch is getting each day. Jason has been such a rockstar, bringing home carryout whenever I have cravings. He’s doing his part to make sure this burrito baby is being taken care of. The pregnancy hasn’t felt that long, but looking back I realize it’s been almost six months since Ironman Canada. Time sure does fly when you’re eating like a fat-ass, doesn’t it? But as proud as I am of my growing bundle of bulge, I’m not sure I can continue incubating it much longer. In fact, I may need to give him up for adoption. I just don’t think I’m ready to carry this responsibility long-term. There are so many races I want to do, so many bikinis to wear, so many skinny jeans to yank on. So as exciting as this time is for me, I’m afraid it can’t persist for much longer. It’s been a great six months, Food Baby, but you’re gonna have to go. If anyone’s interested in adopting a 15-lb bundle of joy from me, that would be really great. The deadline for this offer is before I go to St. Croix in May. Make sure you give Gordo a good home, because this little dude has overstayed his...

After my first Ironman in 2010 and my most recent one in August, I figured post-Ironman I could keep the momentum going and snowball my fitness levels into training for the next Great Big Bad-Ass Event. I’d kick ass, take names, polish my six-pack abs with a ShamWow, all that good stuff. And like clockwork, after each season I got hit with the Post-Ironman Blues pretty hard, proving once again that I am my own worst enemy. The first time around, I was training for a December marathon and ended up getting injured with Achilles tendinitis. With running removed from my fitness equation, I became unmotivated and depressed, packing on weight and working on my TV tan. My 2011 season was uneventful, and I vowed to crawl out of my bunker and bounce back with a fantastic 2012. My 2012 season was mostly fantastic–I slimmed down, improved in all three disciplines, and had some great race PRs (and even podium’d at a couple races thanks to being a big fish in a tiny pond). As with 2010, this time I promised to keep the momentum going and segue into another fit season where I’d be even slimmer and faster than ever before… …and here I am, unmotivated, tired, unfocused, chubbier. I had plans to aggressively train for a marathon in January in hopes of qualifying for Boston after my BFG managed to qualify for the 2014 race at Portland. That January race got pushed to February as my training became more and more inconsistent, and now it’s postponed to sometime this summer. I read my teammates’ status updates about all of the great workouts they’ve been doing lately and ask myself why I feel less energetic than them, why I’m struggling to find motivation after having the grit and determination to push myself to complete an Ironman while injured. I wonder if I’m less “tough” than my seemingly superhuman friends who can easily bust out one, two, or even three Ironman races a year. I struggle to understand why I feel depressed and lethargic at the end of every season while others seem to bounce back quickly, always happy to train for their next big race. I make lofty goals but drag my feet when it comes to getting started. It’s been a confusing few months where my body and my brain battle against each other for supremacy. It’s not that I’ve not enjoyed my time off from constantly training and exercising. My race season started back in March, after all, and it didn’t conclude until the end of August. As such, I’ve greatly enjoyed the copious amounts of eating and drinking the past four months, though I’ve not enjoyed gaining 18 lbs from my most svelte state (about 10 lbs since Ironman Canada). But I always marvel at those who spring out of bed after just a couple short weeks of rest and are ready to get back in action while I still feel somewhat lost and unfocused for 2013. Maybe 2012 was harder on me, both physically and mentally, than I thought. Maybe I needed this extra time off to truly fully recover as I tried to restore a sense of balance to my home and professional life instead of tipping my focus in triathlon’s favor so heavily. Maybe I’m having a full-on Jessie Spano caffeine pill freakout now as I try to organize home projects, find happiness and satisfaction at work, figure out this whole “living like a grown up” thing, and hit all my workouts. (Side note: how the hell do you folks with kids juggle all this shit? I can barely take care of myself on a regular basis, let alone a brood...

My BFG has taken an interest in trail running and has set his sights on tackling the White River 50 mile ultramarathon summer 2013. He’s been running with a teammate of ours who unfortunately was unavailable this past weekend for a trail running dude date with Jason, so I cautiously accepted my boyfriend’s invitation to run “with” him at Squak Mountain. Of course, by run “with” Jason, I mean “trudge far, far behind him” because he ran a 2:57 marathon in October and I have gained back a demoralizing chunk of the weight I lost earlier this year and have been intermittent with hitting my workouts lately. Nonetheless, I knew this excursion would make Jason very happy so I tagged along to tackle a 2 1/2 hour run in the wilderness. As far as trail running goes, I’ve only ever run at Cougar Mountain and Discovery Park (which isn’t really difficult trail running, but it does involve a lot of stairs), so I’m still a bit of a trail running noob. I do enjoy running on trails, though–I feel like a kid again, splashing through muddy puddles and trying to hurdle logs–so I’m making a half-ass New Year’s Resolution to do some more trail running in 2013. Unfortunately, I hate trail running just as much as I’m starting to enjoy it. It’s fun to feel like a child again, but I often forget how stupid and hard trail running can be. In Squak Mountain’s case, since I’ve been feeling down about feeling chunkier and less active lately, what better way to feel supremely dejected about how much fitness I’ve lost since Ironman Canada than to wheeze my way up a goddamn mountain at an average pace of 15 minutes/mile? Seriously, this mountain’s elevation profile is dumb. There were some hills so steep that I resorted to walking them since my walking pace was no slower than my sad attempt to jog. Jason, naturally, gazelled across the trail with his 8 ft long legs while I stub-legged a sad trot behind him, my heart rate in zone 4. I briefly thought of murdering my athletic, chipper boyfriend on numerous occasions as he’d make empty promises to me like “Take this left up here and it flattens out, I promise.” We’d take the left and climb a bunch more while he scratched his head and tried to figure out which flat part he was trying to remember as I glared hate daggers into his back. Or when he said it was really pretty at the top but failed to inform me that the last 0.5 miles were a steep-ass grade covered in frost and snow that I could not remotely run up. When I reached the summit I expected to see something grand like a majestic elk who would congratulate me on my impressive feat and crown me Queen of the Mountain, but instead there were some electrical towers and a lady eating a chunk of cheddar cheese out of a plastic bag. (I was really, really jealous about the cheese.) We turned around to head to the car, except my navigationally challenged boyfriend couldn’t exactly remember where we had parked, and I had been aimlessly following him the whole time so I didn’t know where the hell we were, so we ended up running out of the park and looping back to our car by cutting through a couple neighborhoods. He asked if I wanted to tack on an extra 10 minutes to make it 2:45 and I refrained from punching him in his tall stupid face, saying only “No, I would not like to run an extra 10 minutes,...

I love me some food. I know triathletes and endurance athletes often boast about how much they eat, but I’ve read the SlowTwitch “shame eating” threads and they’re pretty weaksauce. Admitting you ate two huge bowls of cereal or a Krispy Kreme donut pales in comparison to the splendid displays of fat-assery Jason and I have embarked on time and time again. One time we went to Claim Jumper and each ordered fried mozzarella sticks as an appetizer before polishing off fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, extra biscuits with honey butter, and dessert. (Okay, I lied…we’ve done that more than once.) So you’ve got the faux-pig triathletes who are all “Tee hee, I ate so much yesterday” and then you found out it was something bullshit like an extra helping of quinoa or farro or some other dumb grain that sounds made up. And on the opposite end of the spectrum you’ve got lean, stringy-looking endurance athletes who you know are fast just by glancing your fat eyeballs upon their striated, beef jerky-esque frame, and those folks are so uninterested in food that sometimes they “forget to eat” and only do it because their bodies need sustenance. Forget to eat?! Who does that??? When I’m eating, I think about other food I want to eat, and when I’m not eating, I think about all the food I can’t wait to eat. I love food so much. Soooooo much. I consider myself an equal-opportunity food lover, meaning I’m just as willing to drop a few hundred bucks at a Michelin star restaurant as I am to gorge myself at the sketchy cash-only taco truck parked behind a Home Depot. Despite being a mega-huge carnivore, I’ll also be a good sport and hit up vegetarian or vegan places with my friends. (Though the last time I did that, I promptly came home, picked Jason up, and drove to get meat-filled deep dish pizza. Deep dish pizza is muy tasty.) I’m willing to try pretty much anything, whether it’s foo-foo holistic or offal-tastic. However, some of the stuff my teammates insist on passing off as real food has me unconvinced. Some examples: 1. Kale Chips Everyone seems to be on this kale chip kick lately. “Mmm, they’re sooooooo good! They really satisfy my craving for real potato chips!” I’ve had kale chips before and they’re alright, but I have to point out a couple things: They are absolutely not a substitute for actual potato chips. Real potato chips are delicious. Kale chips are dried pieces of kale. These two are not remotely the same thing. Only eat these if you’re sitting at home by yourself, because dark green flecks get shoved in every possible tooth crevice you can imagine, thus killing any socialization efforts at a party or your chances of getting laid if you’re on a date. Nothing says “Please don’t interact with me” like a wad of crusty kale hanging outcho toof. 2. Cottage Cheese Sorry, I don’t eat ceiling spackle. I don’t care how much you trowel into half a cantaloupe. It’s the one cheese I won’t touch because it’s not actually cheese, it’s the stuff that gets sucked out of Kim Kardashian’s saddlebags. 3. Anything That’s a Poor Substitution for Something Else Looking at some Runner’s World recipes, I’m seeing “Chicken Not Pie” instead of chicken pot pie and “Grilled Turkey Salisbury Steaks,” which I’m guessing is a poor substitution for actual Salisbury steak. Turkey doesn’t taste like beef, it tastes like turkey. I get that it’s lower in calories than beef, but don’t try to dupe me by saying it’ll quell my craving for cow. If...

I received an event invite on Facebook from a triathlete friend named Laura (not the same Laura who monologued me at Ironman Canada this year), who I highlighted in my Futile Quest for Abs post for having one of the most glorious set of stomach muscles I’d ever seen. She and I often overlap in age groups, meaning I get my ass kicked six ways from Sunday (or is it to Sunday? I get my ass kicked, that’s the main thing) in every race we both happen to be at. She’s raced at Kona and above all else is a seriously sick swimmer. I was hoping the event invite had to do with a brownie eating contest or perhaps a “Celebrate the holidays with a Christmas Story marathon and inappropriate amounts of yuletide booze,” but no, it’s some bullshit swimming thing. Correction, it’s not some bullshit swimming thing, it’s the ultimate bullshit swimming thing; specifically, the “Fourth Annual 100×100/10k Swim Holiday Extravaganza.” Never mind the fact that my brain cannot comprehend the notion of swimming 6.2 miles in a single day (or week, or month, for that matter, but I digress), or the twisted idea that this is supposed to be a “fun” gathering. No, what I don’t understand is why the hell someone like Laura would invite a swimmer like me to this horrible, horrible event. Is it like hazing? Some sort of sacrifice, maybe, where a fast swimmer must offer up a slow lamb to the Swimming Gods every year so she can continue to bust out sub-55 minute Ironman splits? Because I really don’t understand why this fast pod of swimmers would want to invite a manatee to hang out with their dolphin group. To get an idea of why this event is utter crap, here’s how Laura plans to organize the swim workout: Here is how the breakdown will work (tentatively set to be TWO pace groups, Group A and Group B). Please RSVP with your Pace group selection. If there is enough demand for a faster/slower sendoff, then we will have another lane…first come first served, 40 PEOPLE MAXIMUM…don’t miss out! SENDOFFS MAY CHANGE DEPENDING ON GROUP. In the past, we have done: 10×100 Warmup on 1:40, 1:50 20×100 free on 1:30, 1:40 5×100 kick on 2:00, 2:00 20×100 free on 1:25, 1:35 5×100 choice of stroke on 1:45, 1:55 20×100 free on 1:30, 1:40 5×100 choice on 1:45, 1:55 10×100 free on 1:20, 1:30 “10×100 free on 1:25, 1:30 (for those going 10k)” 5×100 warmdown on 1:40, 1:50 Group A will go on the faster sendoff. Group B will will on the slower sendoffs. At these sendoffs with no breaks between sets, Group A will finish in 2:35, while Group B will need 2:51. As always, some of the group opts to go 110×100’s to equal 10k. Your option to stop at 100 or finish 110. Some points: First of all, I am not fast enough to swim with Group A or Group B. I’m not even worthy enough to hand them their towels when they’re done. If I participated, I’d be looking at being an Army of One in Group Triple J. Secondly, I can’t hit 10×100 on 1:40 or 1:50 as a warmup. I can’t even do that as a main workout set because I am slow as shit. I could probably bust out a couple at most, but after that I’d be panting on the sidelines. Thirdly, 20×100 on 1:25 – 1:40? Twice?! My fastest standalone 100 ever has been like a 1:32 – 1:35, and that was in a short pool so I got to push off more. Eff...