5ks suck for one reason: they hurt. If you’re intent on doing a 5k as a fun run, that’s fine, 3.1 miles is a fine distance for a walk or a jog or a combination of the two. But if your coach wants you to “race” the 5k, you’re essentially tasked with sprinting the entire distance and are a half-burp away from horking up one or both lungs at any given moment.

I’m writing this post from hot, humid, and sunny (well, not right now — it’s pouring rain) St. Croix, nursing a mild sunburn and a round belly (don’t worry, it’s just the food baby) on the eve of Ironman St. Croix 70.3. I had grand plans to run a marathon before kicking off my triathlon season by tackling the Beast, but the marathon never happened and neither will the race tomorrow (for me, anyway). Truthfully, the months after Ironman Canada have been tough for me mentally as well as physically. After my crashtacular finish, I took some extra time to recover and focus on work. Unfortunately, that focus made me realize how unhappy I was at my new job, and that realization caused a lot of stress and headaches through fall and winter. I’ve noticed this in past seasons: my happiness levels in my personal life greatly affect my success in training and races. Whenever there’s a big imbalance, my motivation suffers and my training swiftly circles down the shitter. So this past fall and winter have been somewhat difficult for me as I struggled to keep it together professionally and drove Jason crazy with typical Quarter Life Crisis freak out laments: Me: “All of our friends our age have ‘grown up’ but us! We should be grownups!” Jason: “What the hell does that mean?” Me: “I don’t know, we should travel more! Or buy a house! We should get married soon! When should we have kids?!” Jason: “So, to be clear, you think we should buy a house but still travel the world, but we should get married first and crap out a few kids? Before the house and travel stuff or after?” Me: “I DON’T KNOWWWW HOW DO GROWN UPS DO THIS?! I need a better job! One that makes me happy! Should I open a Roth-IRA? What the hell is a Roth-IRA? I need to train for a marathon! Everyone on our team is getting faster and having an awesome season and I’m getting fatter and slower by the day! Can we get a dog? I really want a dog! I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M SAYINNNGGGGGG!!!!” I was depressed. I isolated myself from my friends and training buddies because I wasn’t in a good mental place and because my heart wasn’t into exercising or being social. While Jason has been enjoying trail racing and is successfully training for an upcoming 50 mile ultramarathon, I was drowning in despair, ignoring workouts and replacing anything remotely active with eating and sleeping. It got bad enough to the point where Jason and I discussed whether I should seek out professional help and talk to a therapist about some of the things I had been struggling with lately. We both agreed that something needed to change — I had not been myself for several months, and every aspect of my life was being negatively affected. Jason missed his stubborn yet goofy and fun girlfriend, and I missed me, too. But much like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, I endured a mile of shit and darkness and finally emerged into the light. I found a new job, which I’ll officially start on the 15th, and I was able to head into my vacation in St. Croix less stressed out and feeling optimistic and excited for the first time in months. My new gig brings me back to my startup roots, an environment I really enjoy and thrive in, and has me working with smart, passionate people. Plus, one of my bosses has done several Ironman races, so he understands my kooky hobby enough not to raise an eyebrow when I...

The Mt. Rainier duathlon was May 6th, so it’s a bit belated to be churning out a race report but I’m doing it anyway so DEAL WIF IT. It was the fourth year I’d be doing the short course, and I’ve grown to enjoy the race quite a bit (it doesn’t hurt that I’ve placed in my age group every time I’ve done it, largely due to the fact that there’s no swim segment to substantially drag down my overall finish time). I thought for sure this year Teresa would finally succeed in forcing me to do the long course version of the race (I’d managed to dodge it in previous years due to 1. Being a noob, 2. Being stubborn, and 3. Being injured), but she surprised me by encouraging me to do the short course race because I had enough long distance races on my plate this season and she thought a fast, short race would be good for me. Over two consecutive weekends I drove to Enumclaw and rode the duathlon course. The once-mighty Mud Mountain Road climb now seemed totally manageable thanks to experience/familiarity with the route and because I’ve grown to become a halfway decent cyclist. A week before the race I felt comfortable and confident and was looking forward to the event. And then, as what often happens, three days before the race life decided to kick me squarely in the ladyballs. I won’t go into details but basically an unexpected and profoundly shitty event occurred and my focus immediately shifted from racing to dealing with this sudden hardship. I abandoned my workouts and drowned my sorrows in lots and lots of booze. Thursday and Friday night consisted of drinking with friends and stumbling home from the bars. On Saturday I pinged Teresa and told her that I wasn’t in the best mindset for the race, that I had skipped workouts and was boozing it up instead of taking care of my body, and whether I should still do the duathlon. She talked me off the ledge and, ever the optimist and eternally my ardent cheerleader, encouraged me to “get back on the horse” and “channel my rage” on race day to push me across the finish line. I sucked it up and decided to follow coach’s orders. Despite having endured such a shitty week, I figured enough was enough and that I needed to get back on track, so what better time to re-establish some order in my life than to wake up and race. I behaved myself Saturday night, partaking in a single glass of wine at a friend’s birthday dinner and trying to reintroduce more traditional forms of hydration so that I wouldn’t make a complete ass of myself at the race the next day. On Sunday Jason, who was nursing an injured knee and thus wouldn’t be racing, acted as my sherpa and helped me get all my shit together before we headed out the door. I met up with my teammates and we griped about how cold the race always is before lining up to start. (I never know what to wear for this race so this year I opted to dork it up with a TN performance tee, arm warmers, black tri shorts, and tights. I think my hastily assembled attire was the byproduct of my “Fuck it, this week sucked so I’ll just throw on whatever I can grab so I can get this race over with” mentality.) The long coursers took off and I waited around with my short course peeps, one of whom recognized me as the “Mediocre Athlete,” which made me chuckle. I’m...

Most of my posts on Mediocre Athlete contain self-deprecating comments and faux-negativity about my workouts or my races. I do it for the lulz, but the truth is that nobody is harder on me than myself. At the end of the day, I am my own worst enemy, an exceptionally tough critic. I’m sure a lot of you feel the same way; after all, a big reason you train for a race, no matter the distance, is to push yourself outside your comfort zone to see what you’re truly made of. For me though, I often push myself so hard that it can end up being detrimental. I’m like my own overbearing Asian mother (“Why you no run faster during race? And how come you not doctor?”). Ever since I had a taste of my first half Ironman three years ago, a big goal for me is to go sub-6 hours. I feel that it’s something I can easily accomplish. Each year I’ve continued to improve and become more familiar and comfortable with the sport. After four half Ironman races thus far, however, my personal best is a 6:29 from 2010’s hellishly windy Boise 70.3. I know that everyone was much slower that day, that I couldn’t control the weather, that I would have cycled much faster if conditions were better, that I actually placed decently in my age group. But I was focused on that time goal like Gollum’s fixation on that seemingly innocent little ring, so I couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed. Then Ironman Canada came and went and I had a race that exceeded my expectations. I would have gladly traded in every bad race or training workout that year for the day I ended up having, and after my biggest race of the season I was at an all-time high. I had just done an Ironman, for schmuck’s sake — I could do anything. No, I could crush anything. I was going to do a marathon and I was going to kill it. I was going to do a bunch of 70.3s next year and they’d all be under 6 hours. Hell, I’d be creeping up on 5:30s. I’d improve across the board and make this sport my bitch. Nothing was going to stop me. And then, amid my marathon training, I developed Achilles tendinitis. At first it developed as a slight tightness and ache at the beginning of my runs. Then, with each step I’d take, the tightness would last a little longer. Eventually the pain kept me company throughout my entire run, but I’d stubbornly soldier on because I wasn’t going to let a little stiffness bring me down. I had just done an Ironman, damnit, and now I was going to blow my old marathon time out of the water. That marathon never happened for me. I had to stop running completely, and as frustrating as it was to be told by my coach to eat a $140 entry fee (fucking Rock ‘n Roll and their wallet-rapingly high costs) and not race, I knew I had made the smart decision when I couldn’t even run twenty feet to cheer for Jason as he passed by without having my Achilles seize up. And so, instead of conquering a marathon and posting a 20-minute PR, I stayed off my feet and cycled through the winter. It would be five months before I’d run again. I feared that I’d be starting at the very beginning and would be as bad as I was when I first begun running years ago. The thought of losing all my running fitness had nagged at me throughout those...

Tomorrow I’m doing the Issaquah sprint triathlon. Fun fact: the Issaquah sprint was my first-ever triathlon three years ago. In typical Mediocre Athlete fashion, my first race didn’t go so well. Basically, I should be able to PR tomorrow by about 45 minutes unless my leg falls off or I get abducted. I thought I’d offer up an exceptionally belated race report so you have an idea of how my first-ever triathlon went way back in 2008 — enjoy! Back in 2008, I was training for my first half Ironman, the not-quite-half-Ironman-distance New Balance race in Victoria. I was a sorry sight, riding on a borrowed road bike with mountain bike pedals and swimming even more terribly than I do now. I was basically the Tai to Teresa’s Cher if this were the movie Clueless. Teresa urged me and Jason to do the Issaquah sprint triathlon so we’d have a little bit of race experience going into the Victoria half Ironman. Since it was my first tri, I was ridiculously nervous. Swim Summary The swim was a teeny tiny 400 meters — it would take you longer to get your wetsuit on and off than it would to actually swim that distance. Of course, I was convinced I was going to drown. I swam with a handful of other girls in my age group, stopping at every buoy to gasp for air and gaze longingly at the shore. Swim time: 10:29 (2:37/100 meters) As embarrassingly crappy as my swim was, it marked the only time I’ve beaten Jas during the swim portion of a race. Since this was his first ever open water swim, he panicked and flailed in the water and I ended up edging him out by a minute or so. (Check out the only Mediocre Athlete post my lazy boyfriend has ever written for a recap of his swim from that race.) Transition 1 My transitions have always been decent, even from the get-go, and my first race’s T1 was a respectable 2:14. I think I’m just anxious to get out of my stupid wetsuit as quickly as possible. No matter the reason, my transitions aren’t that bad. Bike Summary I hopped on my borrowed bike and made my way along the 15-mile course. It’s an out and back and I just puttered along with all the other racers. I didn’t have a bike computer at the time, so I had no idea how fast I was going or what my cadence was (it was probably pretty shitty). I momentarily went the wrong way when I followed some schmohawk who took a wrong turn, but thankfully the race volunteers quickly corrected us. When I was a few miles from transition, I was descending a hill when I noticed an odd noise coming from behind me. “That doesn’t sound normal,” I thought, so once I got to the bottom, I got off the bike and checked my rear tire. It was dead flat. Great, I’d gotten a flat tire during my first triathlon and not only did I not know how to change a flat, I didn’t have any tools or spares with me so I couldn’t even attempt to figure it out. I kind of stood there for a while, not knowing what to do, before eventually click-clacking down the road while pushing my neutered bike. Eventually my teammate Beth came along and, bless her heart, stopped to try and help me. She had a spare tire and tools, but the only problem was she didn’t know how to change a flat, either. We both fumbled around for a bit and got as far as taking...