Every once in a while I make a return to yoga as if I’m trying it out for the first time and have forgotten how much I “nothing” it. It’s like forgetting how crappy candy corn is for 11 months out of the year, only to rediscover it in October and remember how waxy it tastes. Nonetheless, I thought I’d give hot yoga a try because I’m doing two tropical destination half Ironman races next season and figured the humid yoga room could potentially help a bit with acclimation. I’ve done hot yoga a couple times. It’s not bad, but since I’m naturally a...

I don’t know why, but I had some faint hope that my aggro Ironman training wouldn’t really kick in until the start of 2012. One one hand, I’m really focused on hitting my workouts and pulling a Knutson and training like a hardcore mofo for Ironman Canada 2: Ironman Boogaloo. On the other hand, the holidays are fast approaching and I really want to enjoy my monthly pies, so I was hoping that I could enjoy my newly uninjured body by doing no workouts whatsoever. Wouldn’t it be great to stay thin, strong, and fast without putting in any of the hard work or effort? “Not by a...

Early in my first triathlon season back in 2008, I attended a transition clinic to learn about how triathlon transitions work. For those of you not in the know, a triathlon has two transitions, one from the swim to the bike and one from the bike to the run. The transition area is where you run into when you emerge from the swim and store items like your wetsuit, bike, bike gear, running shoes, extra water bottles, a large pepperoni pizza, one of those “Hang in there” inspirational posters, etc. Since I didn’t know anything about transitions (or triathlons, for that matter), I went to...

My friend Lauren (who as of now I shall dub “L2″ because I have another friend named Lauren whom I met before this one, and I don’t want to confuse all ten of you Mediocre Athlete readers whenever I talk about the other one) had taken a ballet Pilates class in the fall and urged me to take it again with her this winter. I had mentioned in my yoga post how I had tried Pilates once before and thought it was lame, but I’m generally a good sport about trying new things (plus I need blogging material for this site), so I agreed to take the class with her and her friend. The class is...

One of my greatest triathlon weaknesses (aside from running and biking, of course) is swimming. I don’t like swimming. I feel like my stamina in the water sucks, I drag my arm too much, my turnover is too slow, I’m either too hot or too cold, my wet suit is ghetto and ill-fitting, and I find swim training boring and craptacular. My disdain for swimming has reflected in my swim times: every race except for one has resulted in disappointment. I want to improve a lot in 2009, and I figured that a huge area of opportunity would be improving my swim. I think I can shave anywhere from 5-15 minutes off my...