A couple weeks ago I was all gung-ho about making my triumphant return to working out (once you get to know me you’ll realize that I have a lot of “triumphant returns” to exercising). After my last race at the end of September, I took a couple months off to sit on my ass and get fat (I succeeded too!). I wanted to get back into serious training for the ’09 season, so I started running, cycling, and killing my triceps in order to get all aggro about exercising again. That lasted about a week until Jason and I both got sick at the same time. I pretty much caught whatever had been circulating around our office for the past couple weeks (ah, the perks of working in a confined environment). You know how it is when you’re sick — you want nothing to do with any sort of physical activity whatsoever and are content to curl up on the couch and watch The Price is Right, sniffling and shouting at the contestants for bidding too high. While we were sick Jason and I pretty much sat on our asses and watched various terrible reality TV shows (we recently discovered the train wreck awesomeness that is The Bad Girls Club and holy shit, those girls be crazy). Once we were both on the mend Jason and I were all “Time to get serious, yo.” I was all geared up to go to Tuesday’s evening track practice and make my triumphant return (cue the trumpets). Jason went in the morning and gave me the following feedback: It was freakin’ cold It was really freakin’ cold A stretch of the track was covered in ice, making running quite treacherous Seriously, it was cold. Jason had to borrow tiny Tracy‘s gloves so his fingers wouldn’t freeze off. I’m pretty sure the gloves are now stretched beyond repair. I had miserable expectations for the evening track, but I didn’t have a chance to experience how cold and icy it was going to be–the extremely low temperatures prompted Teresa to cancel track. (Postpone the trumpets.) Attempt #2 at our Triumphant Return was on Thursday. Jason and I signed up for an early morning interval cycling class and dry land swim conditioning. We set our alarm for 6 am and got everything ready the night before. At 5:40 am we were both awakened to the loudest fricking clap of thunder imaginable. We both sprang out of bed and uttered a simultaneous “Whoa.” He got up and looked out the window but saw nothing. We figured it was going to start raining and would probably freeze and make the roads slick. After climbing back into bed we heard another huge clap of thunder and anticipated the sound of falling rain next…but instead it was silent. Hmm… A minute later my phone vibrated. It was Teresa texting me to say that it was snowing like crazy over in West Seattle so she was canceling classes. I said, “That’s weird, how is it snowing in West Seattle but not here?” Jason’s response: “Holy crap!” I looked out the window and saw blurs of white. In the 5 minutes between our first glimpse out the window and checking my phone, it had started snowing buckets. It was as if the sky farted and started pooping out snow. We got a crapload of snow on Thursday and couldn’t work out because the Y closed and because we couldn’t run anywhere without rolling an ankle or slipping and cracking our heads open (which I’ll fully admit is something I’m prone to doing even when the weather is perfect). Aside from a...

One of my greatest triathlon weaknesses (aside from running and biking, of course) is swimming. I don’t like swimming. I feel like my stamina in the water sucks, I drag my arm too much, my turnover is too slow, I’m either too hot or too cold, my wet suit is ghetto and ill-fitting, and I find swim training boring and craptacular. My disdain for swimming has reflected in my swim times: every race except for one has resulted in disappointment. I want to improve a lot in 2009, and I figured that a huge area of opportunity would be improving my swim. I think I can shave anywhere from 5-15 minutes off my worst half Ironman swim time, depending on how much I train. So I cued up the training montage music and signed up for a dry land swim conditioning class that would help strengthen my body and improve my swim stroke, technique, and stamina. Teresa teaches the swim conditioning class, and for good reason. She swam for the University of Nevada-Reno and is one fast mofo. My triathlon trainer is often the first female out of the water during races, and she was the fastest female swimmer in her age division at the Kona World Championships. She is pretty much twice as fast as me in the water. It’s depressing. I remember that for my first open water swim she gave me like a 5 minute head start before swimming after me, and she and I got to the buoy at the same time. Sigh. Anyway, I signed up for an hour of interval bike training and then did the swim conditioning class immediately afterwards. I’m not that hungry in the mornings so all I had to eat before working out was 3/4 of a Kashi Go Lean bar and some water. By the end of my dual workout I was ready to devour a mid-size farm animal. Betsy was my swim conditioning buddy that morning. We started by squatting down and chucking a huge weighted ball back and forth to each other, then we did about 40 triceps dips. After more ball passes and a second set of dips I was already feeling the dreaded jell-o arm effect…and we were only about 10 minutes into the workout. Oh God, I was in trouble. Let me pause and show you roughly what my triceps look like: I have the arm strength of a feeble cartoon octogenarian, and every exercise during this class was exploiting them with sadistic, unrelenting glee. Teresa made me get on the Vasa trainer, where I repeatedly failed to properly pull my arms back in the “catch” position. My wimpy arms were quivering under the teeny amount of weight Teresa had given me. After I half-assed about 20 reps, I switched with Betsy and dejectedly watched her adjust the tension and hammer out a ton of swim strokes with perfect form. I wish I had Betsy’s triceps. But I don’t. I have Mr. Burns-esque triceps. After 45 minutes of non-stop triceps abuse, I headed home to shower and get ready for work. I knew I’d be in trouble when I could already feel the soreness of my arms a couple hours after the class ended. Sure enough, the next day I felt like Ralphie’s brother from A Christmas Story, only instead of not being able to put my arms down, I couldn’t raise them more than halfway. I was rockin’ John McCain arms the entire weekend. Showering was hell, pulling my hair back was hell, rolling on deodorant was hell, changing shirts was hell. Jason quickly got tired of hearing my agonized shrieks whenever...

When Jason and I entered our freshman year of triathlons, we didn’t want to invest much money into the sport because we were unsure as to whether or not we’d like it. Scientifically speaking, triathlons cost a buttload of money. There’s running shoes, triathlon shorts, tri tops, proper running socks, visors, sunglasses, wetsuits, bikes, helmets, bike shoes, fuel, fuel and more fuel, not to mention the cost to sign up for races. That all adds up to a BUTT LOAD of cash. It ain’t cheap. But let me get back to the whole bike thing. Holy shit, if triathlons themselves cost a buttload then the bikes are like an ass cheek’s worth of money. Bikes are expensive! I had no idea they cost as much as they did! I had a pink and purple 10-speed Huffy when I was in elementary school and that thing probably set my parents back a couple hundred bucks at K-Mart, so I figured that good bikes cost like $1,000 or so, right? Wrong. They cost an ass cheek, which is why for our first tri season Jason and I were like “Eff this, we’ll borrow some bikes.” We then proceeded to remain the laughingstock of our training group until about November 2008. For about nine months I rocked out on my coworker Christine’s aluminum Giant, which was built for teeny people but weighed a ton (adding to the weight were mountain bike pedals that I was too lazy to change). The bike was too small for me (Christine’s 5’1″ and I’m 5’5″ — even with my stumpy legs, that’s a considerable size difference) and I never got a proper adjustment, so I rode on a bike that didn’t fit me for an entire season. Here’s a picture of me and Christine’s bike after the Victoria Half Ironman: Notice how it’s sportin’ the aero bars. Putting aero bars on that heavy mofo is kind of like ordering a Diet Coke with your triple quarter pounder with cheese, but I did stick aero bars on it (mostly so I could drink without having to wobbily reach down and grab a bottle from my cage — I’ve since gotten better at doing that). I also put new tires on the bike after I tore the rear one during my first sprint triathlon (I’ll get to that in a future post). While I had made some modifications to the bike, it never felt like mine, and after I decided that I liked racing, it was time to go shopping for a bike I could call my own. Jason, meanwhile, was tearin’ it up on his dad’s old, old, old bike. Here’s a picture of it: Haha, just kidding. The bike isn’t that old. Jason’s dad has a Klein that’s about 20 years old and has the shifters down on the frame. Now that’s old school. My racing buddy borrowed the bike the whole season and stubbornly raced with it amongst the fancy Cervelos, Scotts, Felts, Gurus, and Quintana Roos. You can sort of see the Klein in the above pic where Jason is in T1 at the Victoria Half Ironman. Though it ain’t much to look at, the bike did get Jason through a half dozen races this year (and he passed his fair share of athletes on fancy $3,000 time trial bikes. Suck it, losers!). Jason made some much needed upgrades to the bike as well — the front derailleur needed replacing and he also swapped out the seat. Much like me, however, Jason didn’t have a bike of his own and wanted to join his fellow athletes in the 21st century with upgraded, lighter technology....

This week I tried a yoga class for the first time. Having been unimpressed with Pilates (well, with the class I tried, anyway), I didn’t have high expectations for yoga but nevertheless felt like I should at least give it a try, seeing as how I’ve met my share of buff women who swear by it. I entered the dimly lit yoga room about a minute after the class started. It was full of men and women who were sitting cross-legged on yoga mats. I panicked when I thought it was BYOM (Bring Your Own Mat) but then saw a stack of extras in the corner of the room. After grabbing a mat, I picked an open spot on the floor and sat down…then I stood back up and kicked off my socks and shoes when I realized that everyone else was barefoot. (Seriously, what is with yoga and Pilates being barefoot requisite? The only exercise I’m used to doing sans shoes is swimming.) The yoga instructor was giving us pleasant-sounding instructions amid the New Age music and the white Christmas lights. She kept flicking her eyes over to me, having noticed the Outsider vibes I was giving off. I don’t blame her for staring — I was the only person in the room wearing a tank top and exercise shorts, so I must have looked downright nutty compared to the fashionable yogaphiles in leg warmers, almost pants, and off-the shoulder sweaters. I felt like I was in a room full of Flashdance extras. We started the class off with a few minutes of meditation. The instructor told us to close our eyes and just “relax and let the day’s events melt away.” I found that it was difficult to close my eyes and relax while loud trash talking permeated the room from the adjacent basketball court. It’s not easy to ignore repeated shouts of “AGHHHHH!” and “Not in MY house!” Somehow, everyone else in the room managed to close their eyes and appeared to go to their happy places while I looked around and gawked at them. (I do the same thing at dinners whenever the family insists on saying grace before we eat.) From there we did a lot of stretchy stuff and pretended to be various animals. In the course of an hour I was a dog, an alligator, a snake, an eagle, a “happy baby,” and other creatures. It’s like we were starring in our own version of Michael Jackson’s Black or White video. (Speaking of the “dog” moves, whenever the instructor told us to “get in the up dog position,” I resisted the urge to cheekily say “What’s up dog?” in hopes that she’d respond with “Not much, what’s up with you?” I’m such a dork.) I kept up with the moves while stifling chicken quesadilla burps and silently cursing myself for eating Mexican for lunch. At the end of the workout the instructor had us lay flat on the ground and close our eyes while she went around the room and “adjusted” people. I laid there and found out that “getting adjusted” consisted of her walking over to me and holding my legs up in the air for a few seconds, then gently placing them back on the floor. I’m not sure what the purpose of these adjustments are other than to realign my chi or something. Maybe my aura looked crooked. Overall, yoga wasn’t too shabby. I felt it was mostly easy, with only a couple of poses that were difficult. I can see the benefit of doing yoga once a week or so for stretching purposes. The class was palatable —...

Flash back to January 2008. Jason and I had just joined a track running group that my coworker, Christine, trained with every Tuesday evening. We were the awkward NKOTBs who were huffing it around the track while fit, wiry runners flew by us. Jason sported baggy Old Navy sweatpants that were at least one size too big and I bounded around on my toes like Pepe LePew. Oh, how far we’ve come since then…(not really.) Anyway, one day Christine mentioned to me that she had signed up for the New Balance Half Ironman in Victoria, BC. After much prodding and convincing, I decided to sign up for the Half Ironman too (and I dragged Jason into the entire mess). It’s a good thing Christine isn’t a drug dealer — she’s so damn good at convincing me to do stuff that if she were peddling crack instead of triathlons, you’d be reading my first post from MediocreMethHead.com. Jason and I each forked over about $230 and signed up. We then set up a meeting with Teresa, our new triathlon training coach. This is what Teresa looks like: Now here’s me: Basically, whereas Teresa has abs on top of more abs and shoulder blades that can crack walnuts, I am quite adept at stuffing my face with fried po’boy sandwiches. That’s how I roll: shamelessly inhaling food while armpit fat pooches out of my tank top. I’m classy like that. Jason and I met Teresa at a coffee shop near the Seattle Athletic Club to get a noob’s guide to triathlons. She then proceeded to humor us for about 2 hours, answering every single question we had about triathlon logistics, from what kind of gear we’ll need to how often we should be swimming, biking and running each week. I swear, we were so clueless about the sport that I’m surprised she didn’t bust out the hand puppets and pop-up books to help us understand. As I recall, the conversation went something like this: Teresa: “Do you have wet suits?” Me/Jason: “No.” Teresa: “You’ll have to buy wet suits. Speedy Reedy is having a 50% off sale for last year’s gear, so you should be able to get a good deal. Okay, so I’m scheduling a ride for you guys this week…” Me: “Oh yeah, bikes…yeah, we’ll have to get some of those.” Teresa: “You don’t have bikes?” Jason: “Well, I can borrow my dad’s…” Me: “Christine might have one I can borrow…” Teresa: “K…well, pick those up this week. Anyway, since it’s too crummy to ride outside right now, you’ll need trainers for indoor rides…you guys have trainers, right?” Me: “Trainers?” Teresa: “I’m guessing no. I have a couple you two can borrow…you at least have helmets, right?” Me/Jason: [blank stare] Mayyyyybe… Teresa: [sighs] “Do you have running shoes?” Me/Jason: “Ooh, those we do have!” We front-loaded Teresa with ridiculous questions and scenarios we wouldn’t even have to deal with for months (e.g., “How do transitions work? What clothes are you supposed to race in? Do you change clothes during the race? Will people see us naked?”). That woman has the patience of a saint. Little did she know how much grief we’d put her through with us being late to every workout, impulsively signing up for endurance races, falling into bad habits over and over again (I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard “Jason, put your head down” and “Rebecca, stop dragging your arm” while swimming), and griping about various race misadventures. But hey, not all of her clients can be elite age group winners, right? That’s us: bringing down her average since January 2008. We love...