The rain gods must have read my post about crappy Seattle weather and decided to troll the entire city by unleashing torrential downpours and strong winds for the past few days. Good thing I live on a hill; otherwise, I could be running into flooding problems that are plaguing many of the city’s residents right now. I’m also finally happy to be on coach’s and doctor’s orders not to run until the Achilles tendinitis heals, because there’s no way in hell I’d want to run in the kraken-summoning tsunamis unfurling outside. No running, unfortunately, means that Teresa has taken this opportunity to remind me that I haven’t swam (swum? Swum looks weird) since Ironman Canada, so that fast little bastard has started adding swim workouts to my training schedule. Boooooo. Just when I was starting to begrudgingly psyche myself up and promise myself that I was going to work hard on my swimming this season by hitting all my pool workouts and not skipping any open water swims, my friend Mr. Oatmeal posted a link to this charming piece of news on my Facebook wall: “More than one million gallons of raw sewage backed up into Lake Washington over the weekend. The sewer system in Medina was unable to handle all the rainfall from the storm, causing raw sewage to back up into peoples’ homes and into the lake.” Oh, great. That should really get me excited to dive into the lake for some long swim workouts this spring. There’s nothing like practicing bilateral breathing while some kid’s pet goldfish rides a turd right past...

The New York Times recently wrote an article about the growing sport of triathlon and how older people are getting into it. At the end of the article there’s a blurb about a triathlete from Stamford named Eric Goodman:

This photo was taken by my teammate Kathleen Jones at the Lake Stevens Olympic distance triathlon over the weekend:

A woman from Tennessee swam from Pittsburgh to Illinois via the Ohio River. It took her two months to complete the swim, which totaled 981 miles. If my coach put this workout on my schedule, I’d punch her in the face. From the article: She often was in the water for eight to 12 hours daily, resting one day per week. Swimming 8-12 hours a day?! Eff that ess. I’d flail around for an hour, say “Screw this,” and drag my sodden ass out of the river to go get some frozen custard. (Speaking of which, the swimmer celebrated the completion of her journey with ice cream and a beer, which I wholeheartedly endorse, but also with a veggie burger. Really, a veggie burger? Swimming 981 miles should require you to celebrate with at least a couple tons of animal flesh, even if you are a vegetarian.) I can only imagine that Ms. Hughes emerged from her 12 hours a day, 2 month-long swim looking something like this: She did swim in the Ohio River, so I’m guessing she had to dodge quite a bit of discarded LeBron James merchandise. As much as I hate all things Ohio, at least she didn’t attempt her feat in the Detroit River. If she did, she’d likely have emerged depressed, gunshot, and looking for a...

Much like Elaine’s boyfriend Puddy from Seinfeld, I picture this guy running around going, “We’re the devils! Eeeeehhhhh!”