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.

Recently Jason and a number of my triathlon teammates raced Ironman Lake Stevens 70.3. I had been training for the race but decided at the last minute not to do it because I had traveled to San Francisco, Napa Valley and San Jose the week before and had too much booze and horrible food sloshing around my system to feel prepared to tackle a half Ironman. Nonetheless, I watched the race anyway to cheer on my friends and the BFG. A word of advice to any triathletes out there reading this: if you’re thinking of racing Ironman Lake Stevens, don’t. First of all, Lake Stevens sucks. If Washington state had a hillbilly cousin, Lake Stevens would be that hillbilly cousin’s poo-crusted butthole. It’s such a crappy town that the only thing the official Ironman race catalogs can advertise about the area is that it has a Buzz Inn Steakhouse, which looks about as classy as the bar where Jodie Foster got raped in The Accused. The town literally consists of this skeezy restaurant, a Subway, a crappy foodmart, a burger shack, and, inexplicably, a town museum (maybe they wanted to commemorate the day they scored a Subway franchise). To answer your next question, no, there are no hotels in Lake Stevens, so if you’re thinking of flying in to do this race then lucky you, you get to stay in Everett or a neighboring city. (And no, Seattle is not “twenty minutes away,” as I heard one race official tell someone over the phone; it’s more like 50 minutes.) Secondly, the “lake” part of Lake Stevens is filthy. It smells terrible and is full of garbage. When Jason swam in it the day before the race, he said the bottom of the lake was littered with beer cans and junk. Teresa said she spotted an old rusted chair while swimming. Jason and his dad once saw a half-submerged mattress in the lake after they finished a bike ride, and I had the pleasure of experiencing an obese kid with a rat tail throwing firecrackers into the lake as I was standing in it for a post-workout ice bath. This lake is the town’s urinal — they don’t give a crap about it and they certainly don’t take care of it, so excuse me for not wanting to pay a couple hundred dollars to do a race that involves swimming in it for 1.2 miles. Thirdly, the bike course is horrible. It’s two loops and is a challenge for sure, with a few tough hills, a lot of false flats, and many twists and turns. However, what I hate most about the course is that the town’s inhabitants are so mean and inconsiderate to cyclists that it makes for a stressful, miserable ride. Every time I’ve ridden the course I’ve had some redneck in a Ford F-150 angrily honk at me as he passes me at 50 mph. And surprise surprise, Ironman didn’t close off the course during the actual race so my friends said they kept getting passed by jerks in cars who would angrily swerve and honk at all of the cyclists who were racing. Jesus Christ, this race is one day out of the year — you’d think that these a-holes could show some courtesy and put up with a few hours of inconvenience, but no, they’ve gotta get to Walmart or a monster truck rally or a Larry the Cable Guy viewing party or wherever the hell they’re rushing to. The cherry on top of this turd sundae was the expo hall for the race. Race organizers had the expo hall in Everett, because, as I’ve...

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:...

Like the elite athletes we are, this morning Jason and I slept in until 11:30, stumbled downstairs, watched a movie while eating a scramble full of embarrassingly massive quantities of feta cheese, and then queued up the Ironman 70.3 Championships in Clearwater on NBC. We’ve grown increasingly obsessed with watching triathlons and have caught a crapload of Kona reruns on the Universal Sports channel, so we were pretty stoked to see the 2008 Clearwater race. Unfortunately, it sucked. Well, let me clarify. The race didn’t suck, but the coverage sure did. They really phoned it in this year. I’m surprised it took this long to air the coverage — given how crappily they half-assed it, they could have aired this thing the day after the actual race. First of all, they showed two “check out these athletes who have overcome adversity” profiles, one about a paraplegic motocross (or dirt bike, or something) racer and another about a dude who got in a horrible car accident and got a “second chance at life”/insert-hyperbolic-inspirational-schmaltz-here. I don’t mind athlete profiles, but I do mind when they show the exact same segment they aired for the Kona race. They didn’t even bother shooting anything new — they just queued up the existing footage and re-played it for Clearwater. That’s pretty lazy. Other disappointments: The narrator was underwhelming. He didn’t seem especially stoked to be covering Clearwater, and his lack of enthusiasm was kind of a buzzkill. They didn’t really do any elite athlete profiles other than the requisite 30 second “here’s who won last year” mention. I like how Kona does it — they talk about the elites more and interview them and check in on them more on an individual level. Not much mention of the course. I know that Clearwater is an “easy” course since it’s pretty much flat as a pancake, but how were the conditions (e.g., temperature, humidity)? Is there any elevation gain? They could have even talked about how flat it is and compared it to more challenging race courses, but no go. Not only did they recycle some athlete profiles and barely cover the elites, they did some super half-ass last-minute profiling, like the 5 second mention at the very end of the program of the lady who ran in sandals because of some condition she has (what? who? huh?). I’m sure there are more grievances to air, but the coverage was so unimpressive and disappointing that I’ve already forgotten most of what I saw. The one saving grace was getting to see Team Hoyt and finding out that this year they’ll log their 1,000th race. (I’ll post a separate entry about them this week.) Other than that, though, I must say that the coverage was pretty craptacular. Oh well — at least it motivated me and Jason to get off our unsatisfied asses and do a 10-13 mile...