Dear Linsey Corbin

I’m back from racing Ironman Honu 70.3. My race recap will be up soon, but first I wanted to clear something up with Linsey Corbin, the female professional triathlete who won Honu and set a female course record because she’s all fast and bad-ass and and dominates the sport in a way us mere mortals can only dream about. First, a brief explanation. Rooming with Teresa often means I inadvertently run into professional triathletes because Teresa’s a pro and rubs pointy, athletically vascular elbows with the sport’s elites and I’m often tagging along like a schmuck. In Costa Rica I met Bree Wee and in Hawaii we swam with Linsey Corbin (and by “we swam with,” I of course mean “Teresa swam with while I flailed around 500 yards behind them”).

Linsey Corbin and her famous finish line cowboy hat taking first place at Ironman Honu 70.3.

The race came and went and I was pretty happy with my performance considering the tough conditions (meaning “it was windy as shit out there”). On Sunday I had a lazy and tired recovery day, and on Monday I drove around the big island with Jason and his family and checked out the volcano. That left Tuesday as my last day to get a little relaxation in before I would return back to Seattle. Faced with one final hurrah to get my sun and drink on, I did what any Mediocre Athlete would do: I went at it full-speed.

Jason and I ate breakfast, walked to the Fairmont and had a few cocktails on the beach, walked to our hotel, changed into swimsuits, lazed about all day in the sun, then went back to our hotel room and slurped down a couple mixed drinks before meeting Kevin, Cindy, and Cindy’s mother for happy hour at Ruth’s Chris. I knocked back a couple more cocktails and some bar snacks, then we went to the Mauna Lani Canoe House to cap off the evening.

I was sipping a glass of wine and enjoying the sunset when I started to feel a bit off–a mixture of queasy and sweaty that is scientifically known as “sweesy.” I excused myself and started making my way towards the bathroom, feeling worse with each step. Heading right towards me emerging from the bathroom was a perfectly bronzed, statuesque figure. It was Linsey Corbin, and we were on an unavoidable collision course that would inevitably lead to small talk. The only problem was I was feeling pretty terrible and was in no mood to chat with anyone. I vaguely recall the conversation going something like this:

Tall, lean, beautifully golden-hued Linsey: “Oh hi!”

Stumpy-legged, splotchily tanned, soaked with sweat me: “Hi! Congratulations on your race! You did really awesome.”

My brain: “Is it me or is the room starting to spin a bit?”

Linsey: “Thank you! How did you do?”

How-am-I-producing-this-much-sweat-this-doesn’t-seem-humanly-possible me: “I did alright!”

I realized the absurdity of trying to explain to a professional triathlete that I had a good race when I finished over an hour behind her. I didn’t know what else to say, so I asked my brain for help.

My sun-baked, alcohol-soaked brain: “Just keep rambling about something!”

Me: “Uh, so I was a few minutes slower than in Costa Rica but the conditions were tougher here…but the run was easier.”

Linsey: “Easier in Costa Rica?”

Me: “No, easier here…it was tougher…there.”

Awkward silence.

My brain: “Hey, what’s with this tunnel vision all of a sudden?…..OH GOD, YOU’RE GOING TO PASS OUT. ABORT! ABORT! MAYDAY! YOU DO NOT WANT TO FAINT AT LINSEY CORBIN’S FEET!! GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!!!”

Me, quickly: “Anywaygoodseeingyou–”

Linsey: “Yeah! When do you leave?”

Me: “Tomorrowwww…” I shot several nervous glances towards the bathroom and at this point was convinced that after seeing the sweat all over me and the sheer terror in my eyes, Linsey was certain I needed to take a huge poop.

Linsey: “Me too! 11 am flight?”

Me: “Yeahseeyouthenhahabye!” I jerked my arm up in a violent wave and bolted for the bathroom, leaving Linsey standing there wondering if I was a socially inept fan or if I was just the rudest person on the planet.

I Kool-Aid Man’d through the bathroom door, kicked open a stall and immediately fainted, whacking both knees on the hard, cool tile floor (and earning some lovely bruises from my fall). The next few minutes consisted of me curled up with my head bent between my legs while my pores unleashed a torrent of sweat I hadn’t experienced since the Great Cyst Drainage of 2012.

I started to wonder at what point would I have to call Jason and make him send Cindy in to retrieve me as a restaurant full of sunburned couples in Hawaiian shirts and sundresses watched them both drag me through the hotel grounds to an ambulance, but after resting for a bit (and after a dozen auto-flushes since my crumpled form kept inadvertently triggering the toilet sensor), I had enough energy to stand up. Naturally, my action movie entrance meant that the stall door was now jammed shut, forcing me to wrestle with it until I finally managed to un-wedge it and free myself from my porcelain prison.

I mopped the sweat off my face with some toilet paper and exited to the sinks, where I noticed that all of the toilet paper I had just used to clean the sweat off me was now plastered all over my cheeks and forehead. Sighing, I spent another couple minutes picking two-ply off my face, then somewhat dizzily made my way back to the table. My friends and Jason were waiting politely, but since I had been gone so long I’m sure they all figured I had just decimated the bathroom with the aftereffects of happy hour prime rib sliders from Ruth’s Chris.

We paid our tab and Jason and I walked back to our hotel room. While we were in the elevator, I confessed what had happened and he was all, “WTF, you fainted in the bathroom?!” I spent the rest of the evening laying in bed nursing a bottle of water and a couple aspirin. The next day I felt better but still a bit warm and headachey, so I kept chugging water and laid off the booze. I’m pretty sure the sun and alcohol and lack of legit hydration contributed to my sweaty-fainty state that night. It wasn’t very fun, and making an ass of myself in front of Linsey Corbin didn’t help matters, either. (I saw her multiple times at the airport but awkwardly kept my distance because I honestly didn’t know how to follow up such a profound failure of social interaction. Then again, avoiding her probably didn’t help her opinion of me. I can’t win.)

So Linsey, on the incredibly slim chance you’re reading this, allow me to clarify that I wasn’t:

a) A creepy, Single White Female-esque fan who was so obsessed with being in your presence that I started to spontaneously sweat and spew a stream of nonsense out of my mouth,

b) Some rude age-grouper who doesn’t give a shit about anyone but herself, or

c) About to burst from critical levels of feces in my system.

I simply had too much sun and too many foo foo tropical drinks that day and was one more pleasant question away from literally fainting onto your fast feet. I apologize if my behavior was erratic, sweaty, and somewhat distant. Congratulations once again on a stellar race! I’ll try to go easy on the sauce next time.

Your non-stalker, non-rude age-group triathlon peer,

Rebecca