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...

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,...

Sunday was the Las Vegas Rock ‘n Roll Marathon, a race I signed up to do but unfortunately could not participate in because of my increasingly annoying Achilles injury. The last time I updated you on the status of my feet, it was the left foot giving me grief while the right Achilles was intermittently tight. Now my left foot appears to have healed but the right Achilles has gotten worse. It’s now instantly tight and stiff when I start running and is stiff in the morning when I wake up and hop out of bed (morningtendon?). At first I thought I could still manage to do the half marathon, but...

Sorry for the slight delay in getting this to you, but for some odd reason flashing my finisher’s medal doesn’t get me out of doing my day job or paying my bills. An Ironman employee should really look into fixing that — completing the race should earn you “I Don’t Have to Do Jack Shit” status for a month (or at least a couple of weeks). Before the Race Anyway, back to my report. It’s a long mofo, so read at your own risk. You may want to properly hydrate and stretch beforehand since this is an endurance read. Got your salt pills and a couple gels within...

Around this time last year, I had driven up to Penticton, slept in a teenage girl’s room, rooted on my teammates, and got sucked into the excitement and craziness that is Ironman Canada. I had zero intention of signing up with Jason, but watching the spectacle and the support of the entire town and seeing wave after wave of various athletes (elite, beginner, big, small, old, young) finish motivated me to chase after that feeling and experience it on my own. And so I plunked down six hundred big ones and spent a year training for a full Ironman. Now, one year later, the race has finally snuck up...