If you’re a serious athlete, you eat to train. I am not a serious athlete, so I reverse that mantra. Jas and I love food more than our non-existent children (those ungrateful little shitheads), so we train to eat. A big chunk of why I dutifully put up with working out upwards of 15 hours a week is so I can enjoy cramming poutine, frozen custard, handmade tagliatelle, and other unhealthy deliciousness into my gaping mouth until my belly is as bloated as Val Kilmer’s face.

Not too long ago I blogged about how I was a mediocrely dressed athlete. My teammates all looked gorgeous in their cutesy petite Lululemon gear while I slummed it up in old race t-shirts and haggard eyes. Since then I’ve Jefferson’d up and moved into a de-luxe apartment in the sky, meaning I’ve acquired some more respectable exercise clothing. Woo hoo! First, my coaches Teresa and Mark bought me a pair of Lululemon shorts for my birthday, thus popping my Lululemon cherry. (Hey, I’m a late bloomer.) Then a teammate of mine, Amanda, gave me another pair of Lululemon shorts she didn’t like. That’s 200% more Lululemon than I had before! Teresa then tricked me into buying a Lululemon tank top by saying she was going to print the TN Multisports logo onto them for Ironman Canada, so I shelled out the big bucks for my first Lululemon top. It all goes downhill from there. I’ve since discovered that while I’m still not a Lululemon shopper (one of my teammates admitted to dropping five hundred dollars there in a single shopping trip, and when I balked at the price, other teammates were like, “Oh yeah, I’ve spent that much in one visit before” without batting an eye. Seriously, underground meth lab. It’s the only explanation), I am a Lululemon sale shopper. I’ve recently bought two tank tops and a short-sleeve performance shirt that were all on sale, plus a pair of running shorts and some socks that were marked down. Jason, on the other hand, has chugged the full-price Kool-aid and plunked down some cold hard cash for two pricey (but nice) t-shirts and some undies. (He did manage to get a pair of loungey shorts on sale, though.) Capping off my wardrobe is a pair of Nike shorts and a run shirt handed down to me by Teresa. (She also hooked me up with roughly 80 pairs of summer shorts because they were too big for her. Yes, a slimmed down me = a big Teresa.) Maybe now I’ll be able to start phasing out my gross old $7 tank tops with the permanent underarm stains. Yee-haw! To give you an idea of how perceptive my female teammates are (and how Lululemon-obsessed they are), when I debuted one of my new Lululemon tank tops at a track workout, I hadn’t made it more than four steps onto the track when several of my run buddies exclaimed, “Hey, new top!” They all noticed immediately and cooed over my fancy new digs. When I got home and told Jason, he laughed and asked if they all formed a circle around me and began chanting, “One of us! One of us! Goo-ble gob-ble, goo-ble gob-ble!” I still can’t bring myself to buy something from Lululemon at full price (seriously, $120 for a sweatshirt?), but I do admit they make some nice crap. Plus, I’ve lost enough weight to feel less like a fat cow when I try on their clothes and more like a chubby...

All of the Ironman Canada athletes received a little magazine that included a list of every athlete who was racing. If the athlete specified his or her profession when s/he signed up, it was also included in the list. I perused pages of athlete names and found a number of professions that stood out as amusing or unique in some way. Below are my 30 favorite athlete professions from Ironman Canada 2010:

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

…is to get sick. I’m not surprised that Jas and I both got sick after the race. (Well, he got sick about two days after the race, while my body managed to fend off his cooties until Saturday, at which point I succumbed to the plague.) I had actually been really lucky all year and didn’t get sidelined from training with colds or the flu; in fact, I haven’t been sick since last fall. Guess it’s that time of year. I nursed a scratchy, sore throat on Saturday and Sunday, then transitioned to a head cold complete with snot and congestion. On Tuesday I decided to nut up and went to track practice to run an easy three miles (and afterwards my legs felt as stiff as if I’d run 20), but the next day my body rewarded my efforts to get back on the exercise saddle by hitting me with a fever. Damn you, immune system. I guess that’s what I get for venturing into porta potties barefoot and for ingesting Vaseline of questionable origin. Jason has taken advantage of my weakened state by constantly pestering me to shell out $1,200 for a community slot into Ironman Coeur d’Alene. Sample conversation: Jason: “You’ll do sub-12 hours. I know it.” Me, blowing my nose: “You’ll have to do better than that.” Jason: “Yeah, I know.” We had talked about taking next year off from full Ironman training and instead focusing on half Ironman distances, but of course all of that flew out the window once Jas found out that our friends Mark and Jeff were doing Coeur d’Alene, so now he wants to race with the cool kids. I, on the other hand, would like to actually make an attempt to save some money this year instead of pouring all of my available funds into triathlon-related expenditures. When I remind him of our pledge to be more fiscally responsible, he hangs his heads and pouts, “Yeah, I know” with a “you’re no fun” tone in his voice. I better shake this cold soon — I’m flying to Denver for work next Monday, come back Thursday, celebrate Jason’s birthday on Friday, and fly to Miami the following Monday night to embark on our vacation to Puerto Rico. Not only would I like to be healthy for all of that, I’m getting really antsy fitness-wise and want to start training for marathon season. The only upside to this cold is that it’s put me on the “nothing tastes or sounds good” diet, so at least I’m able to counter-balance the lack of exercise by starving off extra pounds. I can’t wait to look weakened and gaunt in a bikini by the end of the...