So I went to the Coeur d’Alene training camp, did a fever and cold-induced 80 mile bike ride, and came home with a Fergie-approved lovely lady lump in my nethers. It hurt like a mofo over the weekend but subsided into a “feels like a slight bruise” sensation. Unfortunately, despite the pain level decreasing, the size and hardness of this mass remained the same. I started to get concerned because I had three bike workouts on my schedule for this week and Honu was right around the corner, so I couldn’t afford to stay off the bike and wait for this thing to go away on its own.

My “situation” was quite the topic of interest among my female teammates:

[at our group run at Greenlake]

Jill: “How are you feeling?”

Me: “Much better! I think my cold is gone now.”

Jill: “I mean…how are you feeling.”

Me: “…oh, right. That thing. Yeah, it’s still there.”

[two minutes later]

Vicki: “Hey, Rebecca! How are things feeling?”

Me, sighing: “Yeah, it’s still there.”

By Wednesday the blob was still hanging around places it shouldn’t be, so I called the women’s health clinic at my go-to medical center to try and make an appointment.

Receptionist: “So are you just wanting a routine checkup?”

Me: “Well, I guess we could do a checkup, yeah, but I want to get this potential cyst looked at. It formed after a bike ride on Friday and I need to get it dealt with as soon as possible.”

Receptionist: “Okay…” [clack clack clack clack clack] “…I have a June 6th appointment available. Will that work for you?”

Me:

Best health care in the world, amirite?

Me: “Seriously, three weeks? Don’t you have anything sooner?”

Receptionist: “I’ll have to look and call you back.”

Annoyed, I tried a different clinic. The soonest they could get me in to see a doctor was Monday, so I tentatively made an appointment but kept calling around trying to find a better option.

Clinic #3 receptionist: “How can I help you?”

Me: “I was wondering if you had any open appointments for the gynecologist.”

Receptionist: “Uhhhh…I don’t think we do that here.”

Me: “Oh, okay.”

Receptionist: “Let meeeeee cheeeeeck…..” [clack clack clack clack clack] “…yeah, we don’t have cardiologists here.”

Me: “Not cardiologists, gynecologists.”

Receptionist: “Oh, radiologists?”

Me, shouting: “GYNECOLOGIST! WOMEN’S HEALTH!!” I glanced over at Jason, whose shoulders were shaking with laughter. I could only imagine my conversation with this deaf woman escalating to me screeching “VAG DOCTOR!! I’M HAVING COOCH PROBLEMS!! THERE’S A CYST NEAR MY POON!!!”

Receptionist: “OHHHHHHHHHHH…..let me give you the number to our women’s health clinic.” Good grief.

I called the clinic she referred me to and spoke with a fourth receptionist.

Clinic #4 receptionist: “How may I help you?”

Me: “I need to make an appointment to see a gynecologist. First available, if possible.”

Receptionist: “Okay, what’s the reason for the visit?”

Me, as if reciting from a script because I’ve explained this roughly 1,000 times already: “I’m training for a race and I did an 80 mile bike ride over the weekend and I developed a hard lump near my pubic bone and my friend who’s a nurse said it’s probably a cyst and told me to have a doctor check it out to make sure it’s not infected.”

Silence.

Receptionist: “……….okaaaaayyyyyyy. Let me check and see if there’s anything available.” [clack clack clack clack clack] “I have a 2:00 available today, do you want me to bo–”

Me: “YES! I’ll take it!”

YESSSS

I went to the lunchtime strength training class and told Teresa that I had scheduled an appointment for later that afternoon.

Teresa: “I told Dr. Perry about your…thing…and asked if he wanted to look at it.”

Me:

WTF, no

Teresa: “Haha! I was kidding and he said no, anyway, but he wants to talk to you because he knows exactly what it is.” I hate you, Teresa. Don’t scare me like that.

I poked my head into Dr. Perry’s office.

Me, jokingly: “So, Teresa said you’re all too eager to look at my vag?”

Dr. Perry, laughing: “Yeah, I don’t want to see it but I know what happened. It’s a cyst. Or it could be a gland that’s gotten plugged up and swollen. But it’s probably a cyst.”

Me: “Yeah, that’s what Vicki said. I’m seeing the doctor at 2:00 today.”

Dr. Perry’s face lit up. “Oh, you should try to get them to drain it! If they can’t do it there then try to get some strong antibiotics. I don’t recommend lidocaine though. It’s generally not used…down there.”

The thought of getting my lady lump drained made me cringe so hard my face hurt, but my training schedule wouldn’t allow for this unwanted guest to stick around much longer, so I guess I’d have to see what the doctor said.

Eventually 2:00 rolled around and I got to the clinic to fill out paperwork. I checked in and was told I’d have to fork over a $60 copay. Ugh. (Jason, via text: “I bet it’s normally $20 but they’re charging you a 200% ‘grossness tax.’”)

I hadn’t even written my name on the stack of paperwork handed to me when a nurse retrieved me and led me back to a room. She looked at me and asked, “Are you the woman who went bike riding?”

Me, laughing awkwardly: “Uh, yeah. Do I already have a reputation here?”

Nurse, smiling: “Yeah, kind of.”

Really? I’m the Weird Case of the Day? Awesome.

She took my vitals and I hung out for a very short while before the doctor came in. This is the shortest I’ve had to wait for a nurse or a doctor–I guess having the Weird Case of the Day has its benefits.

Doctor: “Hi! I’m Doctor So-and-So. I heard about your issue but tell me what’s going on.”

Me: “I’mtrainingforaraceandIdidan 80milebikerideovertheweekendandIdevelopedahardlumpnearmypubicboneandmyfriendwho’sanursesaidit’sprobablyacystandtoldme tohaveadoctorcheckitouttomakesureit’snotinfected.”

Doctor: “Hmm, okay. Is it internal or external?”

Me: “Uh, you can’t see it but you can feel it. It’s kind of…long.”

Doctor: “Hmm. Okay. You’re gonna have to show me where it is.”

I poked at the wad. (For those of you who are curious, here’s a picture of a taco with an X marking the spot where the lump was. It was in a very weird area as far as saddle sores go.)

This is about as PG as it gets

Doctor: “Huh. Yeah, that’s…exactly how you described it.”

Me: “Well yeah.” What did she think I was going to do, shout “Just kidding! You just got vag punked!” and run out of the room bare-assed? I have better things to do with sixty bucks.

Doctor: “I mean, it is kind of oval…and hard… [poke poke] …hmm. Interesting. Very interesting…I think it’s a cyst but it’s so oddly shaped and it’s in such a peculiar spot… [poke poke] Hey, do you mind if I call in a colleague to take a look?”

I had officially become a sitcom cliche punchline come to life. I felt like Ross from that episode of Friends where all the doctors gather together to look at his weird skin thingy. This day had firmly veered into “super sucky” territory.

Me: “What the hell, I guess so.”

Doctor: “Great! I’ll be right back.” She left the room, leaving me to stare up at the bird mobile hanging above my head and wonder why I do this sport considering all the chafing, sunburns, and unfortunate crotch issues that come with it.

I heard footsteps approaching and a voice in the hallway getting louder.

“…it’s just really weird!” Superb, I’m the patient with the weird crotch issue at a women’s health clinic, a place where the docs are up to their elbows in ladybits all day long. That made me feel fantastic.

The door opened and my doctor popped in with an older woman whom I shall refer to as Grizzled Veteran Doc.

Doctor: “This is Grizzled Veteran Doc. I told her what’s going on and how I think it’s a cyst but that it’s in such an odd place and it’s so oddly shaped that I wasn’t certain.”

Grizzled Veteran Doc: “Hi there! Let’s take a look.” She and the other doc poked their heads under my paper modesty sheet as if they were old-timey photographers snapping a picture of a Victorian-era child instead of a couple of gynecologists checking out a cyst on an exasperated patient’s hoonaner.

Grizzled Veteran Doc, chirpily: “Oh yeah, that’s a cyst!” She and the other doctor then proceeded to go into high-level gyno speak while I laid there with my legs splayed open, thrilled that two middle-aged women were having a conversation while gathered around my crotch as if it were an embarrassed, lumpy campfire.

Me: “So what do you recommend?”

Grizzled Veteran Doc: “Oh, I’d just leave it alone for a couple weeks and see if it gets better by itself.”

Me:

I ain't got time for that nonsense!

I explained to Grizzled Veteran Doc that I had too many workouts relying on a healthy, cyst-free crotchal region, and that I was racing in a couple weeks and couldn’t spare any down time.

Grizzled Veteran Doc: “Hmmm… [to other Doc] You could stick a needle in there and try to drain it. See if anything comes out. If so, great! It’s not near anything important so it should be fine.” Nothing important except for my VAGINA. But yeah, it’s not like it’s near a Maserati or the Mona Lisa or something important like that. Just my reproductive organs, no big deal.

Grizzled Veteran Doctor left, leaving me with Doctor #1.

Doctor: “Okay, I’ll go get a needle and we’ll try to drain it. If it drains it’ll pretty much go back to normal but it could fill up again, at which point you can come back in and we can schedule an ultrasound and see what’s going on with it. If it doesn’t drain, I guess you’ll have to leave it alone and we can see what our options are. We could cut it out but that would require time in the surgical room, and I’m guessing that’s not much of an option for you at this point.”

My face was frozen into a mix of disgust and horror the entire time she was talking to me.

Me: “Uh, not really… [sighing] I guess we can try to drain it.”

Doctor: “Yaay! I’ll be right back.” She seemed way too giddy about this procedure. It must have been a boring day of pap smears and polyp tests until I walked through the door.

The doctor left and returned with some supplies.

Doctor: “This reddish goop is called ‘Hurricane.’ It’s a topical ointment that will numb the surface layer.” It reeked of cherries. Thanks for ruining that scent for me. ”I don’t know if you’re squeamish about needles, but here’s what I’ll be using!” She shoved a gigantic-looking needle in front of my line of vision and I shot her the “Are you fucking kidding me” look. Why in the hell would I want to see that?!

Doctor: “It looks scary but it’s not that bad!” She was in such a great mood she was practically singing. “Okay, I’m gonna try and drain it now. We’ll see what happens…you’re gonna feel a slight pinch…”

HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK THIS FUCKING HURTS THE HURRICANE IS USELESS OF COURSE IT WOULD BE SHE’S STICKING A FUCKING NEEDLE IN MY CROTCH WHAT THE HELL I HATE THISSSSSSSSSS

My body went from dry to drenched with sweat in four seconds flat. I tried to lie still and resorted to making little grunting noises while my deodorant rendered itself completely useless.

Doctor: “I’m sorry, does that hurt?”

Me: “Well it doesn’t feel GREAT!”

Doctor: “I’m sorry…..oh, cool!”

Wait, what? Did I just hear an “Oh, cool”? What the shit is going on down there? Did my vagina just solve a Rubik’s Cube?

Me: “Did you just say ‘Oh cool’?”

Doctor: “Yeah, it’s draining! How about that!” For that amount of pain she was inflicting it damn well better have been draining. I wanted to feel completely dehydrated by the end of this procedure, like I had just taken a sip from the wrong chalice in The Last Crusade.

"Yep, looks like you got it all!"

She finished and showed me the needle, beaming with pride. It was full of darkish red goop. My reaction:

Thanks for the Show and Tell, Doc!

Doctor: “It looks like a bunch of old blood. My guess is that you developed a blood blister that got really hard. I got most of it out though…so cool.” She kept turning the needle around and staring at its contents with a look of awe and wonder.

Me: “You are definitely in the right profession.”

Doctor, laughing: “Yeah, I guess I am, aren’t I? I’ll send this to the lab to check for any abnormalities.” [And then she'll probably loop it onto a chain and wear it as a necklace, judging from how much she was loving what she had just drained out of me.] “But don’t worry, it’s not cancer. Cancer doesn’t look anything like this, and it certainly doesn’t form this quickly.” So yaay for that–the silver lining in this shitstorm of a day.

The doctor said I was good to go and that I could go about my training with no downtime. I guess the cyst could potentially return but I’m pleading to the Powers That Be that this was an isolated incident because I’d really rather not go through the ordeal again (although I’m pretty sure the doctor would waive my co-pay and do future drainings for free based on how enthralled she was the first time around). I’m not sure if there’s a way to prevent this from happening again–I’ve used the same saddle for the past four years without incident and my new bike fit has felt totally fine. I guess that’s just one of the perks of cycling. Lance Armstrong’s taint must look like a kaffir lime.

Sicky-Ki-Yay, Motherf*cker

A crappy cold has been working its way through my team the past couple weeks, so it was only a matter of time before the germs made their way to me. At least three of the teammates who I had swum with and met for dinner last week ended up getting sick, and Coach Teresa was battling the yuck all week, too. So naturally, as Jas and I were driving across Washington on Thursday heading to glorious Idaho, I started to feel rundown and kind of blergh. By the time we checked into the hotel and met Mark and Teresa for dinner, my head was aching and I was battling Lumpy Throat Syndrome.

The next morning, I sucked it up, chowed down on off-brand daytime cold medicine, and did the group swim at a nearby pool (swimming in the lake was a no-go considering temps were hovering at a nope-inducing 46 degrees), then suited up for a long bike ride.

Me with a gigantic-looking underwater body and my camp buddies after our swim workout

The first part of the Ironman bike course is kind of nice, with some slight, steady climbs along the lake before turning around and heading back into town. After about an hour, however, the course dumps you onto the highway where you get to bike out 20 miles before returning to town and doing the entire loop all over again. You spend 80 of the 112 miles on the highway, which is pretty sucky because it’s a boring, long, lonely, and mentally challenging stretch. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about riding alongside a rumble strip while semis careened past me as I dodged roadkill and random bits of debris, but if I had signed up for CdA I could probably suck it up on race day, although training on the highway was somewhat grueling.

After I completed loop 1, I was starting to feel kind of crummy. The day was sunny and warm, but I was feeling too warm and started wondering if I was battling a low-grade fever–I’m used to sweating and sniffling during bike workouts, but this flop sweat, snot factory, and throbbing headache felt more cold-induced. I ran into Teresa, who went into Mom Mode when I told her I wasn’t feeling well and made me ride back to the hotel and rest. I felt kind of chumpy for only busting out 80 miles instead of riding the entire 112 and for skipping the brick run, but after I showered and spent the next two hours sneezing and blowing my nose, I figured I made the right decision.

My evening was spent curled up in a chair in self-mandated quarantine watching re-runs of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and wheezing while my teammates went out to dinner. The next morning I skipped the second group ride but thought I’d give the team run a try, figuring that if I had to choose one of the workouts to do, I’d opt for the run instead of the bike because I could bail more easily if I still felt crummy.

The group before we started running. This workout brought to you by a low-grade fever!

I still felt a bit feverish leading up to the run but felt surprisingly good during the workout and actually managed to get through about 11 miles relatively easily. Maybe I just needed to sweat out all the crud and purge the system with a good ol’ run. In any case, I felt better from that point on…

Chafe You, Chafe Me

…minus the newest batch of goddamn sternum chafing thanks to the worst heart rate monitor strap known to man. I figured I wouldn’t have any problems but I’m a complete moron because this Garmin strap always seems to love eviscerating my chest every other time I wear it. My post-race shower went something like this:

Me: “I’m going to take a shower. Disregard any bloodcurdling screams you hear from the bathroom for the next ten minutes.”

Jason: “Okay. I’m going to call my parents so try to keep your shrieks at a reasonable level.”

Me: “Alright.”

*summary of the next ten minutes*

“AHHHHHHHH!!!”

“ARGHGHHHHHHH!!!”

“FUUUUUUUUUCKKKKKK!!!!”

“RAGHHHRHHHHRHHHGHHHHHHHHH!!!”

You’d think I would have built up a hefty callus by now considering all the times this fucking strap has kicked my ass, but no, I just develop new skin that promptly gets rubbed off and ruins my showers. I hate this sport.

Another reason why I hate this sport…

When Shit Goes South Down South

My 80 mile ride felt more uncomfortable than usual, not just from the cold, but because for some reason I couldn’t seat myself comfortably and kept shifting and fidgeting. I think I ended up putting way too much weight forward because my hands kept partially falling asleep and my crotch was a numb mess. My pubic bone was really sore and I later discovered a, uh, lumpy bit that I’m 100% sure wasn’t there before the ride. Lumpy bit hurt. A lot. I brought it up to Teresa via text message because I know she’s always eager to hear what’s going on with my crotch:

Me: “I think I’m having issues. There’s some sort of, uh, hurty ropey part on one side. A muscle? Ligament? I don’t know vagina anatomy.”

Teresa: “Is it skin peeling or a lump?”

Me: “It’s like a lump but a long one. Really hurts to the touch.”

Jason’s advice: “Send a pic to Strayer!” Strayer is one of my male teammates who’s an ER doc. We joked about snapping a pic of me spread-eagled with the subject line “Whaddya think?” and firing it off to him. His wife would be thrilled. (Actually, his wife is an OBGYN so I should probably bomb her with vag pics in this hypothetical scenario.)

Teresa recommended I hit up Vicki, another teammate who’s a nurse. I pinged her on Facebook:

Me: “So, uh, this is kind of awkward but you’re both a nurse and an avid cyclist so I figured I’d float this by you rather than send super awkward pics to John Strayer. I had a more uncomfortable than usual ride yesterday and my ladybits are sore today. Like really sore. Specifically, the left side has a long, ropey-type lump that the right side doesn’t have, and it hurts to the touch. I dunno if it’s a lump or a ligament or a muscle protrusion or what, but it’s weird. Any thoughts on what the eff that is and how I can fix it/make it go away?”

I didn’t get a response from her so naturally I panicked and figured that her tipping point was getting unsolicited messages from teammates asking her to diagnose their crotch issues. Teresa went into Overdrive and started harassing Vicki via text message to help a Becca out:

Teresa: “Just told her to check her messages when she has a moment. She’s on her way home from dinner and will look in 5 to 10 min.”

Me: “Operation Save Rebecca’s Vagina is in full swing!” (This is a terribly embarrassing operation.)

Vicki responded on Facebook and said she thought it was probably a cyst. She recommended no biking until it goes away and to take warm baths to “either help it drain or get absorbed back in” (me to Jason: “Gross, I don’t want to absorb this!!”).

It was a good thing I skipped the Saturday ride and opted to just run, because this crotch issue was no bueno. On Sunday I did a 30 min swim, awkwardly moving the pull buoy down so it wouldn’t bump into the Evil Foreign Mass of Hurtitude, and a 30 minute run. The lump continued to be a pain in the ass (well, not “ass,” but…yeah, you get the idea) and I’m currently dealing with trying to find a doctor who can check it out before I hop back on the bike.

So aside from my three c’s, the training camp was still a lot of fun. I was able to get to know some of my teammates better; in fact, I got to know one a bit too well:

Me, to one of my teammates as we’re headed to dinner: “So, are you sufficiently pooped from this weekend?”

His face lights up.

Him: “No! I was just talking to Terrance about that! I don’t know what the deal is but I haven’t had a good poop since I got here and–”

Me, throwing my hands up and waving them frantically: “NO. NO. NO. STOP. That is not what I asked you! I did not ask you that!”

Everyone in the car starts laughing hysterically.

Me: “I said are you sufficiently pooped. As in tired. Are you tired from the weekend’s workouts.”

Him, sheepish: “Ohhhhhhhh…yeah.”

We laugh even harder.

Him: “Yeah, I thought it was weird that you asked me about my pooping but I figured, ‘Oh well, she asked so what the hell!’”

Naturally, at dinner, we encouraged him to order a lot of high fiber dishes. No word on whether he finally got his epic pooptime in–I’ll keep you posted. (On that and on my crotch issues. I run a classy blog.)

Chris Lieto, professional triathlete and founder of BASE Performance

Since I’ve been a fan of the company shortly after it was founded, I thought I’d ping someone at BASE for a little interview. Eventually Paul Lieto, Chris’s brother who works for Base, got tired of my incessant pestering and agreed to answer some of the dumb questions I threw his way. Enjoy!

Mediocre Athlete: Can you share the super awesome comic book-style origin story behind BASE Nutrition? Who founded it and what was their purpose behind forming the company–did they see a void in the athlete nutrition industry that wanted to fill or a problem that needed solving?

Paul Lieto: BASE Performance was founded by professional triathlete Chris Lieto. He did see a void in his nutrition plan. There were several companies providing good nutritional products (like CytoSport, PowerBar, Clif, etc). But he was looking for some additional supplementation to improve his recovery specifically. Chris worked with his physicians to find and formulate the products we offer. He first utilized the products when racing the Tour of Utah, a cycling stage race. He immediately noticed the improvements in his recovery as he felt stronger from stage to stage rather than slowly breaking down over the tour. He debated for some time whether to bring the products to the public, giving his competitors a chance to utilize them, but decided it was for the greater good to help other professionals and age groupers achieve their fitness and endurance goals.

MA: What makes BASE Nutrition’s products great for athletes?

Paul: In a nutshell, BASE Performance develops all-natural supplements that help athletes train harder, recovery quicker, and therefore race faster. Endurance training is stressful on the body (and mind). Our products primarily focus on recovery and building a base foundation of health. Our Amino helps minimize muscle breakdown during workouts while helping build lean muscle post. The Recovery Activator helps clear toxins and facilitate glycogen absorption after a workout. Our Vitamins have higher dosages of the essentials to help defend against the excess free radical production associated with strenuous aerobic exercise. And our Electrolyte Salts are not just sodium chloride tablets; they actually have all 84 essential minerals needed for proper energy balance, including calcium, magnesium, and potassium. It’s in a fine grain form so we recommend athletes not only use in their sports drink mix, but also replace their normal table salt with BASE salt.

To become a stronger, faster athlete you need to put in the hard, focused workouts. We develop the supplements that help you attack your tough workouts and recovery quicker so you can do it again the following day. It’s the building of continual focused workouts that will make athletes faster and why we see so many PR’s from our customers.

MA: How many employees does BASE have?

Paul: Just Chris and I right now as partners in BASE Performance. We work with other small businesses to help fulfill orders and manage some of the stuff I’m not good at, like balancing the books.

Paul (left) and his brother Chris having a bromance moment (photo shamelessly stolen off Paul's Facebook profile)

MA: What is your role within the company (other than putting up with pestering questions from mediocre athletes like myself)?

Paul: Currently my role is day to day operations. I pretty much manage everything from sales and marketing to customer service and some fulfillment. We are a small family-run company and both Chris and I enjoy being able to personally connect with most of our customers.

MA: How many Lieto brothers are there? You guys seem to multiply like wet gremlins.

Paul: There are three of us. Chris and Matt, both professionals. And I bring up the rear, though I’m the oldest.

MA: How does your Brand Ambassador program work? [My teammate John Frair is a BASE Performance brand ambassador.]

Paul: The Ambassador program is one way we build a mutually beneficial relationship with some of our core customers. They receive a significant discount on our monthly supplement program in exchange for being vocal about what they’re already doing… training, racing, and sharing their passion for endurance sports.

MA: Swim, bike, or run?

Paul: I love the bike, though I’m not as fast as either Chris or Matt, unless I have towline. For that reason I like the run in races. For my age group I’m a better runner than cyclist.

MA: Would you rather have a permanent farmer’s tan or a permanent tri short tan?

Paul: Good question. I would go with tri short tan. Less noticeable when in board shorts stand up paddling or catching some waves.

MA: Which Lieto brother would win in an eating contest?

Paul: Dang, another good one. I would go with Matt. He is the local champion for slamming an 18oz burger, order of fries, and a milkshake followed by sprinting a one mile uphill run segment. More carnage than Alii Drive on that one.

A not-at-all-photoshopped picture of Matt Lieto racing while eating a humongous burger

MA: If BASE stood for something (assuming it doesn’t already), what would you suggest? I’m thinking Bad-Ass Sports Endurance, but I’m open to other suggestions.

Paul: I like yours!

Thanks, Paul! Be sure to check out BASE Performance products–they’re really awesome and the company is run by a couple of cool (and ridiculously athletic) dudes.

A higher than usual percentage of racers (3,863) didn’t even bother showing up to pick up their numbers this year. Obviously a portion of the no-shows could be folks who had injuries (as was the case of a friend of mine who tore her hamstring and was unable to race) or had a situation pop up where they couldn’t race (a family emergency, work conflict, etc), but the rate was higher than in previous years. Of the 22,426 runners who did show up to pick up their numbers, 427 deferred, which is even worse than not bothering to show up in the first place. You travel all the way to Boston, pick up your number, and then decide that you’re going to chump out and run next year in the hopes that temperatures will be more to your satisfaction? Ridiculous.

Yes, I know it was hot. I know it was uncomfortable. I know that overall times were slower than previous years and that more people were treated for heat-related ailments (cramping, exhaustion, overheating). But that’s the nature of racing. You sign up for a race not knowing what’s going to come your way. You can do the training and prepare for it as best you can, but there are certain factors you can’t control on race day that you just have to deal with. Do you think the 2011 Ironman Canada athletes wanted to race in upper-90 degree heat all day? Obviously not, but they showed up at the start line and powered their way through like champs, and they raced 140.6 miles in adverse conditions, not just 26.2. Do you think Ironman Louisville athletes want to spend an entire day pushing themselves through ungodly heat and humidity, or that Ironman Coeur d’Alene athletes want to swim 2.4 miles in a ball-shrinkingly frigid lake?

Did I want to race Costa Rica in the searing sunshine and come home with absurd tan lines? Did I want to battle ridiculous crosswinds at Ironman Boise 70.3 in 2010? Did I want to run through a windy monsoon during the Seattle Half Marathon this past year? No. Hell no. But you know what? I gritted my teeth and persevered, just as the Ironman Canada, the Louisville, and the Coeur d’Alene athletes did and just as every athlete should.

Boston was hard this year. Harder than usual, I’m sure. PRs were shot, everyone was uncomfortable, it was a miserable day. But if you sign up for a race and aren’t prepared to deal with the potential curveballs that go along with it, you shouldn’t race at all because clearly you’re not cut out for it. You’re kidding yourself if you expect all of your races to have perfect weather, perfect race conditions, and that you’ll post a PR. You’re delusional if you think you’ll never get a flat tire, experience gut rot, be forced to endure wind or rain or snow or heat, and that everything will be hunky dory for you.

The challenges behind racing are more mental than physical. The people who opted not to run or deferred because they were intimidated by the heat were defeated without even having to step foot on the course. You don’t share stories with your friends about the training days or the races that went perfectly, you take pride in and talk about the times when you rode your bike through a hail storm or you crossed the finish line after puking your guts out for 26 straight miles. It’s the tough workouts and races that stick with you, the ones that kick the shit out of you but you emerge from stronger and victorious. If I ran Boston this year, I’d be proud as hell to have crossed the finish line under tough conditions, regardless of my time.

If you can’t stand the idea of a race’s conditions slowing your otherwise fast self down, check your ego. If you’re worried about Mother Nature making things difficult for you, harden the fuck up. It’s not your tempo runs or your weekly mileage or your chia seeds or your stupid toe shoes that will get you across the finish line, it’s your mental toughness. Everyone has to deal with the weather on race day, not just you, and the difference is how you handle yourself when variables are thrown your way. The people who showed up and ran on Monday sure as hell didn’t want to run in the heat, but, to quote a teammate of mine, they were “doing work and gettin’ it done.” The ones who didn’t punked out because they lack mental toughness and because they were plagued with doubt and fear. It wasn’t the heat that ruined them that day, it was themselves. Don’t be a deferral. Be a racer.

Arriving in Costa Rica

So yeah, back to Costa Rica. We arrived the Tuesday before the race, smelling and looking as if we had taken three planes and a red-eye itinerary to get to Guanacaste. Because Jas and I pack like champs, we only had to check our bike boxes (thanks, Kirsten, for letting me borrow yours!) and managed to shove everything else into carry-on luggage (tank tops and shorts don’t take up that much space). Unfortunately, American Airlines deemed it necessary to charge us an “Are you fucking kidding” price of $150 per box each way. Destination races ain’t cheap, folks.

Our rental house was in a little town called Potreros, which wasn’t very far from the host hotel and the race course but sat atop a ridiculous 10-minute climb that requires a Canyonero to safely traverse. If I had to do the race again, I wouldn’t stay atop Mount Doom because it was too much a pain in the ass to get up and down the rickety-ass road all the time, but it did make for a memorable stay (plus, the house came with a dog named Cookie, whom I fed dog treats every chance I had).

The gigantic house we rented for the week--big enough to fit six triathlete egos! (I keed)

Pre-Race Workouts

Mark, Teresa, Jason and I decided to do a 30-minute run near our house to shake the travel stiffness out of our stinky, tired bodies. The run went something like this:

All of us: *gasp* *wheeze* *heave* *shuffle* *sweat*

Me: “Oh look, my heart rate is at 176 already.”

The hills were no joke, the terrain was ankle-rollerrific (in fact, Teresa did roll one), and it was hot as shit outside with zero cloud cover. Such a lovely taste of what’s to come on race day!

Later that week we took our bikes to the Westin Playa Conchal to ride the hardest part of the bike course. Transition area would be set up in one of the Westin’s parking lot, and athletes would have to mount their bikes, ride over a 100-yard stretch of gravel, then climb a few daunting hills over the course of about 2.5 miles to get out of the resort. From there, we’d turn onto the road and enjoy a relatively flat three loops before heading back into the resort and climbing more hills to get back to transition.

When we suited up to ride, it was impossible to ignore the remarkable heat as well as the discouraging gusts of wind. Since we were in the middle of the region’s dry season, we expected warm temperatures but it was unseasonably warm (the race website advertised average temps being in the upper 70s, but it was mid-to upper-90s the entire time we were there). Also, the wind was unusual for that time of year, and we were all a bit nervous about having to battle nasty gusts on race day.

I strapped on my brand-spankin’ new aero helmet (now I can look like a sperm on wheels!) and tackled the climbs as best as I could.

Teresa capturing me at the top of "Fuck You, Why Are You Taking a Picture of Me Right Now" Hill

The hill coming out of the park was tough, but at the time I thought the climb getting back into the park was worse. Even more demoralizing was the fact that headwinds would kick up while I was climbing, essentially preventing me from making any decent forward progress. I could only laugh and think to myself, “Yep, this is gonna be a tough race.”

After our bike ride we took a dip in the ocean. I felt a bit rusty since I hadn’t done an open water swim in several months, but eventually I found a decent Mediocre Athlete rhythm and emerged from the water feeling somewhat confident. Then I saw a fucking snake slither into the water from which I had JUST emerged and my confidence dove headfirst out the window. We ran into one of the race organizers later and I confronted her about the horrors waiting to drown and consume me on race day:

Me: “So what the hell, I just saw a snake slither into the ocean.”

Race organizer: “Oh yeah, well you’ll be swimming on THAT side of the beach [gestures to the right], and the wildlife generally stays on the left side, which is where you were practicing.”

Me: “What the–? Like some sort of invisible barrier?” That didn’t sound right. I doubt creepy crawlies are that courteous.

Race organizer: “They generally stay in that area because the boats push them over. You won’t run into anything on race day.” Then, she added cheerfully, “All you’ll have to worry about is jellyfish!”

Me: “Wat.”

So now I was going to have to potentially battle sea snakes and jellyfish during the swim and brutal headwinds and scorching temps on the bike. I can’t wait to see  what the run has in store!

Posing in my teammate Jill's swim skin and trying not to think about the Kraken that will devour me on race day

We ran most of a loop of the run course (it would be four loops on race day). The terrain was somewhat challenging, to say the least–we started on a dirt road of sorts that cut between the beach and the resort through some local knicknack stands, then down a rocky little embankment onto the beach for a stretch, then back onto a dirt road with absolutely zero shade before moving onto a paved road that led the athletes back into the park. From there, we’d run up a steepish hill before cutting onto the golf course that led us back to transition, where we’d begin the next loop.

Running on the sand was a bit tough, as I wasn’t used to feeling the loose terrain under my feet. The difficulty was counteracted by the beauty of the ocean and the beach, and I really enjoyed the training run even though it was super hot and the course was a bit awkward. Plus, we came across this during our run, which is bound to put a smile on even the crabbiest athlete’s face:

"Stop looking at me, I'm trying to shit out some eggs!!"

The Calm Before the Storm

Despite my sarcasm about how horrible the race was going to be, I was actually in a really good mindset leading up to the race. I pretty much accepted the fact that there were circumstances beyond my control that could potentially make the race very difficult, and that there was nothing I could do about them except stay strong and positive and do the best I can. My “zen” state really helped keep my stress level at an all-time low all week, and I concentrated on enjoying Guanacaste and having a good time while I was in Costa Rica.

The Friday before the race, Jason and I separated from our housemates and went on a day tour to Arenal and the surrounding rain forest. It was nice to explore a different region of Costa Rica and experience such a lush, colorful contrast to the arid, desert-like environment where we had been staying. We saw waterfalls, howler monkeys, a sloth, beautiful flora, tiny poisonous frogs, a Jesus lizard, and even soaked in a hot spring.

Jas and I at a waterfall/local swimming hole

The hot springs in Arenal we stopped at for a relaxing soak

On our way back to Guanacaste, our tour guide Chico took us to a local dive bar and we had dinner, some beers…

Knockin' back a cold one

…and an illegal drink.

A raw turtle egg floating in a spicy Tabasco-type sauce. Bottoms up!

Okay, technically the raw turtle egg shot is illegal if you don’t have the proper paperwork. Bars are allowed to serve the drink, a local custom, if they have paperwork showing they got the eggs from a certain area where it’s legal to collect them. Chico told us the law isn’t very heavily enforced and that if you’re caught illegally collecting turtle eggs, the punishment is a few dollars’ worth of fines or possibly a night in jail. Meanwhile, I felt mildly guilty for watching a beautiful sea turtle lay eggs on the beach, then two days later sucking down one of its spawn in a $1 bar shot, but hey, it was an experience I just couldn’t pass up. Plus, I needed the extra protein for race day.

Speaking of race day…

Race Day!

We had to wake up earlier than usual because Teresa was racing in the professional Olympic distance event that was starting at 6:00 am, while us amateurs who were racing the half Ironman distance were scheduled to start at 6:30. I did my usual routine: rinsed off, suited up, ate breakfast, headed to the race, set up my transition area, searched for a bathroom to expel any last-minute pre-race “jitters,” and loitered around transition waiting to be ushered to the beach. We got immensely lucky, as the wind that had been fiercely blowing throughout the region all week had become somewhat subdued, leading to a calmer-looking swim and a potentially faster bike than we were expecting.

While I was pumping up my tires, I inadvertently bent the rear valve and, as a result, couldn’t close it. I planned on replacing the tube but the bike maintenance guy assured me that it wouldn’t lose air unless I pushed down on it so I left it the way it was. Still, I was a bit worried about the tube and the idea of getting a flat nagged in the back of my mind.

I killed time by looking for the other woman in my age group to try and size up my competition. The day before the race we were waiting around for the athlete meeting to start, and Jason informed me that he checked out how many women were in my age group and found out that it was just me and another female. Upon finding out that I was a shoo-in for 2nd place barring a DNF or disqualification, I had the following reaction:

De-fault! De-fault!

After checking out the small number of women (23 total females out of 145 athletes), I thought to myself, “Hmm, it looks like I can hold my own against this field.” Feeling confident, I scanned a bunch of calves until I saw a “28.” There she is, my age group rival! Bring it on, I’ll smoke this chick!

I looked up. My competition was wearing an Olympic-distance race onesie that had her name and “Argentina” printed on it. “Oh, what the fuck,” I muttered. There’s one other girl in my age group and she’s a South American Brownlee. I pointed Argentina out to Jason, who started laughing really hard and said, “Congrats on taking second in your age group!” Mark tried to make me feel better by countering with, “Well, technically anyone can order a race outfit like that. You don’t have to be fast to have one.” Yeah, but have you ever seen someone wearing a onesie with his name and country on it who just turned out to be some slow douchebag who wanted to look like a pro? Neither have I.

I pushed Argentina out of my mind, telling myself that anything could happen and that I could still have a really good race if I stayed strong and positive. With that mindset, I headed to the beach and waited for my wave (39 and under male and female) to start.

Swim Summary

The swim was a beach start, so when my wave went off I jogged into the water and started swimming. The course was a two-loop diamond-shape, and after finishing the first loop we’d have to exit the water, run around a buoy on the beach, and dive back in for loop #2. I hadn’t done a two-loop swim since Cancun, but at that race we weren’t required to exit the water. Today I was getting a little taste of what the athletes who race Coeur d’Alene go through.

There was a current that pushed against me as I swam to the first buoy but worked in my favor once I turned towards buoy #2. I was keeping a decent, steady pace when out of nowhere I felt a sharp rubber band snap on my right foot and an intense stinging pain. Confused and bewildered, I kept swimming for a few strokes before I realized that I had just gotten stung by a goddamn jellyfish. Earlier in the week the race organizer said that mostly the pros get stung since they’re the first ones in the water. That race organizer is a big fat liar. I kept moving to the third buoy and the sharp pain in my foot eventually subsided to a dull ache, but it wasn’t anything terrible so I pushed it out of my mind and kept swimming.

As I swam to shore, the current simultaneously worked in and against my favor in the sense that it made me a bit faster but was also pushing me away from the swim exit. I ended up emerging onto the beach a few yards away from the crowd than I intended, but it wasn’t a huge deal since a ton of athletes had done the same. I had zero experience doing the whole “swim/run/swim” thing, so I popped my goggles up so I could see what the hell I was doing, ran around the buoy, pulled my goggles back down, and teetered back into the water. My attempted bad-ass dive resulted in an instant left calf cramp and I flailed and garbled obscenities in the water as I tried to shake it out while swimming at the same time. Two-loop swims are not my strongpoint (or swimming, really).

For us slowpokes, loop #2 got considerably choppier and I had to battle some waves as I headed out to the first turn. Once I was able to swim with the current again, however, conditions got a bit better, and eventually I found my ghetto rhythm despite my aching left calf and my stung right foot. When I emerged from the water, I saw a “43″ on my watch and nearly shit my borrowed swim skin. Unfortunately, I didn’t know where the timing mat was so I wobbled up to transition not exactly knowing what my swim split was until I was able to check results later.

Swim time: 44:49. Mark had said that the timing mat was quite a ways away from the swim exit, which explained why my final swim split was over a minute longer than when I had checked my watch upon emerging from the ocean. I didn’t care though; I was thrilled to have a sub-45 minute swim split, and it was sans wetsuit in the ocean, no less! Granted, I was still pretty craptacular relative to the field (119/145, 15 out of 23 females), but I’ve gotten used to making up some ground on the bike and went into T1 with my spirits high after such a successful-for-me swim split.

T1

I was lucky enough to score an end-position on the bike rack close to the bike out/in spot, meaning less time spent awkwardly clacking across the pavement in my bike shoes (and I wasn’t about to try the fancy mount/dismount move again after my sad attempt at Rev 3 Portland). My rear tire looked fine so I ran in and out with no issues.

T1 time: 1:58. My somewhat fast transition moved me up three spots overall and one in my gender. Woo hoo!

Bike Summary

I biked somewhat cautiously along the gravel stretch, not wanting to wipe out or attract a flat so early in my race (and because my left leg was still aching from the World’s Worst Ocean Dive). Before long I was at the base of the worst hill that takes you out of the park. When I practiced it earlier in the week it was crappy but not terrible, but on race day I approached it with an already spiked heart rate so this damn thing nearly killed me. I pedaled up it, wheezing but still managing to pass a few people who were probably astounded that I hadn’t keeled over and died. (My max heart rate, I’d later discover after looking at my watch data, hit 187.) My thoughts alternated wildly between “I can’t do it; there’s no shame in walking up the hill” and “You better not stop, you asshole!” Fortunately, my stubbornness and steady pace paid off and I emerged at the top victorious, having passed a number of athletes who looked worse off than I was (and one who did indeed stop and walk his bike up the remainder of the hill).

After the Heart Buster 5000, I made it out of the park and onto the road, where the course split into a Y-shape. I cranked up the effort and stayed a little higher than the target heart rate zone Teresa assigned me, but I felt strong and kept picking off athletes, mentally shaking my fist at them and screaming, “Swimming is overrated, bitches!” The course was mostly flat but the wind was unpredictable, pushing me to holding 35 mph at some points while reducing me to 13 mph at others. I couldn’t help but laugh in one stretch when I braced myself against a crosswind that was blowing at me from the left, only to have the wind abruptly change and begin blowing at me from the right.

Despite some seriously tight turnarounds and a wonky aid station (we were handed bottles with screw-tops instead of squeeze-tops, and the volunteers didn’t bother to loosen the lids before handing the drinks to us, resulting in some awkward juggling-while-cycling maneuvering), I managed to stay pretty steady and never got passed. I spotted Argentina a few times and managed to stay the same distance behind her, giving me a bit of confidence that at least I was holding my own against the She-Beast on the bike.

When I finished my three loops, I headed back to the resort entrance and got sprayed by a guy with a hose as I entered the park. The shock of the cold water against my back made me realize how hot the day was already getting, and I thought ahead to the run and prepared myself for a tough final leg of the race. I reached the last big hill leading back to transition and was surprised to find that it wasn’t nearly as bad as when I had climbed it earlier in the week, which made me feel happy knowing that I still had some juice left in my legs for the run portion. I made sure to slow down after the last big descent so I wouldn’t eat gravel as I hit the stretch of unpaved road and made it back into transition in one piece.

Bike time: 2:57:02. It wasn’t my fastest split to date, but I did move up a ton of spots so I was pretty happy with my time. Onto the run!

T2

I deposited my bike and slipped on a pair of socks, then my new Zoot racing flats. I grabbed a couple of gels, some salt pills, my visor, and my race belt, then ran out of T1 while trying to shove various items into various pockets.

T2 time: 1:44. I managed to pass a woman in transition and one other person in T2. BALLERRRRR.

Run Summary

As soon as I ran out of transition and turned the corner to the hard-packed dirt road along the beach, I was stunned to see so many locals shouting and cheering for all of the athletes who ran by. As I passed a group of guys, one of them shouted “Muy bien, muy bien! Eres la tercera! Eres la tercera!” I was mostly concentrated on how much my quads were aching, but my fluency in Spanish snapped me out of my pain stupor and I thought to myself, “Did that dude just say I was in third place?!” I wasn’t sure I heard correctly so I just kept running, trying to shake the aches out of my legs and wondering how well my run would hold up.

Remember that gorgeous oceanside run along the beach that had me awestruck earlier in the week? Well, I could have been running alongside a flatbed truck piled high with $100 bills, hot fudge sundaes, and beagle puppies and I wouldn’t have even noticed. All I kept thinking was how much it sucked running on sand. After a while, however, my legs loosened up from a combination of constant movement and a salt pill I gulped down, and I managed to fall into a pretty respectable run pace.

But holy shit was it hot out. Not as hot as I remembered Cancun to be, which wasn’t as temperature hot but was much more humid, but it was still in the mid-90s with a searing sun raging down on everyone. Enter the Saving Grace: sponges. Not just any sponge, and not from volunteers, either. Volunteers had these little wimpy sponges that were cool but not sufficient enough to put out the fire that kept erupting on my skin and atop my head every four minutes. No, these sponges were wielded by local spectators, and they were huge and ice-cold. I’d run past a local who would dunk a giant sponge in a cooler full of ice water, run alongside me, slap this thing on my head or neck with enough force to make me flinch, and squeeze a bunch of water onto me that was so frigid it would make me gasp. (And moan slightly. Don’t judge.) These folks were so awesome that whenever a race volunteer would offer me one of their second-rate sponges, I’d scoff and think, “Put that shit away, these wimpy squares can’t compete with the orgasm-inducing race savers Jorge has up the street.”

So that was my strategy–I’d get sponged every five minutes by an overly-eager local and it saved my ass. Volunteers were also handing out long tube-shaped plastic baggies of water instead of cups, which were perfect to run with (they were similar to what was handed out in Cancun but shaped differently). I’d shove one down my shirt and sip on the other one, then dig the backup out when I needed something to drink. This method worked well for me, and I only needed to grab a cup of Gatorade a couple of times throughout the course.

When I started loop #2, I saw Teresa, who had finished her race some time ago and was on the lookout for her TN athletes. She excitedly cheered for me and said, “What loop are you on? 2?”, and because I go full moron when I’m racing, I responded with, “Uh, whuh, I dunno” and took off.

Super sweaty and starting loop #2 of 4

I stayed pretty steady and at one out and back saw Argentina a ways behind me. Her placement confused me because I didn’t remember passing her at any point, and then I realized in horror that the South American She-Beast was a whole lap ahead of me. FML. Jason and I crossed paths shortly after that and had the following exchange:

Jason: “Great job!”

Me, blurting: “Argentinaiskickingmyass!”

She eventually passed me and I said, “Good job” to the female-shaped dust cloud she left behind.

Despite the fact that Argentina was mopping the floor with me, I puttered along, never having to stop and walk or meander through an aid station. The sponges and the tubes of water helped greatly, as did the dude with the hose who was spraying everyone at the entrance to the park. During one of my laps I professed my love for him and said I was planning to marry him later, and he laughed and replied in a slight accent, “I’ll be waiting for you!”

On the third loop I caught a female and passed her. We exchanged smiles and nods, and I excitedly wondered if that meant I was now in 2nd place. I kept cruising along but could feel myself growing tired. The hills were becoming a little harder to climb, the sun was feeling a little hotter, and my feet were aching a little more with each passing step. I zonked out a bit, trying to find my “zen” place, and subsequently almost booted a lizard across the golf course as it lazily made its way across my path. So much for my zen place.

Loop four! Finally! One more runthrough and I’d be done with this nonsense! I tiredly made it to the golf course and was about a mile from the finish when a way-too-fresh-looking woman passed me. I mentally cried, “Nooooooooooooo,” Vader-style, and tried to keep up with her. She maintained her lead on me and I continued to give chase, hoping that when we’d reach the fork beyond transition, she’d turn right to start a new loop instead of heading left towards the finish line. Turn right. Turn right. Turn RIGHT, you stupid, perky, fresh-looking freak!

She turned right. I mentally did this:

YESSSS

I took the final stumbly steps through the loose sand towards the finish. The announcer called out my name and said I was with TN Multisports from Seattle, then gleefully exclaimed, “Guess what, Rebecca! It’s snowing in Seattle right now! How about that?” I smiled and put my hands up.

I'll take scorching temps over mid-March Pacific Northwest snow any day

Run time: 1:57:08. I finally hit my sub-2 hour run split off the bike, and it was a tough run at that. A resounding “woo hoo!”

Total race time: 5:42:42. I managed to post a PR over last year’s flat and fast Rev 3 Portland course, and this race was much more difficult. I couldn’t have been happier with how my race turned out.

Jas and me holding every type of liquid known to man

Jason had an exceptional race too. He swam a 33:34, which is a huge PR. Unfortunately, while I never got the flat tire I half-expected, his rear tire did go flat in transition and he didn’t notice it until he grabbed his bike to start the bike portion of the race. Thankfully, a bunch of spectators alerted him to the problem and he ran around for a few minutes trying to find the bike mechanic before he got his tube swapped out. Despite this several minute delay, Jas managed to bike a 2:52 and run an astonishing 1:35 to finish in 5:05:31, taking 10th overall. He’d have broken 5 hours were it not for the flat tire. Crazysauce.

Know what else is crazysauce? I did take 2nd overall female behind the Argentinian She-Beast (who finished in 5:06:57 and 11th overall because she is absurdly fast…though I was less than four minutes behind her on the bike, so I at least have that to brag about)! Whaaaaaaaaaat!! I podiumed! At a race that included a swim segment! Granted, the field was small but still, 2nd overall female! Crazysauce, indeed!

My first non-duathlon "hey, you placed pretty well" medal!

At the awards ceremony the race officials mistakenly awarded me third place but realized later that one of the females on their finishers printout DNF’d, which messed up the race results. I wrote the organizers and asked if they could send me the 2nd overall female medal and they said they would but ended up accidentally mailing me a “1st in age group” medal instead. I’m still trying to obtain the corrected hardware, but in the meantime I mailed out the third place medal to the woman who finished behind me (I tracked her down on Facebook and she was quite excited to receive the medal). She was the one I passed on the third loop of the run, and she rallied to try and catch me at the end and ended up finishing a scant 20 seconds behind me. Close call!

Grinning like a kid on Christmas

In addition to the incorrect medal, I received a flask run belt, a gift certificate for a free rental car (which was a bit odd since we already had a rental car but I had to redeem my free one before the end of the month) and free surf lessons for me and a friend (which I didn’t use due to a gnarly blister on my foot that wrapped between my two big toes and hobbled me for the rest of my trip–so much for the racing flats; I’m switching back to my running shoes for half Iron distances).

I also came home with the sexiest tan lines ever:

Now everyone can know how old I am without asking

The top swirl is from a TN Multisports tattoo, while the giant rectangle is from my race number tattoo

I''d still take this over the Cancun disaster

And, of course, the dreaded tri-short tan

Overall, the trip was fun, the race was a blast (despite its difficulty, it was run remarkably well and the course was challenging but rewarding), the locals were super awesome and really encouraging, and I had a great 2012 race debut. I couldn’t have asked for a better result, and I certainly didn’t expect to take 2nd place. My next big tri will be Honu in June, so hopefully racing in Costa Rica helped prep me a little bit for similar conditions (though it could be much windier and it will be a lot more humid). If my race season goes as well as Costa Rica did, I’ll be a very happy Mediocre Athlete indeed.

My Cancun 70.3 Race Report

(or as I like to call it, the “Eff Jason for talking me into doing this” Half Ironman)

Arriving in Meh-hee-co

Como se dicen en México, survimos (as they say in Mexico, we survived). Jason and I got in Friday early evening for the race on Sunday. Some of my teammates were surprised we were arriving in Mexico so soon before the race, but honestly, after having done it both ways (I got to Costa Rica on a Tuesday and the race here is on Sunday), I prefer the “get in a couple days before the race” mentality. I kind of feel like I’m wasting part of my vacation by sitting around not doing much when I fly in early. I’d rather stay longer after the race and enjoy my time laying out on the beach, slurping tropical boozy drinks, and exploring/doing activities than staying out of the sun, constantly hydrating, and keeping off my feet.

I had made it roughly four feet from the airport before grumbling to Jason that we will never do another destination race again (three and a half years later, 2008 Rebecca is scowling at 2012 Rebecca for breaking her promise, as I have not one but two destination races on my schedule this season). Between the two of us we had a big suitcase for our clothes, another suitcase for our race clothes, two duffel bags full of fuel, helmets and accessories, and two giant bike cases containing our deconstructed bicycles. Lugging all of this crap required some serious muscles and patience. I was soaked with sweat from the combination of heat, humidity, and gear muling.

When we got to the official race hotel, we took a hooker’s bath and attempted to put together our bikes (Jason was still rockin’ his dad’s old Klein, which took him and Mark an eon to take apart since it probably hadn’t been disassembled since 1985, and I was riding my old coworker’s Giant road bike). After 90 minutes and repeated grease markings on the rug and floor, we were successful. Hooray! (I later spent a half hour trying to scrub the room clean of incriminating bike grease and realized that I would never, ever get away with murdering someone. Considering how much grease and grime I left all over the room just from assembling a crappy road bike, I’d have hair, fingerprints, sweat droplets, and probably my wallet because I’m that stupid all over a crime scene.)

The race hotel itself was kind of crappy. They overbooked so we didn’t get the room we requested. Instead of a king-sized bed we got two doubles. The hotel staff helpfully suggested that we push the beds together. Just like in the 1950s! There were also little ant-like bugs that enjoyed crawling around our bathroom sink. I made it a mission to squash all of the ones I could see, but the little effers would return in full force. To top it all off, our door’s lock kept breaking, which was annoying before the race and super annoying after the race because we kept having to trudge up and down stairs (the elevator took an eon to call) on tired legs to the lobby so I could crabbily yell at the front desk employee in Spanish that our llave no functiona porque la cerradura está rota.

Jason complaining about our 'Leave It to Beaver' bed setup

Pre-Race Shenanigans

On Saturday morning we went to the expo hall to get our race packets. To our amusement, they gave us each a fleece jacket that said “Ironman 70.3 Cancun.” Kind of a kick in the balls to give each entrant a fleece jacket for racing in 90+ degree, humid-as-shit weather, but whatever. I also bought a technical tee, but Jason, who was considerably bigger then than he is now, was unable to purchase one because he couldn’t fit in the XL size. (He tried. The Mexican lady selling the shirts laughed at him as he struggled to get it off.)

Later Jason and I swam in the sea for about 10 minutes to get acclimated to open ocean swimming. It was salty, but the water was really pretty and warm. That evening we went for a run to get acclimated to the heat and humidity. It sucked. The run lasted 11 minutes total, and every single second was chokingly hot. At this point I was getting a little concerned about how the race was going to go for us.

We took a shuttle bus to the transition area, which was the Wet ‘n Wild water park. The shuttle bus, by the way, was pretty much just a bus that you had to lug your bike onto and prop up on one wheel while awkwardly holding the bike upright. It was a big enough struggle to get my bike on the bus pre-race, so I was wondering how well the post-race transport would go after I’d be exhausted, sunburned, and sore from swimming, biking, and running all morning (the answer: not great).

Jason and I got to the transition area and did a ½ mile test ride. I made some adjustments to my bike and we got our tires inflated. We set up our bikes, got marked, and went to check out the swim area, which was at the beach behind the Wet ‘n Wild park. The water was not as beautiful and turquoise-colored as the beach at our hotel; rather, it was seaweedy and mucky, evoking lovely memories of Greenlake.

I was wondering how we were supposed to get from the beach all the way to the transition area, which was pretty much the entire Wet ‘n Wild parking lot. It turned out that T1 went like this: swim, get out of the water, run down the beach and through the Wet ‘n Wild park, out the front entrance and over to the parking lot to your transition area. It was going to be a long T1. I half expected them to require us to shoot down the water slide and take a trip down the lazy river as part of transition. (That would have been kind of neat, actually.)

Jason and I got eaten by mosquitoes while setting up our bikes at the park, so we were a bit grumpy and itchy when we returned to the host hotel. We ate dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant and saw a huge fat crocodile in the inlet adjacent to the restaurant. This did not make Jason feel very good about the swim, although the croc was on the bay side of Cancun and we’d be swimming on the opposite sea side. I assured him that we’re more likely to get eaten by a shark in the sea than a crocodile, but I don’t think that made him feel any better.

Stay on your side of the peninsula, croc!

Race Day!

Jason and I awoke to howling winds, dancing palm trees, and frothy waves. I took one look at him and said, “There is no way I’m racing in this weather.” Not helping my stress levels was the fact that I had sweat a good chunk of my race number off while sleeping, so the sheets and pillows were covered with Sharpie ink. There’s a reason why you don’t get marked for a race the day before, folks (or at least why chronically sweaty people like me shouldn’t).

Flexing my race number the night before the race, before most of it ended up all over the sheets

I wasn’t very confident about racing since I was still a triathlon noob and the winds were pretty aggro. Ultimately I decided that I didn’t lug all this shit to Mexico just to puss out at the last minute, so we gathered our gear together, got to the park, and set up our transition areas (and got more bug bites). Worst case scenario I’d just drown or something, right? No big deal. Thankfully, the winds had calmed down by then so I felt a little bit better.

While we were at the transition area we met a guy named Daniel who was way too stoked to be up that early to race:

The only guy in the world who likes getting up at 4:00 am

After snapping a couple pics of Daniel (I sent them to him via email; we haven’t spoken since the race but we are Facebook friends, of course), he offered to take one of us. Here we are in our pre-race glory:

"Just smile and pretend you're not nervous as shit."

I’d like to once again point out how ridiculously long my torso is and how disproportionately short my legs are. I have the stumpiest legs ever. Thanks, Mom.

After some photos we headed to the swim area. The swim was two loops, and the furthest point from the beach was probably only a couple hundred meters, so it felt very manageable and safe. The deepest point was only about 10 feet and you could always see the bottom, so at least I’d see the shark should it decide to saunter up and chomp my leg off.

Jason’s wave started nearly 20 minutes before mine, so I wished him good luck and off he went. While I waited for my wave to start I saw an obese, hairy man who looked an awful lot like Borat’s manager Azamat, sporting band-aids over his (furry) nipples, waiting to begin the race. I thought, “Okay, if he can do this, surely I can…right?”

Swim Summary

Finally it was time for my wave to start. The water was warm so wetsuits weren’t allowed. I swam in a sports bathing suit top and tri shorts. The first straightaway was tough for me because the water was kind of choppy with a lot of waves, so since I suck at swimming (and I sucked even more in 2008 than I do now), I felt like I was in a washing machine. Since the swim course was two loops all of the fast assholes (meaning everyone but me) ended up lapping me, resulting in me getting manhandled by a lot of swimmers. I had to stop a lot. At one point I popped up and must have looked downright miserable because one of the Mexican volunteers shouted to me in Spanish if I was drowning. I sighed and said no, then proceeded on my not-at-all-merry way.

Swim time: 54:50. Slow, but at least I survived. When I first started the swim I contemplated saying “Eff this” and getting hauled out, but I kept trudging. (This would not be the first time I’d think about quitting throughout the course of the race.)

T1

I finally wobbled out of the water and ran down the beach. As soon as I cut over to the park, they had a double row of showers set up so you could rinse off the salt water. I ghetto showered right quick and guiltily ran past the “NO CORRER!” (NO RUNNING!”) signs plastered all over the park. Finally I got to my transition area and ran out with my bike.

T1 time: 5:31, which was actually quite decent considering how far we had to travel. I think the pros took at least four minutes, so I didn’t feel too bad.

Bike Summary

The bike was a super flat but kind of a boring course. There was nothing really scenic, though I did see the occasional stray dog (as well as an angry Mexican throwing stones at a couple of dogs so they would move out of his way), and at one point I saw an animal with a curiously long tail scamper across the street. I’m not sure if there are any monkeys in Mexico, but the tail was monkey-tail long, so who knows what the hell it was.

The bike was mostly two loops (you rode out for a short bit, then came to the start of the loop you’d have to repeat before heading back to transition), and there was an aid station at either end of the loop. The way out was really fast and awesome, but the way back was against a fairly strong wind, so I wasn’t able to get much speed. I don’t think I put my bike together exactly how it was before I traveled, because I was immediately uncomfortable while riding and my body never seemed to acclimate. I also started to feel pretty sick on the bike and thought (again) about quitting. My stomach just felt really sour and I was pretty nauseous. I took in a ton of water/Gu20 and ate a lot of shot blocks and gu, and I also took an endurolyte every 30 minutes, but nothing seemed to help that much.

At one point it started pouring for about five minutes before the rain stopped and the sun reemerged. Whenever the winds would briefly die down, I’d become aware of how searingly hot it was. I was pretty sure I could actually smell my back frying like sweet, savory bacon. At this point I stupidly started to wonder if my sun-friendly Asian skin would actually burn on this trip (spoiler alert: it did. Big time).

Towards the end of my ride I was in total “Fuck this, I want off this goddamn bike” mode. I was also wondering why I wasn’t going as fast as I felt I should be. Despite my efforts, I felt like I was hardly making any progress, and after the race I discovered the culprit: my front tire was almost completely flat. I think it must have punctured toward the end of my ride, which explained the lack of speed at the end. I didn’t notice it at the time though; otherwise I would have changed it since I was becoming quite the pro at changing flats that season (it was the 2nd flat I’d gotten during a race and the 5th flat of 2008).

Bike Time: 3:22:58. Not great at all for how flat the course was, but I was still a newbie, riding on a borrowed bike that was put together wrong, and had battled head winds, gut rot, and a flat tire, so oh well. It was still about 30 minutes faster than my Victoria half Ironman bike split. I was also stoked to have passed a fair amount of people (both men and women) who had fancy Cervelo and Felt time trial bikes, which made me feel pretty bad-ass on the ol’ Giant. “Choke on my aluminum frame and stumpy Asian legs, bitches!” Hell yeah. (Of course, I love my bike much, much more.)

The one impressive thing about the bike leg was the volunteer support. There were folks who rode on mopeds and motorcycles, looking out for people, and I saw countless volunteers actually helping people change bike tires, with one volunteer puttering around on a moped with a bunch of spare tubes and old punctures. That was pretty awesome–I wish more races did that.

T2

Sweet sassy molassy, the pavement was freakin’ HOT at this point. I rode sans socks, so I was hopping from foot to foot trying not to burn my toes off while scrambling to put on my socks and running shoes. I dumped a water bottle over my head and headed out for the run.

T2 time: 2:15

Run (if that’s what you want to call it) Summary

The run absolutely destroyed me. I started running and made it to the first aid station before I had to stop. It was so hot outside. The run was along the hotel zone, so there was absolutely zero shade to hide under. It was like ninety degrees and we were running in direct sunlight with about 1,000% humidity. My saving grace (and Jason’s as well, I found out later) was the fact that there was an aid station every other kilometer. Each station had orange and banana slices, ice cold Gatorade, gu, ice cubes, and cold baggies of water. The water baggies were UH-MAZE-ING. Every hot race should have these. They were my saving grace.

At each aid station I would take one baggy of water and tear it open with my teeth, guzzle half of it, and squirt the rest on my head, face, and chest. Eventually I started taking two baggies and would rub one of them on my arms, face, and chest, then would later tear it open and drink/squirt it, then hobble/jog for a bit before busting into the second one. This was my rhythm for the entire run duration. Each cool down was short-lived, however, and almost immediately my body would dry up and get dangerously hot again, and I’d drag myself to the next aid station to start the process over again.

Everyone looked miserable on the run. Even the hardcore athletes looked pretty jaded, which made me feel marginally better. I ran into Jason a few times (the run was an out and back which we repeated) and cursed him each time I saw him. I begged the Aztec gods for it to rain. I mentally promised them my first-born child, or, if I decided not to have kids, all of our gaming consoles (I’m pretty sure that Quetzalcoatl would like an Xbox 360).

On my final lap I saw, to my horror, some athletes riding their bikes back to the hotel. This was demoralizing for two reasons:

1. These assholes had already finished the race, and
2. They had enough energy left to actually ride their bikes back to the stupid hotel.

Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Nonetheless, I trudged on, popping Endurolytes like Tic-Tacs. I saw a one-legged guy starting his final lap as I was finishing mine and publicly cheered for him but was internally happy that I at least beat the one-legged dude (though I imagine my gait didn’t look much different than his at this point). I did not, however, beat a one-armed guy. That guy kicked my ass.

With .1 miles to go, I looked down at my watch and saw that I could maybe, possibly squeak in at under 7 hours, just like I did in Victoria. I got as excited as one with possible heatstroke could get and started to pick up the pace. I ran hard, only to realize that the cruel bastards who organized this hellacious event decided to make the last .1 miles as switchbacky as freakin’ possible. I rounded each corner expecting a finish line, only to be met with another stupid turn. Eventually I staggered across the finish line and collapsed under the reprieve of a shaded tent.

Run time: 2:35:39. Not great by any means, but at least now I know I can walk-shuffle a half marathon in a little over 2 1/2 hours.

Total race time: 7:01:13. I was 17th out of 23 girls in my division. This race sucked. Hard. But hey, I finished because no matter how miserable I feel or how terribly the race is going for me, I refuse to quit. This medal doesn’t have a great time attached to it, but it was still pretty hard earned so screw it, I learned a lot and got a good vacation out of the experience.

Showing off my medal in pre-TN gear (back when we were team Herriott Sports Performance)

Jason’s time was pretty craptacular too—I think he finished in 6:42 or so. He had a great swim, about 45 minutes, and a solid-at-the-time bike (about 3:13 or so). The run, however, claimed him as a victim as well as me and several others (I think it took him about 2 ½ hours as well).

Surprisingly, we survived relatively unscathed aside from the usual soreness and chafe marks. I did, however, get some nasty cuts on my ankle from the chip strap that I wrote about so lovingly in my Triathlete Woe #2 post.

Not the best souvenir

Oh, and, as for a possible race sunburn? Well, I put on SPF 30 before the race started and will let you guess how well that held up:

Ah, the tri short tan. You know it, you loathe it, you can't avoid it.

My back got the worst of it. I mistakenly figured that racing in a sport swim top would help keep me cooler vs. a sleeveless tri kit top, but I obviously didn’t think about how my back would be completely exposed to the sun all day and how it would soak up the brunt of the rays during the bike and run. The aftermath of my sunburn wasn’t pretty:

My back after the race

One day after the race--swollen and red.

Three days after the race. Here come the blisters!

Four days after the race. My back is looking quite un-a-peel-ing.

My first day back in Seattle--I think this is about a week or so after the race

I have never gotten as bad a sunburn as I did from that race. Since I have a darker complexion, I don’t really burn that easily and when I do, it turns to brown rather quickly. The Mexico sun, however, is no joke, and even I was no match for its brutality. It took my skin about eight months to fully recover from the bad sunburn, but eventually the splotches evened out and I stopped convincing myself I was dying of skin cancer.

The burn put a damper on my vacation since I had to keep my back covered at all times, but other than that Jas and I still had a lot of fun. We changed hotels after the race and spent the remainder of our trip at the Sun Palace, a beautiful all-inclusive resort. He and I spent some time at Isla de Mujeres, went to Xcaret (an eco park), where I got to high-five a sea turtle, and enjoyed lazing about while slurping sugary blended drinks for the rest of the week before returning home.

Fast forward to early 2012, where I find myself in yet another extremely hot (although not nearly as humid) tropical environment on the verge of racing my second destination half Ironman to start off my fifth season as a triathlete. I’m stronger, in better shape, and more knowledgeable than I was back in 2008, but the conditions will still be hot and windy and the course is much tougher, so I really have no idea how well I’ll do. I’m confident I’ll do better than my seven hour Cancun suffer fest, but as far as an actual time estimate, your guess is as good as mine. I’ll let you know how it goes. One thing is for sure: I definitely plan to wear a tri top and drench myself in the strongest sunscreen known to man so I don’t turn my back into beef jerky again.

Dear Judgmental Waiter Who Thinks I’m Ordering Too Much Food,

First of all, I appreciate your concern for my well-being as well as your doubt that I can successfully cram such a large quantity of food down my gullet. I can see how you would underestimate my ability to pack in the calories, seeing as how I’m of average height and somewhat thin/athletic build and not some sort of morbidly obese hobgoblin who rolled in on a Rascal scooter and prodded you with a fork I brought from home while wearing an old food-stained bib I got from an Old Country Buffet six years ago.

However, I need to educate you on a few things so that you will stop giving me that “Are you seriously ordering this much food” look:

1. My mom is Korean; therefore, I know how to eat.

Koreans love to eat. The only thing they love more than food itself is watching their kids pig out; thus, my mother’s greatest joy is simultaneously stuffing bulgogi and rice in my mouth while scowling that I’ve gained too much weight (except for recently, where now she alternates asking me what I’m making for dinner and telling me not to lose too much weight or I’ll become “ann-o-reck-she-uh”). Therefore, despite my size and stature, I have an uncanny ability to eat a ridiculous amount of food. It’s how I grew up–Momma didn’t raise no dainty eater. Although my boyfriend is 6′4″ and 200 lbs, when he and I order dishes to share at a restaurant, we actually do split the food 50/50, which is highly disproportionate considering our weight and caloric intake differentials. To put it quite bluntly, I am a pig. A shameless, ravenous pig. If I don’t restrain myself, I could easily polish off enough food to put a Biggest Loser contestant to shame.

2. I worked out for four hours today.

Not only am I a glutton, I’m also a (somewhat mediocre) endurance athlete; thus, chances are I’ve done 2-8 hours of grueling workouts earlier in the day and am freakin’ starving. I’ve burned thousands of calories and now my body wants some of them back. So thank you for the eye roll and the silent judgment that I’m probably bulimic. I’m not puking, I just want something other than Powerbar Perform and gels in my stomach, for crying out loud.

3. In case you forgot, I’m paying you for all this food.

You’re not bringing this shit to me for free, for crying out loud. I understand the basic concept of a restaurant–I pay for the food you make and bring to me, whether or not I actually consume it (I will though, because my inner fat kid is crying for something that’s been cooked in butter). It’s not like I’m going to take one dainty little nibble, push the rest away, and hold my belly, exclaiming, “Ohhhhhh, I’m so full. I’m not paying for the rest of this!” If I don’t eat it all (which is rare), I’ll take the leftovers home. Either way, it shouldn’t matter to you since you’re getting money from me whether I eat it all, throw it on the ground, or build Close Encounters-esque towers with it.

4. I realize how much food I’m ordering because a) I’m not an idiot, and b) I want to fucking eat it all, otherwise I wouldn’t order it.

You know why I’m ordering this much food? It’s not to be a dick, it’s because all of this stuff sounds good and I want it in my bellah, stat. I can’t tell you how many times a waiter has doubted that Jas and I will finish the gigantic amount of food we ordered, only to be surprised when they return and clear empty plates. I know what I’m doing. This ain’t my first dog and pony show–I’m gonna order a crapton of food, eat it all, feel miserably full and loathe myself, work out for four hours the next day, and then feel better when I step on the scale and see that everything’s evened out. It’s a typical cycle, so get used to it.

5. I could do without the attitude, and you could subsequently do with a nicer tip.

When you come back to my table after the meal is done and sneer, “Can I get you something else? More food, perhaps?”, two things run through my head. #1 is yeah, I could probably eat more food but I’m gonna have to draw the line somewhere. #2 is that I can hear the condescending tone in your voice and haven’t left your tip yet, so how about you save the shit talking for after I leave. Or better yet, forget the shit talking and just marvel that a skinny woman just ate more than the adjacent table of four and left you a better tip than they did.

In conclusion, Judgmental Waiter Who Thinks I’m Ordering Too Much Food, while I appreciate your concern, I know what I’m doing so let me pig out in peace and keep the water refills coming. A full, unjudged Becca is a happy Becca, and a happy Becca tips over 20% and comes back for more food at a later date.

Gluttonously yours,
Mediocre Athlete

I’ve gotten chafing everywhere. And by “everywhere,” I mean everywhere. My ankles, my armpits, my sternum, the small of my back, my inner thighs, my ribcage, the back of my neck, and yes, the demoralizing “are you freakin’ kidding me” spot known as the asscrack. This diagram fully illustrates which parts of my body have been rubbed raw from friction, clothing, or some other random bullshit while training or racing:

The buttcrack is the worst.

I’ve gotten ankle chafing from timing chips:

A permanent souvenir from Ironman Cancun 70.3

I’ve gotten thigh chafing from a pair of shorts I had worn a hundred times before, but when I wore them for a half marathon, they inexplicably tore my legs up so bad that I had to cover the scabs in gauze for a few days. I’ve gotten pelvis chafing from swimsuits, which is just mind-boggling. I’ve developed thick neck scabs from wet suit chafing. If you threw a dart at a diagram of a body, chances are I’ve gotten chafing there.

Here’s a chafe mark along the lower part of my stomach that looks like I got slashed by a knife-wielding maniac:

Courtesy of the 2010 Ironman Boise 70.3

And here’s a chest chafing that looks like the shape of New Jersey:

I've been branded with the mark of the guido

This past weekend my sternum got torn to shit during a hill repeat run:

Note the old chafe scar in the middle, sandwiched between the new ones

My sternum has gotten chewed up so much from heart rate monitors that I have resorted to covering the spot with a Band-aid before workouts (which has led to Jason calling me King Hippo), but even that failed me on Saturday.

Chafing sucks. It has no pattern, no rhyme or reason. I’ll use a crapton of Glide and will still get it. I’ll wear a tried and true pair of shorts and will still get it. I’ll have a short workout and will get a mark out of nowhere. But the worst part of the chafing isn’t its randomness. No sir. That I’m getting used to. I’ve grown accustomed to sudden chafe marks in various parts of my body I previously thought were immune to chafing.

No, the absolute worst part of chafing is the post-workout shower. It’s like a scene out of Psycho–I peel off my soggy, sweat-soaked clothes, turn the shower on to its hottest setting, and step in, preparing for a luxurious and relaxing cleansing. Then a single bead of water propels out of the shower head and pellets onto the one half square inch of skin on my entire body that has been rubbed raw, a spot I didn’t even know existed until now, and it feels like someone threw hydrochloric acid all over me. I screech and start whirling around in a frenzy, howling, “AGHHHGHHHHHHH WHATTTTT THE HELLLLLLLLL,” not being able to pinpoint the exact spot that has betrayed me until several seconds later when the pain subsides and I succeed in curling myself into the tiniest ball imaginable in the corner of the tub, away from the Razor Droplets from Hell and whimpering like a stray dog. The best part of my day, the glorious post-workout shower, has now been robbed of all its splendor because of one tiny fucking chafe mark.

So here’s to you, chafing, you miserable, awful side effect of endurance sports. I hate you with the intensity of a thousand Christian Bales. By the time I’ve thrown in the towel with this sport, I’ll have more marks on my body than a drug cartel member has tattoos. At least I’m fortunate to be dating someone who doesn’t mind them; I can’t imagine going out with someone and explaining to him that no, I don’t get into back alley knife fights as a hobby.

There are people on my team who have doting, caring family members and loved ones who are out there for every race cheering them on and beaming with pride. Mark’s parents have never missed any of his full Ironman races. Brent’s dad had tears in his eyes when he watched his son approach the finish line at Ironman Canada in 2009 (and when I saw his dad, I choked up too). Jason’s parents, sister, grandma, and aunt and uncle have all shown up at races to cheer for him (though Jim, Jason’s dad, is the most genuine fan of the actual sport and would eagerly watch a race even if Jas weren’t participating).

And then there are people like me, folks who don’t have a familial support system. I have to keep reminding my mom what a triathlon even is, and when I told her about signing up for my first Ironman, when she wasn’t convinced I was going to die, she stated she was too busy growing hot peppers to fly out and cheer for me. I’m in the process of convincing her to watch me race at Ironman Tempe (should I decide to do that race) since it’s outside of pepper season and because her mother-in-law lives in Arizona, but I don’t have a ton of confidence that she’d come even though she has promised she would.

I had invited my sister to come to Penticton with my nephews to watch the race, and she seemed interested but didn’t come out. I’ve invited her to watch me race at shorter, local events but so far she’s been a no-show. She’s eager to boast about our brother and his martial arts on Facebook but has said nothing of my endurance race accomplishments. I doubt it’s intentional or malicious, but the lack of recognition can sting from time to time.

Speaking of that brother, when I had first signed up for Ironman Canada and was telling him about it, I mentioned that it would be really cool if he could fly up (he lives in Los Angeles) and support me and that it would mean a lot to me. He just laughed over the phone and scoffed that he doesn’t want to “stand around all day while [I] run a marathon.” Misinformed distance aside (hello, I’d swim 2.4 miles and bike 112 miles first!), the eye-rolling tone and complete disregard of something that meant a lot to me really stung. I didn’t actually expect him to come up and support me considering it would have been quite a trip, but his complete lack of caring really hurt. After I finished the race, my mom, sister, and other brother all congratulated me even though they really don’t understand the sport or the amount of training required. This brother was the only one who didn’t say anything or acknowledge my accomplishment (and to this day he still hasn’t).

Sometimes I see my teammates and my boyfriend who have such a loving, supportive family and I get sad. I would love for my siblings or my mom to take an interest in this sport that has occupied so much of my time in the past few years. I’d be thrilled if one of them called me after a race and asked how it went, or, better yet, if they could watch me race and cheer for me. It would mean the world to me to have their encouragement and their support.

At the same time, I understand that triathlon and other endurance sports are largely unknown to people who aren’t super into it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard folks refer to a sprint triathlon as an “Ironman” or an Ironman as a “full triathlon.” Some people can’t wrap their heads around why you’d want to train 15-20 hours a week (or 30+, if you’re one of the crazy Kona-bound athletes) for some silly race. They can’t relate because they can’t put themselves in your shoes, so because they don’t understand what drives you or why it means so much to you, they don’t care as much.

Despite not having that traditional support system, however, I remind myself that the support is there, just in other forms. My other brother John had talked about coming to Penticton to watch me race my first Ironman, but his vacation plans fell through. He lives in Michigan and has a wife and two small children, so I didn’t fault him for not being able to make the trip. He has said he’d love to watch me do a race in the midwest somewhere (either in Michigan or Ohio).

The last time I was in town, John pulled out his phone and said, “This is what pops up when you call.” To my surprise, the picture was of me on my bike during the Seafair sprint. I looked dorky as hell (aero position, douchey sunglasses, helmet, spandex) but felt very “Awww, shucks.” Of my relatives, he’s the one who seems to take the most interest in my hobby, and even though it’s not as rabid or as comprehensive as it could be, it still means a lot.

My boyfriend is by far my biggest cheerleader (both literally and figuratively, though he’s lost a lot of weight!), always there to praise me for getting my workouts in, to wrap me in a big hug at the end of a race, to shout words of encouragement (and to boot me in the ass when I’m being cranky), and to give me as much support as I need. It helps immensely that he’s involved in the sport as much as I am, so he knows what I go through and the emotions and sacrifice and hard work that go hand-in-hand with training because he experiences it too. Having someone who can relate and be able to root for me is really special because he knows what it feels like.

My training team, TN Multisports, is another support system. I have fellow teammates who, like me, don’t have family members who really understand or care about all these races they do and the training they endure. But despite not having that, we all have each other, and that’s the main reason why I love this team so much. I will never, ever forget running past my teammates lined up on either side of the street screaming as loud as they could for me as I approached the finish line at Ironman Canada in 2010. To have that much support and encouragement thrown at me was intoxicating and overwhelming. It made me love this team with an intense and fierce passion. The team’s support is what gets me through grueling workouts, rough patches during a race, and moments of doubt and insecurity.

My coach Teresa selflessly took on the role of doting, encouraging mom, filling that void for me. I remember my first season I signed on to train with her, she completely shocked me by calling me after her half Ironman Wildflower race to see how Jason and I did at the Vancouver half marathon (it didn’t go well for Jas, in case you forgot). I was not expecting to hear from her at all considering she had a big race, but she has always been that way. Teresa puts her athletes ahead of herself. She is often the first to comment on my blog posts with words of encouragement. She fills my email inbox with positive thoughts and reassurance. She gave me a huge hug and a kiss after I completed my first Ironman and was beaming with pride. She has become a great friend to me and an indispensable part of training and racing, not because she’s the one who comes up with my workouts (though that obviously helps), but because without her support and her unwavering belief in me at times when I don’t believe in myself, I wouldn’t be the athlete I am today.

Jason’s family has also rooted for me at races, but I didn’t think too much of it because every time I’d be racing, so too would Jas or his sister, so I felt like the “package deal” when it came to cheering me on. This year, however, Jason is planning to race Ironman Coeur d’Alene while I opted to do Canada again, so we’re a bit more independent with our respective race schedules. Jason’s dad Jim shocked the hell out of me when we were talking about traveling for the races and he very casually said to his wife, “So we’ll be over in Idaho for Jason’s race in June, and then we’re going to Penticton to watch Rebecca in August.” It didn’t seem out of the ordinary to him at all to travel up to Canada and support his son’s girlfriend at a race his son wasn’t even signed up for. Much like the Grinch, my heart grew three sizes that day. It really meant a lot to me that they were all willing to come up and root for me outside of the standard “package deal.”

So while no, most of my family members don’t understand this whole “triathlon” or “marathon” nonsense and don’t give me the praise and encouragement and support I sometimes crave from them, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a support system. I’m very lucky and fortunate to have people in my life who are on my side and who do root for me. Most of them aren’t related to me, but they feel like family nonetheless.

To all of you who I consider to be my biggest supporters, whether you’re Jason, Teresa, my brother John, my teammates, my non-in-law-in-laws (we’ll get married eventually, I promise), or my few blog readers: thank you. You are what gets me out of bed for early morning workouts (which I freaking hate), what forces me to hop on my bike or lace up my running shoes when I’m tired. You’re what drives me to dejectedly yank on my swim cap even though I hate swimming. You’re what motivates me to keep training and to be the best, strongest, fastest, and most driven athlete I can be. You’re what carries me across the finish line when I don’t think I can make it.

No matter how strong or thin or speedy I can get, it’s a hollow, meaningless feeling without the support and encouragement of loved ones. Thank you for being my loved ones.

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 oh well, sometimes you have to make do.

Unless you’re Grimace, of course. As soon as I started swimming, it became abundantly clear that she was going to do the workout she had planned, crowded pool be damned. Grimace frequently veered into the opposite side of the lane to pass either me or the guy, going back and forth with her fins and her dolphin kicks. I was fine with being passed like that so long as the coast was clear on both sides of the lane, but she made a few really close calls. At one point I reached the wall and had turned around to swim back but saw Grimace on my side of the lane trying to pass the guy at the last second instead of holding off and just doing it at the wall. As a result, I had to sit there to avoid a head-on collision and wait for her to pass the guy, swim two strokes, reach the wall, turn around, cut me off, and swim back. Grimace wasn’t about being polite today. Grimace was about Grimace and only Grimace.

Eventually the guy let us know that he only had a couple more laps before he was finished, which was a relief because then Grimace the Type A Swimmer and I could revert to splitting a lane instead of circling. She had since ceased her seemingly never-ending set of fins and dolphin kicks and had been stopping at the wall in between her new sets. I was in the middle of a recovery 100 when I reached the wall and noticed her a few strokes behind me. Figuring that she was going to stop at the wall again, I took off to finish my 100. I had gone a few strokes when I felt a hard tug on my left ankle, which jolted me into stopping and standing up.

My first thought that popped into my mind: “Did this bitch just yank on my ankle?!”

I turned around and Grimace was right behind me. She sneered, “You can’t cut me off like that!”, then swam around me. What the hell? You want to pass me so instead of tapping my foot like a normal, courteous swimmer, you yank my ankle? We weren’t in Thunderdome, for fuck’s sake. Hell, this wasn’t even a race, where one expects to get jostled and man-handled a bit amid the churn and chop and flailing arms and legs. This was a goddamn lap swim at the fucking YMCA. You don’t lay your hands on me unless it’s an accident.

The last time someone maliciously grabbed me at the gym, I punched her in the mouth and she learned not to bother me any more. Granted, that was 16 years ago during middle school P.E. when I had an altercation with a mouthy classmate during a game of basketball, so I figured that my schoolyard tussles were long behind me. On the other hand, I didn’t expect a grown woman to act like a fucking bully during a swim workout, so you never know what kind of immaturity life will throw at you even when you figure you’ve outgrown this bullshit.

I finished my set and met up with Grimace at the wall to exchange some words.

Grimace: “You can’t cut people off like that!”

100% accurate depiction of this woman

Me: “That doesn’t mean you can yank my ankle.”

Seriously, what the fuck. I could have been recovering from an ankle or foot injury or experiencing some tightness or weakness on that side. Why the hell would she tug on a stranger like that other than to be a complete and utter dick? She could have injured me or made an existing injury worse.

Grimace: “You saw me coming and you cut me off.”

Me: “I thought you were stopping at the wall, it was a misunderstanding.”

Grimace, exasperated: “I just can’t believe how some people don’t understand proper pool etiquette.”

Are you fucking kidding me? You’re at the Y, not a master’s swim class. The level of mediocrity in this place is sky high, so don’t act like you’re some elite athlete amongst a sea of mentally challenged dog paddlers. Look around, lady. To your left you’ve got two old people in the slow lane, one treading water with a flotation device around his waists and the other one aquacizing with water weights, and to your right you’ve got a kid in the other medium lane giggling and occasionally swimming a lap while horsing around with her friends. I’m one of three people in this goddamn pool who’s actually doing a swim workout during lap swim, and now you’re telling me I don’t know the rules?

Me: “I know the etiquette. You’re the one who kept cutting into the other side of the lane a while ago to pass him and cut me off.”

Grimace: “That’s because we’re all swimming at different speeds!”

Throughout our argument she kept bringing up how much faster she was than me and the other guy, as if I was supposed to humbly bow down to this lightning quick she-dolphin who was swimming with zoomers and let her do whatever she wanted while basking in her mighty Poseidon wake. If she didn’t want to bother swimming with us “slow” peons, she should have taken her bright purple ass to the fast lane.

Despite my increasingly overwhelming urge to deck this woman in her intolerable fucking face, I kept my rage at a simmer and tried to keep the discourse at a reasonable tone.

Me: “I know that, but when the pool is this crowded we have to make some compromises. I’m trying to do a speed workout too, but I’ve had to wait at the wall to give space to you guys, adding a few seconds here and there.”

Grimace, accusatory: “You saw me coming and you took off. You can’t do that.”

Me, sighing: “I thought you were stopping! I didn’t do it on purpose.”

I felt like I was talking to a broken record here.

Grimace: “You have to wait if you see someone coming. You have to let me pass.”

Rage. Rising.

Me: “And you can’t just yank on someone’s ankle because that’s incredibly rude.”

Grimace: “Well, you cut me off.”

At this point I was approaching The Room levels of anger.

"You're tearing me APAHHHHHHHT, lap swim!"

I weighed my options:

1. Let it go, be the adult in this situation, and finish my workout, making it back to my house in time for a conference call scheduled for later in the afternoon.
2. Cuss her out, further drawing out the altercation, which would in turn lengthen my workout time and cause me to miss my conference call.
3. Unleash the kraken and go Detroit on her ass, ultimately using my one free phone call to get in touch with Jas so he can bail me out of jail.
4. Drown her. Just fucking drown her. The world would be a better place.

Knowing I had a limited amount of time to finish my workout and opting for the sensible, mature human being route, I sighed, gritted my teeth, and said, “Look, let’s just split the lane and finish our workouts. You stay on your side and I’ll stay on mine.”

Grimace: “Fine…[under her breath] I just can’t believe how some people don’t know proper pool etiquette.”

BITCH YOU DON’T KNOW PROPER POOL ETIQUETTE I WILL FUCKING RUIN YOU I WILL DESTROY YOUR GODDAMN FACE WITH MY FISTS I WILL RELISH IN THE WET CRUNCH OF YOUR NOSE BREAKING WHEN I SMASH MY KNUCKLES INTO IT I WILL WEAR YOUR EARS AS A NECKLACE I WILL MAKE A WIND CHIME WITH YOUR TEETH YOU INCONSIDERATE, TERRIBLE HUMAN BEING

I'm starting to relate to Patrick Bateman

I resumed my swim. The upside to the altercation was that I handily hit all of my fast effort swim times, having been fueled by intense hatred. If only this had happened before the start of Ironman Canada–I’d have PR’d like a mofo.

Grimace eventually finished her workout and left the pool, leaving me with 400 yards of bitch-free bliss. As much as I’d have loved to continue our sparring session in the locker room, I didn’t run into her; besides, I had a conference call to get to.

So to the rude asshole at lap swim today: I may be slow, and I may not know how to flip turn without partially drowning, and I may not be able to backstroke without zigzagging all over the place, and I may loathe swimming three out of four times I do it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know the basic tenets of swim etiquette. If you want to pass me, pass me. I don’t give a shit, my feelings aren’t gonna get hurt, it’s nothing I haven’t experienced countless times at countless workouts and races.

But how about you act like a decent fucking human being about it and tap me instead of yanking on my ankle like I’m some dumb dog on a leash? I know your type: you’re someone who expects the world to bend over backwards for you and accommodate your self-entitled, bratty ways. Everyone owes you a favor and you give nothing in return. You’re a shitty tipper, you never hold the door open for people, you’re condescending, you complain about everything, and nothing is ever your fault. These are the traits of an asshole, and you firmly belong in that classification of people. You, Grimace, are an asshole, and you can go fuck yourself.

Also, keep in mind that not everyone would have been as level-headed about what you did as I was, so consider yourself lucky that I tried to stay mature about the situation. That being said, if I run into you at the pool again, the next time you touch me it better be from accidental contact, because if it isn’t you will most definitely regret it. I already redeemed my “act like a grown up” card so next time I won’t be so nice. And this isn’t Internet tough guy posturing–if you lay another hand on me in a malicious manner, I will engage in self-defense, and I’ll make sure it fucking hurts.

Lastly, regarding whichever poor sap has the misfortune of being married to or is otherwise dating you (whom I’m hoping doesn’t exist, because nobody deserves that kind of torture), I’m guessing he gets the worst handjobs because I’ve felt how aggressively you tug and I’m guessing you’re a real shaft chafer. Maybe that’s why you’re such a fucking bitch–ease up on the grip and he’ll be happy, which will make you happy, which will result in less cunty behavior at the pool. Just a suggestion.