I swim at the Y near my house, and I mostly hate it. It’s kind of expensive for how ghetto it is, they keep the pool temperature at an uncomfortable 85 degrees (sometimes 86, while occasionally they “treat” us with a refreshing 84), the pool tiles are jagged and broken and collecting more sketchy-looking black grime each week, the locker room is nasty despite the heavily advertised 20 minute daily cleaning it receives (wow, a whole 20 minutes! Too bad that’s apparently not enough time to clean the tumbleweed of body [probably pube] hair clogging up the shower drains), and the hot water is nonexistent on a regular basis (probably because it’s all pumped into that hot spring they call a pool). But I put up with it because it’s a couple blocks from where I live, and because their lap swim times are pretty decent. But let’s face it, it’s the Central District YMCA so I’m not exactly working out in the lap of luxury or expecting greatness here, which I fully understand. I also understand that since it’s the Y, there’s an eclectic group of people who work out there. You’ve got your lower income families, your skinny, tatted up hipsters who exercise in skinny jeans and Converse, retirees who aquacize during lap swim, huge, menacing dudes who look like extras from The Wire, student athletes from nearby schools–it’s a ridiculously random bunch, but everyone is mostly polite and does their own thing without incident. Until recently, of course. I showed up to lap swim yesterday to get in a workout during my lunch break. Judging from how loud the pool sounded from the locker room, I could tell it was going to be a crowded day, and when I emerged from the showers my suspicions were correct. There are four lanes in the pool, and they were situated like this: The slow lane (typically reserved for people who tread water, float around, or are doing some sort of water therapy) had two people in it Medium Lane #1 had two people in it The fast lane had two people in it Medium Lane #2 inexplicably had four people in it In the context of my triathlon team, races, and most of mankind, I am a slow swimmer; however, by the Y’s incredibly low standards, I’m more of a “medium speed” person so I walked over to Medium Lane #1, which had a woman and a man splitting the lane. The man had taken off down the pool but the woman (who I shall henceforth refer to as “Grimace” due to her garishly bright purple swimsuit and her top-heavy stature) was on her way back, so I waved to get her attention. Me: “Can we circle swim? Sorry, I know it’s crowded.” She nodded and took off. When she caught up to the guy she explained the change, and we all settled into a circle swim. Typically, when the pool is crowded and you’re forced to circle swim with other swimmers, it can be difficult to follow your original workout. I know this from having done enough circle swims and from reading various swim forums where the consensus is that some sort of compromise is required in order for everyone to successfully share the lane. Today I had planned to do a speed workout, but I knew that I was going to end up taking a few extra seconds here and there waiting at the end of the pool to create gaps between me and the next swimmer, or that I’d have to time my sets so that everyone was spaced out accordingly. It’s not ideal but...

Recently some professional triathlete was all proud of himself for coming up with an arbitrary “do’s and don’ts of triathlon.” He started his post by exclaiming that some athletes will “probably be offended at some point” while reading his list, as if he were making a racist rant about Obama or opining that men should decide whether women should have abortions instead of making the controversial claim that triathletes should use chamois cream before their rides. I didn’t take offense to his list so much as rolled my eyes to it, as if you’re not a “serious” or “hardcore” athlete if you commit any of these cardinal sins. According to him, nobody in the history of ever should do their swim workout while wearing a watch, even if they need to record splits that would be much easier to track via the lap button than trying to memorize them all from the wall clock. Got it. You should also listen to this guy when it comes to fueling, because it’s better to forgo extra fuel on the bike and a fuel belt during your runs so you don’t look like a fool, amirite? Because everyone laughs at you if they see you carrying some bottles and a few gels. They all point and cackle, “Look at this dumb-ass, carrying a couple unnecessary extra pounds! Revoke his USAT card right now!” Also, despite the fact that I have never seen anyone ever eat a gel outside of training or races, thanks for pointing out that one should never consume them as a snack or meal. I’m sure that happens all the time. I suppose the only truly “controversial” point this guy brought up was the M-dot tattoo. You all know it well–it’s the Ironman logo that some athletes get tattooed on their bodies after completing their first Ironman. His argument was “do fat people get the McDonald’s Arches tattooed on their bellies because they love a quarter pounder with cheese?”, which is a straw man argument. It’s not like some guy ran out and got the M-dot tattoo because he liked the Timex Ironman brand watches; typically the mindset is that the tattoo is “earned” after months of training and upon completion of the race, whereas any schmuck who loves Mickey D’s or is an Apple fanboy can get the arches or apple icon inked on his skin. What I think this man was trying to say is that the M-dot is a corporate logo, and tattooing a corporate logo onto your body is stupid–it’s like getting the LG logo or BMW permanently etched onto your body. I can understand that argument, but are you really going to nitpick an M-dot tattoo over tattoos in general (especially when the author himself admitted to having a “Cleveland” tattoo, which is infinitely more embarrassing than an M-dot considering Cleveland is an utter shithole)? People get stupid, ridiculous tattoos all the time for no reason–at least the M-dot tattoo has some semblance of reason and meaning behind it. Would you make fun of a group of military guys for getting army/navy/squadron/etc tattoos? Of course not, because you’d probably get your ass kicked, but also because you understand that even though the army is a “corporate” logo, it represented a time in that guy’s life when he did something personally meaningful and bonded with a group of like-minded individuals. I don’t see the M-dot as being any different. Not everyone is naturally athletic or gifted. Some people look at an Ironman and see Mt. Everest. They train for months, maybe even years, to aspire to complete one, and when they do they see a dream...

Last night when I was at track, my coach Teresa, with a big grin on her face, blurted out two big announcements. The first was that one of my teammates had gotten engaged, which I knew about thanks to Facebook (nonetheless, congratulations once again, Karissa!). Maybe now that Karissa will be busy with wedding planning, I can finally catch up to her swim speed. (I say this with 100% sarcasm because she is insanely fast in the water and I am dumbfounded by how she does it–I’m convinced she stows some fins and a small motor underneath a dock or something before races.) The second piece of news was that one of TN’s coaches, Bridget, is three months pregnant. That was more surprising to me, although not mind-blowingly so since her mom had been putting some not-so-subtle pressure on her to start popping out grandkids already and Bridget had mentioned that she wanted to start a family soon. I started having my Usual Suspects moment where I thought back to all of the workouts Bridget hadn’t participated in lately and how I hadn’t seen much of her in general before my brain went “Ohhhhhhhh, right, because of the whole ‘fetus’ thing.” I was happy for her and her husband, but then it dawned on me. Despite being terrible at math (I’m a disgrace to my Asian heritage, I know), I was able to calculate that if she’s three months pregnant now, she’s likely due at the end of July or the beginning of August. I started my Ironman training program in September, having gotten more of a head start than when I trained for my first Ironman (which was about an eight-month regimen back in 2010). By the time Bridget squeezes out Bridget Jr., I’ll still be a few weeks away from racing Ironman Canada; thus, in the amount of time it will take me to train for and complete an Ironman this year, I could have conceived, gestated, and given birth to a baby and have been taking care of it for a couple months. Mind. Blown. So basically, my baby is Ironman Canada. There isn’t that much of a difference between being pregnant and training for an Ironman, if you think about it: You’re often sore and bloated Your feet hurt You’re hungry all the time You’re tired all the time Nausea (puke and rally!) You get mood swings and can be crabby Random, copious amounts of sweat You’re spending tons of money on gear and supplies You have mental breakdowns where you think you’re not ready and that you can’t do it, but you can By the end of it you just want it to be done with it already When the big day arrives, it feels like it goes by in an instant even if it did take you all day You finish with a sense of accomplishment and a brand new “baby” (in my case, a medal and an upside-down printed hat, but whatever)…and a sore hoo-ha. I’m a few years away from making the “should we start a family” decision, but for now Ironman training is giving me a taste of what it’s like to endure nine months (or, this time around, 11 months) of feeling uncomfortable, miserable, randomly sticky, and going through weird body changes. As for Coach Bridget, knowing how tough she is and what an outstanding athlete she is, this whole pregnancy thing should be a piece of cake for her. Just don’t eat too many ketchup chips, Coach B, or your baby may turn into a ginger. (And...

I swear, I must be the only person alive who seems to be getting worse the more she tries to swim. I’m like the Benjamin Button of swimming — the more time I spend in the water, the crappier I seem to get. My good swims are at about a 25-33%, meaning one out of every three or four swims actually feels decent. On the rare chance I”ll have what I think is a “good” swim workout (meaning I was just tragically slow instead of abysmally slow), the next 2-3 swims will be freaking awful and I’ll beat myself up over how hopeless I am until my body throws me a bone with a semi-decent swim again. Take today’s workout for example. Teresa persuaded me to do the “postal swim,” which is an hour-long time trial. The rule is simple: see how far you can swim in 60 minutes. She pestered me via email and asked if I was going to sign up, and I sighed and responded with, “I don’t really want to do it, but I will if you think it’ll be good for me.” By the time I stopped dragging my feet and committed to doing the workout, there were only a couple slots left. Teresa cheerfully jammed me into the first of three waves. Wave #1 started at 7 am. On a Sunday. FML. As if getting up at the ass crack of dawn on a Sunday morning for a bullshit swim workout wasn’t bad enough, I scanned the list of folks who were swimming in Wave #1 and realized that I was woefully outpaced among my fellow teammates. All of the fast assholes on my team were swimming at 7 am. I needed to be in Wave #3, which started at 9:30…or Teresa needed to make a separate “slowest of the slow” wave that started at noon and consisted of me and a no armed, one legged drifter named Hobo Joe. Also making the swim worse was the fact that I was out of town this past week for work, so my weekend workouts were especially heavy duty to make up for my travel time. I spent the weekdays in Denver before flying home and forcing myself to do a swim workout on Friday. My swim wasn’t great, which gave me a glimmer of hope that, by the Law of Transitive Beccas, my Sunday swim would be better. On Saturday I had a “Welcome back to Ironman training you lazy bastard” workout that consisted of 3×1 hour bike intervals with a 15 minute brick run after each set. By the end of my 3:45 workout, I was exhausted, my legs were aching, and I was dreading the early morning swim that would end my weekend. This morning I woke up at a soul-crushingly early 5:30 am and puttered around as nervous as I would be if it were an actual race. I was irrationally anxious and agonized over what to eat for breakfast. I even sucked down a cup of coffee, something I only do on race mornings. Jason and I hopped into the car (he didn’t want to do the postal swim either, but I nagged him into Band of Brothers-ing it with me) and drove over to Mercer Island. It was stupid and dark outside–as in “dark enough that I should still be in bed instead of driving to a turdtastic swim workout.” The island has no streetlights and the pool center was dark too, resulting in a supremely paranoid left turn into the parking lot since I was worried about missing the driveway and careening down an embankment (which, admittedly, still...

When you spend a decent amount of time training with fitness-oriented people, you often get sucked into extra-curricular activities that have an athletic or healthy twist. Like the time I went to my coach’s bachelorette weekend and ended up riding 80 miles through a canyon. Or the time I went to a dinner party that turned out to be gluten, dairy, chicken, various nuts, and egg-free. Or when a couple of weeks ago I did a “holidazzle” run with some of the fittest and fastest females in Seattle. It’s my fault, really. I accept these invitations knowing full well I’m in over my head and that these speedy chicks are going to mop the floor with this Mediocre Athlete. But I go anyway because I’m a glutton for punishment and because I think of myself as fairly easygoing (probably ingrained from “youngest child syndrome” and having grown up with two older brothers barking at me to get in the back seat without asking my opinion on the intricacies of vehicular seating charts). So, with some trepidation, I accepted Ms. Cathleen Knutson‘s invitation to partake in her annual “Holidazzle” pre-Christmas holiday run through Queen Anne. The plan was simple enough: dress up in your goofiest Christmas attire and meet at Cathleen’s apartment before running to a bar for some drinks, then running some more throughout Richy Richville before returning to Cathleen’s for food, booze, and merriment. I tried not to think about how I was going to be the slowest chick there (Cathleen, aka Female Rambo, was fresh off her second straight Ironman Kona appearance and regularly kicks my ass in age group placings [meaning she wins our age group while I’m finishing in the middle of the pack on a good day], and a bunch of other females were also Kona veterans or could outswim, bike, and run me any day of the week). Since I was sorely lacking in the “Christmas merriment” clothing, I settled on a glitzy run headband I received as a Secret Santa gift, a red scarf, and my beloved shark mittens, then waved goodbye to Jas and hopped in my car. Unfortunately, the dreaded Denny traffic ensured that I was super late in getting to Cathleen’s, so by the time I got to her apartment, the girls had already left. I knew that they would end up at the Paragon Bar & Grill towards the early part of the evening, so I looked up the address on my phone. Then I realized I didn’t want to run who knows how many miles with my phone and that I had the bare minimum definition of a pants pocket (thanks for the Lululemon run capris, Teresa!). After some head scratching, I found a clean Subway napkin in my glove box, scrawled the address onto it, shoved my car keys into the tiniest pocket ever, and took off for the bar. Cathleen assured the girls that this would be a “leisurely” run, but she didn’t account for the fact that some of us would show up late and spazz-sprint through Queen Anne to try and meet up with the main group. I ran up several hills, then would get turned around and double back to where I started. Eventually I came across the sketchiest and rapiest staircase in Seattle and reluctantly made my way up them, sporting my most convincing “You best not mess with me, muggers and/or serial killers!” sneer while simultaneously trying to look where I was going in the nonexistent light to avoid tripping and breaking my neck. I made it to the top unscathed and continued on, struggling to read my scraggly handwriting...