Jordan Rapp seems like a pretty cool professional triathlete. He’s one of the mods in the Slowtwitch forums and had a stellar win at Ironman Canada in 2011 after coming back from a life-threatening accident (he was hit by a car while training on his bike) that would have resulted in a lot of people throwing in the towel and giving up the sport. Plus, he’s brofriends with my new BFF Jesse Thomas, which makes him cool by association. Another reason Jordan Rapp is a Good Guy Greg: he founded the Rappstar Charity Challenge, which has raised millions of dollars for World Bicycle Relief, an endeavor that provides bicycles to students, healthcare workers, and entrepreneurs in Africa. Many kids have to walk as much as four hours to get to school each day, so having a bicycle to help with their commute greatly improves their quality of life. If you can, I urge you to donate to the Rappstar Charity Challenge and help someone in need get a bike. According to the website, you can donate any amount you can spare, but if you donate in multiples of $134, you’ll be eligible to win some fundraising awards. The prize pack is listed here, but don’t feel as if you have to donate a bunch to try and win something. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled with even a few dollars if you can spare some (which I know you can because your hobby is one of the more ridiculously expensive sports you can spend your paycheck on). We all need to remember how fortunate we are to be healthy and to have the means to train and race as much as we want. It’s both humbling and refreshing to see a professional athlete try to help out and give back to his fellow man because he knows it’s the right thing to do. Thanks, Jordan–if we ever meet in person, you’ll become my new professional triathlete BFF until the next time Jesse Thomas gives me another shout out on his blog. I promise not to almost faint on your...

I did Ironman Canada again, crashed at mile 30, and managed to mostly keep it together to finish. I was hurting pretty bad during the race but went through a Rollercoaster of Ouch afterwards–some days I’d feel fine, other days I’d be in a lot of pain again. The day after the race I was stiff but not feeling too terrible until I got home that night and realized I had shoved my sore and bruised body into a car for five hours. And then Tuesday rolled around. I’ve often told people that when you do an endurance race, you hit “max soreness.” I’ve felt about as sore after a marathon as I have after a full Ironman, so I figure that my body had hit maximum soreness. It’s uncomfortable but manageable, so after this most recent Ironman, I anticipated hitting “max soreness” like I always have and being able to deal with it fine. Unfortunately, I was wrong. “Max soreness” isn’t when you finish a marathon or an Ironman, it’s when you finish an Ironman race where you also happened to eat pavement. I was hurting bad on Tuesday. Not only did I have the standard post-race soreness, I was still in a considerable amount of pain from the accident. Just walking from my car to the office left me panting and wincing while holding my ribs. I was mostly useless at work and resorted to pained weight shifts and whimpers during our company meeting while the CMO looked at me like I was a dog that needed to get put down. On Wednesday I felt better, but my ribs and the left side of my head would continue to ache on and off for the next month or so. A couple weeks after the race, I showed up to the team track workout to do an easy 30 minute run but had to bail after about 20 when my head started throbbing like crazy. When Jason passed me on the track and asked how I was feeling, I pouted and responded with “My concussion hurts!” like a four-year old. But the human body is a resilient beast and eventually I healed up. Here’s a little photo journey of the nastiness: Naturally, since I wiped out at mile 32.4 of a 140.6 mile race and continued on for several hours before I tended to my wounds, my scrapes quickly evolved into “Nasty Mode” and got angry and red before switching over to liquid-y and disgusting: My most shameful moment was when I was at work talking to my boss, and his eyes flickered over to my left shoulder. I followed suit and glance down, realizing that my shoulder grossness had seeped through my shirt. He looked thoroughly disgusted as I apologized profusely for looking like the thing that emerged from the barrel in Return of the Living Dead. When it finally dried out, my left shoulder started to resemble one of those geode rock thingies you play with in third grade: The scabs are gone now, thankfully. My right hand scars are angry and purplish. The left knee is fading pretty decently, but the left shoulder is a ridiculously hue of “new skin” pink. (My gobstopper tan lines aren’t helping with the contrast.) I’ve been slathering it with lotion as well as sunscreen whenever it’s exposed to sunshine, so hopefully it’ll fade to a less horrific shade soon. Annoyingly enough, everyone who sees it (including a couple of nurses at my allergy clinic) thinks it’s a sunburn that I managed to get only in one concentrated area on my left shoulder, as if I were some sort of long-haul trucker...

Welcome back, reader! It’s been a while, I know. I took a little hiatus after Ironman Canada to laze around and get fat, so now that I am sufficiently rested and newly-pudgy, it’s time for me to get back into the swing of things, and what better way to move forward than to recap a race I did a month and a half ago, right? If you’re all, “Pffft, this was forever ago, gimme some new material already!”, don’t worry, I’ve got some more timely stuff in the pipeline. But for the 12 of you who have been bugging me to bust out this bad boy, enjoy my ridiculously belated Ironman Canada 2012 race report (oh, and here’s 2010’s race report, aka The Longest Race Report in the History of Race Reports, if you care to revisit that one). Pre-Race Shenanigans Jas and I left for Penticton the Wednesday before the race, stopping a couple (meaning hundreds) of times so I could pee and pick up some healthy, pre-race organic, gluten-free, paleo-friendly nourishment… …just kidding, I had a gas station corn dog, a BBQ pulled pork sandwich, and about five pounds of potato chips. Every time I sign up for these endurance races, I fill out all of the information so far in advance that I’ve forgotten what I’ve written until I have to review the forms before the event. This means that Present Me will usually be simultaneously amused and embarrassed by Past Me’s responses. Case in point: when I went to pick up all of my important race crap, I saw this: The elderly volunteer who was going over my information with me did a double-take and laughed pretty hard, saying, “I haven’t seen that one before!” I took that as a sign to keep putting bullshit in my forms for future events. Thanks, lady! With registration taken care of, I taper tantrum-ed my way through my final pre-race workouts (“Eeeeekkk, my foot is hurting during this bike ride! I knew I should have brought my old nasty cycling shoes instead of the new pair!”; “Holy shit, this water is so rough! Why is it so rough?! It’s going to be even worse on race day, I know it!!”), had my pre-race meeting with Coach T, and lounged around until race day. I was a little nervous but mostly anxious to get back on the course again and see what an additional two years of fitness would do for my finish time. Race Morning I sprang out of bed before my alarm went off, hopped up on nervous energy while Jason sleepily mumbled something and rolled over to catch some more zzz’s. After I showered and scarfed down breakfast and my token cup of race coffee (I only drink coffee the morning of a race, so thus far in 2012 I have had a whopping five cups of sludge), we all headed to transition so I could do my thang. After the standard pre-race whatnots, I found several of my teammates who were also racing and hung out with them as the clock ticked down to 7 am. The mood was light and I was having a great time laughing and joking with everyone while other athletes moped around looking worrisome and miserable. The #1 reason I love being a part of TN Multisports: because my pre-race demeanor is this: Apparently my pre-Ironman ritual now consists of peeing myself in transition before the race starts. Thankfully, my teammates were more amused than grossed out. (And the flower bed got a nice watering!) I have no idea what Tom and I are laughing about here–probably my lack of shame after...

Ironman races are a funny thing. I signed up last year, slimmed down, got healthy, (mostly) stopped eating like a complete moron, did four races with mixed results (one win, one DFL), juggled training amid the stresses of starting a new job. And now here I am, on the eve of showing up at the start line to Ironman Canada for the second time. But despite the fact that I feel as prepared as I’ll ever be, it still feels like I’m racing for the first time. Feels like the very first time! I told Teresa exactly that when we sat down for my pre-race athlete meeting, and she laughed and asked why I’d feel that way. Racing an Ironman has an entirely different feel to it. I’ve done three half Ironman races this year, eight since I started doing triathlons in 2008. I’m healthy enough to bust one out a month during the peak of triathlon season. Yet there are only a handful of Ironman races a year, and a mere mortal like myself typically only tackles one per season (or, in my case, one every other season). So although I’ve done this exact same race in this exact same location on close to the exact same date two years ago, it kind of feels like my first Ironman all over again (even though technically it’ll be my last Ironman Canada since next year the series gets changed to Challenge Penticton under new organizers). Sure, I sort of know what to expect this time around, and I figure that I should be faster than I was back in 2010, but it’s a long enough day and enough time has passed since I was at the start line that I’m going to have to rediscover the feeling of racing Ironman all over again. In some ways that’s a little nerve-wracking, but in other ways it’s kind of exhilarating, like being able to recapture the magic and excitement of a first kiss or rediscovering the joy of Saturday morning cartoons and a big bowl of sugary cereal when you were a kid. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a bit nervous, especially as the list of friends who are planning to spectate or track me continues to grow. A prime example: Steven “Good Steve” Hooper, after our last training ride together, in a cheery, optimistic voice: “Good luck at Ironman Canada! Wish I could come up to spectate, but I’ll be tracking you on race day!” What I heard: Steven “Don’t Let Me Down Or Our Friendship is Over” Hooper, in a menacing voice: “I’ll be tracking you on race day.” And when I met with Teresa to talk about my race, she talked about getting in and out of transition as quickly as possible, pushing the descents, pushing my pace when I turn around on the run, and generally treating the day more like a “race” than last time, when my goal was more to “finish.” I of course interpreted her advice as Asian Mom levels of expectations and promptly peed myself a little bit. But ultimately, despite my personal goals or the expectations of others, I know that everyone will be cheering for me no matter how I do. So tomorrow I’m planning to have fun, stay strong, and be thankful that I’m healthy and privileged enough to make something that is the dream of so many people a reality. A few mantras to keep in mind on race day: (My body tells me no / But I won’t quit / ‘Cuz I want more) (It’s gonna be alright / We don’t even have to try / It’s always...

Last month was my third half Ironman of 2012, Rev 3 Portland. I’ve gotta say, I’m really enjoying the Rev 3 race series and highly recommend them to athletes who want a challenging race that’s well run. I hope the Rev 3 series gets more popular since I wouldn’t mind more competition for WTC–right now, only a few hundred people seem to turn out for each Rev 3 race, but hopefully they’ll start gaining momentum. Anyway, onto the race report. I had just done Honu 70.3 the month before and started off my season with Rev 3 Costa Rica in March, so I had been training and racing for quite a while by the time Portland rolled around. When I did the race last year, I was overweight, injured, and out of shape but still managed to have a decent race because the course was flat and fast. This year, however, the organizers changed the bike course to a hellacious hillfest, with four Category 5 climbs (which are apparently the hardest climbs you can rank before the hills essentially just become bullshit mountain terrain). Rev 3 touted the new course as their toughest and most technical one on the circuit. Oh goody. Jason, his deaf dad Jim, his sister Danielle and I went to registration (Danielle was doing the Olympic distance race while Jason and his dad were doing a half Ironman relay with one of Danielle’s friends), then all hopped in Jim’s SUV to drive the bike course. Upon seeing how ridiculous these climbs were and hearing how the car’s engine had to grind to get up them, I couldn’t help but laugh. This course was absurd–full of long, steep climbs and really windy descents that could be quite treacherous if you weren’t cautious. It definitely was not going to be a PR bike split kind of day, but I looked forward to the challenge since I had gotten better at climbing lately. I was only worried about the descents and making sure I stayed cautious and that nobody around me was going to do something stupid that would end up getting me hurt. Jason’s dad, meanwhile, was trying to watch the course like a hawk and study it as best as he could because he was going to be doing the bike leg for the relay team and “didn’t want to get lost.” We informed him that the course is ridiculously well marked with bright pink signage, so he started paying attention to every single thing that was pink and tried to commit it all to memory. Unfortunately, that backfired somewhat: Jim: “Okay, so we go straight here…” Jas: “Ugh, Dad, you’ll be fine.” Jim: “I just want to be sure!” Jas: “If you manage to get lost on this course with how well-marked it is, then you fail at life.” Jim, laughing: “Okay, okay…wait, so then we turn right into this neighborhood.” He pointed at a neon pink sign. Jas: “Dad, that’s for a garage sale!” Jim: “Oh.” Jas: “Do NOT follow that sign. Or blindly follow things that are pink.” Jim: “Well then they shouldn’t have made that garage sale sign pink! Now I’m confused!” Once we all got done laughing at him, we assured him he’d be fine. Swim Summary When race day rolled around, we headed to the venue and I got my transition area set up. My bike was racked right next to bike out/in, which was super awesome. Also awesome was the fact that transition was actually in the park this year–no running over a half mile across the street to the transition area like we did last year. The transition...