Yeah yeah, I know you all have organized a hunger strike until I got my Costa Rica race report up, but this thing called “work” and “real world” (as in real life, not the umpteenth season of MTV’s Real World…though I do confess to harboring a guilty pleasure for the Challenges) have taken precedence lately so I haven’t had much time to blog. Sorry! In any case, I’m here now and will share my race report with you, my loyal readers. (Especially Jim, who has reduced himself to watching the same episode of American Idol twice in one day because he’s so restless for content. Holy crap.) Arriving in Costa Rica So yeah, back to Costa Rica. We arrived the Tuesday before the race, smelling and looking as if we had taken three planes and a red-eye itinerary to get to Guanacaste. Because Jas and I pack like champs, we only had to check our bike boxes (thanks, Kirsten, for letting me borrow yours!) and managed to shove everything else into carry-on luggage (tank tops and shorts don’t take up that much space). Unfortunately, American Airlines deemed it necessary to charge us an “Are you fucking kidding” price of $150 per box each way. Destination races ain’t cheap, folks. Our rental house was in a little town called Potreros, which wasn’t very far from the host hotel and the race course but sat atop a ridiculous 10-minute climb that requires a Canyonero to safely traverse. If I had to do the race again, I wouldn’t stay atop Mount Doom because it was too much a pain in the ass to get up and down the rickety-ass road all the time, but it did make for a memorable stay (plus, the house came with a dog named Cookie, whom I fed dog treats every chance I had). Pre-Race Workouts Mark, Teresa, Jason and I decided to do a 30-minute run near our house to shake the travel stiffness out of our stinky, tired bodies. The run went something like this: All of us: *gasp* *wheeze* *heave* *shuffle* *sweat* Me: “Oh look, my heart rate is at 176 already.” The hills were no joke, the terrain was ankle-rollerrific (in fact, Teresa did roll one), and it was hot as shit outside with zero cloud cover. Such a lovely taste of what’s to come on race day! Later that week we took our bikes to the Westin Playa Conchal to ride the hardest part of the bike course. Transition area would be set up in one of the Westin’s parking lot, and athletes would have to mount their bikes, ride over a 100-yard stretch of gravel, then climb a few daunting hills over the course of about 2.5 miles to get out of the resort. From there, we’d turn onto the road and enjoy a relatively flat three loops before heading back into the resort and climbing more hills to get back to transition. When we suited up to ride, it was impossible to ignore the remarkable heat as well as the discouraging gusts of wind. Since we were in the middle of the region’s dry season, we expected warm temperatures but it was unseasonably warm (the race website advertised average temps being in the upper 70s, but it was mid-to upper-90s the entire time we were there). Also, the wind was unusual for that time of year, and we were all a bit nervous about having to battle nasty gusts on race day. I strapped on my brand-spankin’ new aero helmet (now I can look like a sperm on wheels!) and tackled the climbs as best as I could. The hill...

Tomorrow I’m doing the Rev 3 Costa Rica half Ironman. It’s my first race of the season (I am so not used to doing a triathlon in March), but it’s also my first tropical destination half Ironman since I did the Cancun 70.3 back in 2008. That race was my second ever half Ironman and technically my first “proper distance” half Ironman since I had done the Victoria half earlier in the year, which adds up to just under 70.3 miles. Before I race tomorrow, I thought I’d finally publish my race report of the now-defunct Cancun 70.3 (they moved it to Cozumel, which now has a half and full Ironman distance race) that I raced during my first season of trying out this crazy sport. My Cancun 70.3 Race Report (or as I like to call it, the “Eff Jason for talking me into doing this” Half Ironman) Arriving in Meh-hee-co Como se dicen en México, survimos (as they say in Mexico, we survived). Jason and I got in Friday early evening for the race on Sunday. Some of my teammates were surprised we were arriving in Mexico so soon before the race, but honestly, after having done it both ways (I got to Costa Rica on a Tuesday and the race here is on Sunday), I prefer the “get in a couple days before the race” mentality. I kind of feel like I’m wasting part of my vacation by sitting around not doing much when I fly in early. I’d rather stay longer after the race and enjoy my time laying out on the beach, slurping tropical boozy drinks, and exploring/doing activities than staying out of the sun, constantly hydrating, and keeping off my feet. I had made it roughly four feet from the airport before grumbling to Jason that we will never do another destination race again (three and a half years later, 2008 Rebecca is scowling at 2012 Rebecca for breaking her promise, as I have not one but two destination races on my schedule this season). Between the two of us we had a big suitcase for our clothes, another suitcase for our race clothes, two duffel bags full of fuel, helmets and accessories, and two giant bike cases containing our deconstructed bicycles. Lugging all of this crap required some serious muscles and patience. I was soaked with sweat from the combination of heat, humidity, and gear muling. When we got to the official race hotel, we took a hooker’s bath and attempted to put together our bikes (Jason was still rockin’ his dad’s old Klein, which took him and Mark an eon to take apart since it probably hadn’t been disassembled since 1985, and I was riding my old coworker’s Giant road bike). After 90 minutes and repeated grease markings on the rug and floor, we were successful. Hooray! (I later spent a half hour trying to scrub the room clean of incriminating bike grease and realized that I would never, ever get away with murdering someone. Considering how much grease and grime I left all over the room just from assembling a crappy road bike, I’d have hair, fingerprints, sweat droplets, and probably my wallet because I’m that stupid all over a crime scene.) The race hotel itself was kind of crappy. They overbooked so we didn’t get the room we requested. Instead of a king-sized bed we got two doubles. The hotel staff helpfully suggested that we push the beds together. Just like in the 1950s! There were also little ant-like bugs that enjoyed crawling around our bathroom sink. I made it a mission to squash all of the ones I...

Every once in a while I make a return to yoga as if I’m trying it out for the first time and have forgotten how much I “nothing” it. It’s like forgetting how crappy candy corn is for 11 months out of the year, only to rediscover it in October and remember how waxy it tastes. Nonetheless, I thought I’d give hot yoga a try because I’m doing two tropical destination half Ironman races next season and figured the humid yoga room could potentially help a bit with acclimation. I’ve done hot yoga a couple times. It’s not bad, but since I’m naturally a sweaty person, I’m literally the only one in the room whose shins are sweating because I’m perspiring so much. I end up in my shame corner soaking wet while these yoga goddesses in booty shorts, sports bras, and 12-packs are contorting their bodies into pretzels without even a strand of hair getting frizzy. It’s lame. This time around I bought a Living Social (or Groupon, or whatever the daily deal site was) special for a hot yoga place in Capitol Hill and my friend Lauren and I met up to try it out. We showed up and filled out the “I won’t sue the facility if I sweat myself to death” forms, then dropped our stuff off in the locker room before stepping into the hot yoga room. The first thing I noticed (and smelled) was that the space was carpeted. Uh what? This is a 90-minute yoga session in which the room is heated to over 90 degrees and someone thought it’d be smart to carpet the floors? It stank like musty feet and stale armpit sweat. I was not thrilled. Lauren and I set up shop in the back of the room. I spread out my brand new yoga mat that I bought off Amazon.com because apparently forest green is an unpopular mat color (pink, on the other hand, would have cost me a monthly car payment). The sinewy instructor entered and started the group off with a ridiculously long series of breaths and shouts. Everyone began to moan as if they were zombies, and I instinctively looked for the nearest ax or blunt object in case I needed to peg someone in the head and make my sweaty escape. After the B.S. breathing, we began contorting and stretching and yoga-ing. The instructor kept firing off instructions one after another without pausing, making me wonder if she doubles as an auctioneer on the weekends. She’d bark at me and Lauren every so often whenever we didn’t contort to her liking, and she kept calling Lauren “Laura,” which got more and more awkward the longer we were in class. Pretty soon I was drenched with sweat. I couldn’t see because whenever I’d bend over, all of the perspiration on my face would dump into my eyes. My towel was all spongy so it offered little reprieve. I sighed and kept telling myself that somehow this would help me survive the hot and humid runs in Costa Rica and Hawaii. At one point I looked down and saw that I was so saturated with sweaty nastiness that the scab on my knee (which I got from scraping it on the bottom of the pool during the previous week’s swim class, another reason why swim class is dumb) had hydrated itself and fallen off. It was now perched on my yoga mat in a soggy little ball. My reaction: I was literally sous vide-ing myself to the point where parts of me were falling off. It was like shredding a slow cooked piece of pork. Four...

A good teammate pays it forward when her crew comes up to support and cheer for her as she’s dragging her tired legs 140.6 miles, so that’s exactly what I did the last Sunday in August in Penticton for my TN peeps. My Becca Sense had been tingling all summer thinking that the Ironman Canada athletes would have a hot race day since I got lucky last year with the weather (minus the pockets of rain and wind on the bike), and I was right. Of the five days I was up in Canada, the “coldest” day was in the mid-80s and race day crept up to the mid-90s. I tried to do some workouts while I was up there, so I flailed around in the lake for about 15-20 minutes and called it a swim, and I ran with Teresa a couple days. (And by “with” I mean “behind,” as even in her weakened state she’s still faster than me. Sigh.) One day we ran along an old railroad track that’s been converted into a trail, and although it was hot, the run was pretty nice. At one point we ran by a cottage on the trail that was advertising the following: I would have sold my soul for a slushie at this point on the run, but we didn’t have any money so I had to soldier on with my stupid unflavored water like a chump. The next day we did another shorter run along the run course, and it was so freaking hot that I was running slower than usual at a higher heart rate. I started whining to myself about how hot and shitty it was before remembering that I was running slower than this pace last year and had traveled 135 miles further, and that my teammates would have to run an entire marathon in this heat tomorrow so shut up and finish your stupid little run. Sometimes you’re not allowed to complain no matter how crummy you feel, because you know that other folks will have it worse and that you yourself have been in worse situations. The morning of the race eventually rolled around and I sprang out of bed, giddy with excitement and adrenaline (Jason said I was over-stimulated). I had volunteered to be a sherpa for two of my teammates and friends who were racing with no family support, so I wanted to make sure they were taken care of before and after the race. We packed up our racers and Jason and I cranked “Welcome to the Jungle” for them because it’s the song that played last year for us when we were driving to the race start. Naturally, the day was long and hot and the race was tough. Although bike splits were faster than last year, runs were obviously slower due to the heat. Our team did the best they could under the conditions. One had to drop out due to injury, one dropped out because of a bike malfunction, one got pulled with heat stroke, and one missed the bike cutoff. They all battled hard and gave it an admirable effort, and the athletes who did finish did great, too. Instead of a full recap, I thought I’d give out some “awards” via photos that my teammates and I snapped throughout the day. Enjoy! The “Bad-Ass with Braids” Award goes to Kylee. She battled the barfies all day (from the swim to the bike to throughout the run) and still managed to become an Ironman. I remember how awful I felt for five miles during the Rev 3 run and can’t imagine throwing up for 15...

This is a tapir: This is a taper: Not the most traditional taper, but it’s how Jas and I roll. We’re less than two weeks away from Ironman Canada and have finally started to scale down our workouts. It couldn’t have come a moment too soon — I’m getting burned out on exercising and just want to get this pesky Ironman over with already. The taper’s timing was pretty crucial for us — we had a Portland wedding to go to and the Lake Stevens 70.3 race to spectate, so even though we didn’t have as many training hours, we still had to cram in a bunch of stuff over the weekend. We drove down to Portland Friday night and had dinner with a friend of ours. Jason and I got suckered into having a couple beers with our buddy, and after not having drank much lately because of the relentless onslaught of workouts, a measly two beers made me feel a bit tipsy. Stupid training. On Saturday we woke up and had breakfast with another friend of ours and his girlfriend. It was going to be a super hot day out, plus I didn’t want to run around downtown Portland, so after breakfast I went back to the hotel and ran in the fitness center. My treadmill TV was stuck on MSNBC at full volume, so I ran and watched some “Criminals Caught on Tape” show where the most recent footage was from 2000. After the run, we showered and got a late checkout. Since the wedding wasn’t starting until 6 pm, we had our bags held and figured we’d find a place to change later. We killed time by seeing a movie and getting some food, then we returned to the hotel and got ready for the wedding ghetto-style by sneaking back into the fitness room and changing in the bathroom. At one point someone came in and started using one of the treadmills. We got a weird look when we finally emerged from the bathroom wearing a suit and a dress. I bet she thought we were a crime fighting duo (or that we just got it on in a gym bathroom. Gross!). At this point it was nearly 100 degrees outside, but thankfully the wedding was indoors. Unfortunately, the air conditioning didn’t help too much, and by the time the reception started and people were dancing and acting goofy, we were a sweaty, sticky mess. Since we planned on driving back to Seattle after the wedding, I only had a glass and a half of wine while Jason took it upon himself to drink it up one last time before Ironman Canada. When the dancing started, we had the following exchange: I start dancing in front of him Jason, looking concerned: “How much have you had to drink? Are you going to be okay to drive back?” Me, looking sheepish: “I’m not drunk, I’m just a crappy dancer!” Jason, laughing: “Oh.” Thanks, Jas. Eventually we left the wedding and I drove us back to Seattle. I was tired and thirsty and wondering if I’d be able to get up at 4:30 am to catch the start of the Lake Stevens 70.3. We got stuck in construction traffic (seriously, construction traffic at midnight on a Saturday) and didn’t get home until 1:30 am. Three short, unsatisfying hours later, the alarm went off and Jason got up to head to the race. I was still really tired, so I decided to meet the crew later so I could try and get a bit more sleep. Jason and his dad caught the start of the race and I...