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...

My astute readers will notice that the blog looks distinctly different from its original gangsta look since I launched it in 2008. I was never thrilled with the old blog theme and decided it was time for a little Extreme Makeover: Blog Edition. The new design is more visual than Mediocre Athlete 1.0 — each post has a thumbnail that displays all purdy-like on the homepage. Also, I finally figured out how to add threaded comments, so now you can respond to a comment someone’s posted. It’s the wave of the future! Hope you like the new design — I still have to work out a couple of kinks, but overall I’m pleased with the blog’s new aesthetic. Soon I’ll respond to my regularly scheduled posts about crappy workouts and how I’m getting super burned out on Ironman training and have spent more time eating frozen custard than...

Hello, loyal fans (all two of you)! It’s been a while, I know, but that’s what happens when actual work gets in the way of updating my hobby blog that doesn’t help pay my bills. Oh well. I’m back now, with a goal to keep this darn thing updated more often. Here’s what’s been going on since my last post: The back is better… I got some TLC in the form of massage, chiro work, and foam rolley goodness, so huzzah for that. …but the hamstring is not. A combination of weighted one-legged squats (curse you, Eli! *shakes fist*) and lots of run mileage has led to a tight right hammy, right where it meets the pooch butt. I’ve been stretching and icing it, so hopefully it’ll play nice over Christmas break so I can get my 18 miler in. I ran the Las Vegas Rock ‘n Roll Half Marathon. Jason did the full and shaved ten freakin’ minutes off his PR, thus capping off a fantastic year of racing for him (Mark has dubbed him “Mr. PR,” which is no joke — I don’t think he had a single bad race all season). I, meanwhile, did two minutes better than the Seattle half in June but was still 2 minutes off my PR. The goal for 2010 is to do a sub-1:50. I think that with my diligent training for Canada I should be able to pull it off. I’m training for a marathon in February. It’s a podunk tiny marathon in Goodyear, Arizona that should only attract a couple hundred runners. The race is February 14th — what better way to celebrate a Hallmark holiday than to run 26.2 miles? This will be my second marathon, and I’m hoping to PR by a lot (about 20-35 minutes). The pipe dream is sub-4 hours, but I’ll be happy with low fours. That’s about it for the time being. I’ll check back in after this weekend’s long run and workouts. Hope you all have a happy holiday and that you receive a stocking full of gu and PRs....

Thus far, Mediocre Athlete has been lovingly read by a whopping dozen or so people: me, Jason, Jason’s parents, Jason’s aunt and uncle, our trainer, and some training buddies. In a nutshell, our readership consists of a handful of people who know us in person. This is unsurprising — it’s not like we expect a giant devoted following of people who eagerly await our posts about how sore our asses are after long rides or how much we stink after lake swims. Thus, imagine my surprise when I received this email a few days ago: Hi Rebecca, My name is Sebastian, I’m 24 yrs old and I am a beginner triathlete who started his first (training)season with a little bit too much enthousiasm. This resulted in my first injury ever of which I am still recovering – grrrr – and which is keeping me from doing any running at all. Technically speaking that makes me a duathlete in stead of a triathlete. (Although I am not sure that swimming combined with biking is officially recognized as duathlon.) But hey, that’s why it’s great to read about your triathlon experiences! It helps me convincing myself that – even with a slow start – eventually I will be able to do a sprint triathlon! And maybe later a 70.3 Ironman! And maybe thereafter … Ok, you’re right, stop dreaming, I’ll just start with the sprint triathlon … Please keep writing your blog, it’s really funny and I’ll keep you posted when I finally get started! Regards, Sebastian Fischer Antwerp, Belgium Holy balls! Sebastian marks a series of firsts for Mediocre Athlete: First reader who we don’t personally know First international reader First person to read our blog and actually get inspired by it (seriously, that’s pretty mind boggling) Thanks for being a fan of the blog, Sebastian! We know you’ll kick ass this season–if Jason and I can do it and survive, you sure as hell can, too. Also, we’re pretty sure that you can count swimming and biking as a duathlon. We categorize stuff as being duathlons all the time; hell, just this weekend we did a duathlon consisting of “eat a breakfast burrito” and “watch football games.” I’m happy to report that both of us finished with strong times....

After a freshman season of triathlon races, countless skipped workouts, and entirely too many late night pizza deliveries, MediocreAthlete.com has finally arrived. This site will serve as a diary of sorts for two casual athletes as they experience the joys of long workouts, grueling ice baths, soggy runs in Capitol Hill, smelly swims in Greenlake, numerous bike mechanical failures, diving headfirst onto snowy mountains, tripping on trails, and everything in between. We’ll do our best to provide updates on our workouts, race reports, and anything else we can share in an amusing, self-deprecating manner. We hope you enjoy living vicariously through our misery. (Hey, someone’s...