Today, Rebecca Kelley, a 30-year old mediocre athlete who has somehow managed to complete two Ironman-distance races despite her unwillingness to get out of her warm bed and train most of the time, announced that she will be turning pro in the one discipline she excels at the most: very nearly doing her swim workouts but never actually completing them.

I’m currently sitting on a flight from Seattle to New York (well, Newark) feeling fidgety and uncomfortable. No, it’s not because of your standard “sardines packed into a tin” dread of being crammed into a metal bird with a couple hundred of your closest germ-riddled stranger-neighbors. My constant shifting and pained expressions have to do with something horribly awful and appropriately Mediocre.

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...

It’s been a long season for me–my first race was Rev 3 Costa Rica back in March and I’ve done races in May (Mt. Rainier duathlon), June (Honu 70.3), July (Rev 3 Portland), and am currently sitting on my ass waiting for Sunday to roll around so I can cap off my triathlon season with Ironman Canada. Several months of training means several months of riding, and this year Teresa seemed especially intent on destroying my nethers by assigning me a stupid amount of century rides. Here’s a rundown of the 100+ mile rides I’ve done this year: 1. Flying Wheels Flat Tires: 1 (me) Got lost? No Bonk Factor: 4/5 I already wrote about this ride, so I’ll just reiterate again how crappy it was. Of all the centuries I did this year, I think this one was the hardest–it was just one of those days where nothing really went right. It was kind of cold out, I got a flat tire, rode by myself for a bit until I caught up with my teammates, and struggled in the back stretch of the course. The highlight of that day was getting cookies from Alley for giving her husband Bill (one of my teammates) a ride home (yaay, cookies). Also, the team camaraderie made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, so at least we all suffered together. All in all though, it was a tough day, moreso mentally than physically, but isn’t that usually the case with endurance training? 2. Coeur d’Alene Ride Flat Tires: 1 (Coach T) Got Lost? No Bonk Factor: 3/5, then 5/5 This was the glorious ride where Jason’s deaf dad shot down a hill and forced me to chase after him. The workout after that was kind of ball-kicky since I was riding with three people who were all way faster than me. Teresa got a flat tire but we managed to stay on course (we rode the old Ironman Coeur d’Alene course, which I enjoy 152% more than the new course). I felt alright but a little tired from chasing after Team Fast for a few hours, but after a long break where the group hit up the Ironman expo area for a while before Vicki and I headed out for my last hour of riding, I was spent. I watched Vicki get further and further ahead of me as I started to feel woozy and tired, wanting off the bike forever and thinking that whoever thought up the idea of riding over 100 miles deserved to get buried up to his head in sand and have a large, sweaty man t-bag his face for six hours. Surprisingly, my transition run afterwards went fairly well, but overall the ride was a mixed bag. 3. 7 Hills of Kirkland Route Flat Tires: 1 (Aimee) Got Lost? Yes, gloriously so. Bonk Factor: 1/5 For this ride I met up with Gary, a teammate who was training for RAMROD (Ride Around Mt. Rainier in One Day), and Aimee, who was also training for Ironman Canada. Gary wanted to do the 7 Hills of Kirkland century route so he could practice hills. I mentally punched Gary in the face 15 times, then we took off from Kirkland. Aimee had some problems with her rear brake rubbing and later got a flat tire, but the ride went relatively well for a while… …until we missed a turn and got off course, ending up in effing Monroe. Both of them were following me and I tried to play it cool despite the fact that I hadn’t seen a course marking in quite a while, but I figured that...

I’ve officially hit “burnout” phase of Ironman training. You all know the feeling–you just want to go into hibernation mode after logging into Training Peaks and seeing what your week’s worth of workouts looks like, and even a one hour recovery spin at an easy heart rate feels like a two and a half hour threshold sufferfest. Not helping matters was the fact that I started a new job right when my last big training ramp up hit, so balancing a demanding (yet thus far exciting) work load with over 15 hours of training has left me exhausted and cranky. August 26th can’t come soon enough. Last week I was faced with a two hour run that I very much did not want to do, but since I hadn’t had a long run on my schedule in a while (minus my Rev 3 Portland run off the bike), I forced myself to grab my running shoes because I figured the workout was crucial. Plus, since I was already mentally and physically drained before even starting the run, the workout seemed especially beneficial since it’d probably emulate how craptacular I’d feel at around mile 18 of the Ironman Canada run course. I took off from my house rockin’ a pretty wicked running shmood (that’s “shitty mood” for those of you who aren’t hip to the Mediocre Athlete lingo). My legs felt heavy, various body parts ached, I felt like I needed to sleep for 14 straight hours, the sun was too bright, it was hot and muggy out, my stomach ached, you know the drill. Every ten minutes I contemplated throwing in the “Fuck this” towel and heading back to my house, but I forced myself to run further out and intentionally place my groggy ass far enough away that I’d have to run back without being able to cut the workout short. You’ve all had one of those days where you feel like ass and just want to get through your workout–you’re not in the mood to talk to anyone or put up with any bullshit. All you want to do is stick your head down and swim, grit your teeth and bike, or squint your eyes and run, and you don’t even want to do the stupid workout but you’re making yourself anyway, so you’re already in a shmood before you get going and a mixture of exasperation and general irritability is all that’s fueling you to get through it. That’s how it was for this run. So perhaps the minor altercation I had with a dude in front of the Seattle Tennis Club could have been avoided or handled better, but I had been hit hard with the running shmood and my tolerance was at an all-time low. I was running on the sidewalk approaching the Tennis Club when I saw a grubby guy who looked very much like Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force loading items from a delivery van into the building via a side entrance. I would have paid this man no mind were it not for the fact that he was blocking the entire sidewalk with boxes and a hand truck. Not a big deal, he’s clearly working on moving supplies from the van into the building–it’s not like he’s intentionally blocking the path or anything. As Carl pivoted from the van towards the building entrance with his hand truck of boxes, I said, “Excuse me” and ran in front of him on the sidewalk, between the entrance and the van. I couldn’t run off the sidewalk onto the street because the van was blocking me, and I wasn’t about to stop and...