Recently I did the Issaquah sprint for the first time since 2008. It was my first triathlon of the season and the first race I was doing without my Big Friendly Giant racing alongside (meaning ahead) of me. Jason had signed up to do the Boise 70.3, which was a week after Issaquah, so he served as my cheering squad and gear sherpa for the day. I signed up for the event when I arrived, so no awesome shwag for me. Oh well, I have enough crappy finisher’s t-shirts to last me a while. I puttered over to my transition spot to set up my crap while the race organizers blasted the sleepiest “pump you up” music ever. After hearing Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends” and a mini-marathon of Police songs, I wondered whether I should be racing or watching an end-of-the-episode, post-breakup clip montage from Dawson’s Creek. The girl racked next to me realized she didn’t have a pair of goggles, so I lent her an extra that I had. We joked about the less-than-stellar music playlist before I headed out for a warm up run. I jogged down to the swim start and realized how different the race was set up this year compared to when I did it back in 2008. For one, we were swimming at a different beach. The transition area was also set up pretty far away from the swim exit, so it was going to be a longish T1. After getting lubed up and pulling my wetsuit on, I got in the water to do a half-ass warm up swim. Sweet jesus, that lake was cold. It was colder than Greenlake, which I had swam in earlier that week. Rebecca no likey. “Oh well,” I thought, “I can survive a measly 400 meters. Remember when you swam 2.4 miles in August? Sure, you were 10 lbs lighter and in better race shape, but this won’t be so bad! Plus, it’s not even your ‘A’ race so stop giving a shit and just get this nonsense over with.” Roughly fifteen hundred wave starts later, it was finally time for my group to get in the water. I squirted out one last pre-race pee before the air gun went off. Time to race! Swim Summary I took off amid a cluster of females, my nerves and adrenaline propelling me along at a fast (for me, anyway), unsustainable pace. I swam for a while, and when I eventually looked up, I realized that the group I thought I was keeping up with had, as usual, left me behind. Boo. My swim felt kind of tired and lethargic, which was a big ol’ bummer because I had a good pool workout earlier in the week and a decent open water swim. Of course my arms chose race day to be all, “Screw this, we’re tired.” It was at that point I decided that 400 meter swims suck. I only have one swim speed, which is “mediocre.” That speed becomes more embarrassing the shorter the distance. Swim time: 0:09:22 (2:20/100 meters) Wow, talk about tragic. Even though I was faster than my first attempt at this race three years ago, I was really disappointed when I crawled out of the water and glanced at my watch. I had expected to be a minute to 90 seconds faster (even 30 seconds on the slow end). Later, however, I found out from a couple people that the swim course was most likely measured wrong and that we had swum more than 400 meters. My teammate Kim compared swim times from this year to previous years and...

On Monday I went to dryland strength conditioning, and that day Bridget decided to get cute with us and change up the routine a bit. She did a 30 seconds on/30 seconds rest/30 seconds on workout where we’d be at a station doing reps for half a minute before getting a break. That’s all well and good if the person running the workout is paying attention to the clock and timing everything properly; unfortunately, a couple times Bridget would get too caught up in watching everyone’s form to remember to check her watch and realize that she had been punishing us well past the :30 mark. (She pulled that stunt when I was at the hardest station, then said, “Oops, sorry!” and gave us a shorter rest to balance out the elapsed time. I’m still figuring out how to exact my revenge.) The workout itself wasn’t too bad, but the next day I woke up and was like, “WTF soreness, where’d this shit come from?” before pulling a Bruce Willis at the end of The Sixth Sense and thinking back to all the times I never actually interacted with anyone but Haley Joel the stupid workout I had done the day before. Between my aching body and the fact that a routine oil change turned into a $600 endeavor where I had to replace all four tires (the drawback of having an all-wheel drive vehicle), I wasn’t exactly stoked to do a track workout that evening. But what the hell, I went anyway because I’m a masochist. My reward for showing up was a mile warm up followed by our pre-workout exercises that typically consist of ridiculous movements that resemble a short-lived 80’s dance trend. After Roger Rabbiting my way from one side to the next, Teresa then instructed us to do inchworms along the gravel-y and dirty ground. My reaction: After I begrudgingly wormed my way across the ground and stood up, picking gravel and debris out of my palms, we were told what the workout would be. Survey says…..hill repeats! Fuck my life. 12 repeats later, I drove home and complained to an amused and resting Jas, who had a light week of workouts ahead of him after having raced Boise on Saturday. He didn’t seem very sympathetic. Bastard. On Wednesday morning I woke up feeling less sore and thus somewhat upbeat. I had a swim lesson with Teresa where, as usual, she instructed me to change about 15 different things about my swim form, then beamed like a mother hen when one out of every nine lengths actually managed to look passably decent. I came home and worked for a bit before meeting up with a new strength trainer I found, an imposing Russian guy named Gene (whom I’ve appropriately programmed into my phone as “Gene the Russian”). He assured me that our first meeting would be a “get to know you” session where he’d assess my fitness levels and check my form. After a stupid amount of pushups, shoulder exercises, sit ups, and other movements, I left the facility thinking that this didn’t seem as “preliminary” as I was initially assured. Today my soreness has reared its ugly head once again: my abs (shut up, they soooo exist under that permanent cushion of fat I harbor) are angry with me, my hamstrings are tight, and my shoulders are giving me the aforementioned “Are you fucking kidding me” look.  It’s taken me back to last year’s training, where I ultimately got used to being vaguely sore all the time because I was working out nonstop in preparation for Ironman Canada. This year, however, my body’s become...

Before I put up my Issaquah sprint triathlon race recap, I thought I’d crank out a delayed recap of the Mt. Rainier Duathlon, which I did on May 1st. Enjoy! Until recently, I haven’t been focused on races and have instead been trying to get my right Achilles tendon healthy. Now that it finally seems as if it’s mostly on the mend, Teresa has taken advantage of my newfound health and has been bugging me about my 2011 race season. First up was the Mt. Rainier duathlon, which I wasn’t thrilled about because I wasn’t optimistic about how well I’d do (especially since I was fresh off an injury, hadn’t been running much lately, and had gained a shame-inducing amount of weight in the offseason). My grumblings fell on deaf ears, and both my trainer and my somewhat bullying boyfriend peer pressured me into signing up. (Well, technically Jason signed me up, but he used my credit card. Bastard.) Because of my running handicap, I got out of doing the long course for the third straight year, but Jason opted to finally pop his long course cherry. I wasn’t optimistic about posting a PR this time around and instead opted to focus on not embarrassing myself. Since I didn’t expect to run better than last year, I figured I could at least improve my bike time. Jason’s goal was to take the big descent back to transition confidently since he was still a bit shaky after last year’s bike accident. We got to the race and although the rain had held off and it was remarkably sunny, it was also ball-shrinkingly cold (if I had balls, that is) and holding steady at about 36 degrees. I began to immediately fret over what to wear: should I have gloves? Should I wear the team windbreaker? Is a t-shirt and arm warmers enough or do I need to don a parka OH GOD I’M GOING TO FREEZE TO DEATH OUT THERE. I reminded myself that I often race warm and ended up going with the “Screw it, it’s a short race that I don’t really care about” approach to getting ready. Jason and the other long course racers started five minutes before us shorties, so I gave him a hug and a kiss and wished him good luck. I stood around with my teammates until it was our turn to get started. Let my first race of 2011 commence! Run #1 I wasn’t sure how hard to go out on the first run leg, so I just took off like a spaz and ran as best I could. I had to dodge several horses since this year we were sharing the area with some Enumclaw horse show nonsense, but it wasn’t too annoying because the first run is so short. I thought about trying to chase down Jason’s sister who was also doing the race before remembering that she had just done the Boston Marathon and I was newly uninjured, so unless I wanted to keel over and die on the bike portion of the race, I’d better give up on unsuccessfully trying to catch someone who’s quite a bit faster than me. Boo. You just wait until I’m healthy, Danielle! …healthy and a much, much better runner. (Also, in this stupid run fantasy can you stop getting faster so I can catch up to you? K thanks.) Run #1 time: 12 min 33 seconds (7:51 min/mile pace) — not bad considering I had barely done any running (and haven’t done any speed work) in the past six months. T1 This year they changed how you enter and exit the transition...

Tomorrow I’m doing the Issaquah sprint triathlon. Fun fact: the Issaquah sprint was my first-ever triathlon three years ago. In typical Mediocre Athlete fashion, my first race didn’t go so well. Basically, I should be able to PR tomorrow by about 45 minutes unless my leg falls off or I get abducted. I thought I’d offer up an exceptionally belated race report so you have an idea of how my first-ever triathlon went way back in 2008 — enjoy! Back in 2008, I was training for my first half Ironman, the not-quite-half-Ironman-distance New Balance race in Victoria. I was a sorry sight, riding on a borrowed road bike with mountain bike pedals and swimming even more terribly than I do now. I was basically the Tai to Teresa’s Cher if this were the movie Clueless. Teresa urged me and Jason to do the Issaquah sprint triathlon so we’d have a little bit of race experience going into the Victoria half Ironman. Since it was my first tri, I was ridiculously nervous. Swim Summary The swim was a teeny tiny 400 meters — it would take you longer to get your wetsuit on and off than it would to actually swim that distance. Of course, I was convinced I was going to drown. I swam with a handful of other girls in my age group, stopping at every buoy to gasp for air and gaze longingly at the shore. Swim time: 10:29 (2:37/100 meters) As embarrassingly crappy as my swim was, it marked the only time I’ve beaten Jas during the swim portion of a race. Since this was his first ever open water swim, he panicked and flailed in the water and I ended up edging him out by a minute or so. (Check out the only Mediocre Athlete post my lazy boyfriend has ever written for a recap of his swim from that race.) Transition 1 My transitions have always been decent, even from the get-go, and my first race’s T1 was a respectable 2:14. I think I’m just anxious to get out of my stupid wetsuit as quickly as possible. No matter the reason, my transitions aren’t that bad. Bike Summary I hopped on my borrowed bike and made my way along the 15-mile course. It’s an out and back and I just puttered along with all the other racers. I didn’t have a bike computer at the time, so I had no idea how fast I was going or what my cadence was (it was probably pretty shitty). I momentarily went the wrong way when I followed some schmohawk who took a wrong turn, but thankfully the race volunteers quickly corrected us. When I was a few miles from transition, I was descending a hill when I noticed an odd noise coming from behind me. “That doesn’t sound normal,” I thought, so once I got to the bottom, I got off the bike and checked my rear tire. It was dead flat. Great, I’d gotten a flat tire during my first triathlon and not only did I not know how to change a flat, I didn’t have any tools or spares with me so I couldn’t even attempt to figure it out. I kind of stood there for a while, not knowing what to do, before eventually click-clacking down the road while pushing my neutered bike. Eventually my teammate Beth came along and, bless her heart, stopped to try and help me. She had a spare tire and tools, but the only problem was she didn’t know how to change a flat, either. We both fumbled around for a bit and got as far as taking...

Last week I checked my training workouts and saw that Teresa was seemingly intent on turning my taint into a giant callus on which I could strike matches by scheduling me four bike workouts: one tempo/strength ride, a recovery ride, a 3 hour interval workout, and the 7 Hills of Kirkland metric century ride on Memorial Day. She emailed me and asked if I was doing the ride. I responded with a “Maybe…who else is doing it?” Teresa directed me to our Yahoo! group forum so I could coordinate with some teammates and have someone to ride with. I, of course, was too lazy to do that so I ended up not knowing who was riding and when they planned on starting. My half-assitude lasted me through the weekend until I figured it was time to actually do some semblance of research and see who I could ride with. I had never done the Kirkland ride before (it’s put on by the city every year to raise money to help homelessness), so I asked Jason if he’d sign up with me. He gave me a “Pshaw hell nah, I’m tapering for Boise.” His dad, on the other hand, was interested in doing the ride so at least I’d have one cycling buddy for the day. In keeping with my “total lack of research” theme for this ride, I woke up early Monday morning, got my gear together, did a quick glance at the 7 Hills website to get the address of the starting point, and took off. I met Jim, Jason’s dad, at the park where the ride took off from at 7 am and begrudgingly coughed up $55 for the registration fee. (A cost that I think is too expensive, especially considering that the course is still open to car traffic and we’re really only paying for a couple of aid stations. I reminded myself it was for a good cause and remembered to take more fuel gels than I needed at each food stop to make up for the dent in my wallet.) The ride started out pretty decent, and the climbs were pretty good but nothing that was pants-crappingly difficult. Unfortunately, I found out pretty quickly that it’s not the best idea to do the ride on a time trial bike — there are enough climbs that having a road bike would be more beneficial, plus the descents are often winding/zig-zaggy and there aren’t that many flat/fast stretches to get into aero. I ended up being that doosher trying to look all bad-ass on my TT when a road bike was way more appropriate (at least I didn’t have race wheels *coughBrentcough*). Jason’s dad had warned me ahead of time that the Winery Hill climb was the worst, and he had also cautioned me to be in the proper gearing as soon as we turned onto it. He wasn’t lying — as soon as you take a right onto that road, you run directly into the start of the hill. If you’re not in the correct gear when you hit it, you’re pretty screwed. The climb itself is shorter than the other hills on the ride, but it’s a steep fucker. My rear shifter was pointed towards the sky and I was cranking down on my pedals so hard, I nearly keeled over a couple times (I do not know how those professional cyclists wobble back and forth on their bikes so aggressively). When I got to the top, I was greeted by a woman sitting in a lawn chair and clapping, and once I made my way out of the neighborhood, a bag piper played the...