2008: Is That Soggy Meat?!

2008 was my first year training for triathlons. I sucked it up royally in my first triathlon, the Issaquah sprint, and also did pretty sucktacular that year at the New Balance Victoria half Ironman (I should put up belated race reports for those two — maybe I’ll do a “throwback week” on Mediocre Athlete and publish old race recaps). Seafair was the first time I thought, “Hey, I’m not so completely horrendously awful at this!” I did get a flat before the race when I inadvertently bent my valve when pumping up one of my tires. After freaking out, I managed to change the tube before the race started.

Swim Recap
I remember looking at the swim portion and thinking that the buoys were so far away from the shore. Even though I had completed a half Ironman-distance triathlon, swimming still felt pretty daunting to me (oh hell, it still does). The athletes all got in the water and the race organizer started to explain for the 17th time that we were going to swim counter-clockwise and keep the buoys to our left. While he droned on, I looked down and saw a piece of styrofoam floating face-down in the water. I picked it up to chuck it away from where the racers were standing, only to discover that the piece of styrofoam was actually the bottom of a meat package that had been soaking in the lake for God knows how long and had turned soggy and gray. I started hollering in typical “Ew ew ew this is so gross what the shit I just touched soggy lake pork” fashion, and some bitchface turned to me and said, “Could you please keep it down? I can’t hear the instructions.” Really? You’re too dumb to understand “counter-clockwise” that’s been repeated ad nauseam? I should have chucked the meat at her stupid swimcapped face.

It’s what’s for dinner (unless it’s been marinating in lake water for a few weeks)

When my wave took off, I kept a steady swim pace and felt like I survived the swim with minimal freaking out. (And indeed, it ended up being my best swim of the season.)

Bike Recap
Two years ago I was still riding on my coworker’s blue Giant bike, so it was a little ghetto but still probably a middle-of-the-pack bike among the other Seafair participants. I had clip-on aero bars and was finally starting to get more comfortable hunching down into aero. At one point I almost ate pavement when I leaned down to get my water bottle and ended up swerving like a spaz, but thankfully I managed to keep it together and pull off a decent bike time.

Run Recap
The run is a short 3.1 mile loop around Seward Park. At one point you have to run up this shitty hill and then turn around and run back down it to the finish. We had practiced on the run course a few times before the race, and I remember thinking how horrible the hill was. I could barely get up it during our practice runs — I was huffing and puffing like James Gandolfini doing step aerobics. On race day I was able to plod up the hill without stopping or dying. I paused at the top to grab some water at the aid station, but other than that I stayed fairly steady.

2008 Results
Swim time: 17:56 (2:14/100 meters)
T1: 2:17
Bike time: 39:28 (18.2 mph)
T2: 1:52
Run time: 26:13 (8:27 min/mile pace)
Total time: 1:27:47
Total place: 583 / 1408
Division place: 19 /72

Overall, I felt pretty good about my times. My swim was slow and shitty, as it always is, but my bike was solid considering it was my first triathlon season, and the run was pretty consistent.

2009: I Hate This

Last year, I signed up for Seafair once again and expected to PR since I had another season of training under my belt. Since 2008’s race I had done two more half Ironman races and was in better shape. We got to the race and were able to bypass the ridiculously long body marking line when a friend of ours spotted us and gave us a sharpie so we could DIY mark ourselves. Huzzah!

Swim Recap
When I started my swim, I felt like I was going so fast and swimming so hard. “Man, my swim time is gonna be soooooo good!”, I kept thinking. When I finally dragged myself out of the water, I looked at my watch and was like, “WTF, I was only 30 seconds faster than last year.” What a disappointment. To make matters worse, I felt pretty out of it as I wobbled over to my transition area. I couldn’t get my wetsuit off and felt kind of dizzy/faint. This was not a good feeling, especially when it’s such a short distance race.

Bike Recap
I took off on my bike (my new fancy Cervelo time trial this time around!) and felt miserable and uncomfortable the entire 12-mile stretch. In the beginning I thought I was going to choke on the obscene quantities of snot and phlegm I had somehow managed to accumulate during the 800 meter swim. Thankfully, I managed to clear my airways of the grossness and kept pedaling. I remember feeling as bad during these 12 miles as I’ve felt during half Ironman distances. I don’t know what the deal was, but I couldn’t get comfortable. I actually considered quitting because I felt so crappy, but then I remembered I’m ridiculously stubborn and don’t quit races, so I trudged on.

Accurate analogy of me when the thought of quitting crosses my mind. Stubborn Goat Becca is stubborn!

Run Recap
When I finally got off my bike and hurled it towards my transition area, I was so tired and irritated that I just wanted to curl up with something horrible and fried and drown my sorrows in food and naps. Unfortunately, I had a run to finish. I took off and continued to feel like shit, breathing hard and willing myself not to pass out or puke. I know you’re supposed to push yourself and feel miserably anaerobic during short distance races, but I was feeling especially shit-tay. Thankfully, I was able to plod along and finish.

2009 Results
Swim time: 17:27 (2:10/100 meters)
T1: 2:32
Bike time: 37:21 (19.3 mph)
T2: 1:32
Run time: 25:01 (8:04 min/mile pace)
Total time: 1:23:54
Total place: 559 / 1460
Division place: 22 /124

I was really surprised to see that I biked better this year than last year — I had felt so shitty during the bike portion that I thought for sure I was going slower. The run was kind of funny because I had actually run three seconds faster than a standalone 5k I did a couple weeks prior to Seafair — maybe I run better coming off a bike. I was so close to running a sub-25 minute 5k; I should have dived across the finish line and done a barrel roll. Oh well. I still PR’d, so I was happy and forgave Seafair for making me feel so miserable that day.

2010: Yeah Baby

This year I didn’t have very high expectations for how I’d do. I wanted to race a sub-1:20, but it was a lofty goal and I had been training all year for endurance races, not sprint distances, so I wasn’t sure how fast I’d be or how strong I’d feel. Plus, I was coming off a disappointing Boise race and a couple of craptacular rides in a row, so I was feeling very “meh” about the whole thing. I did a brick workout (a swim, bike, and run) the day before the race and felt pretty stiff throughout most of it, which did wonders for the psyche going into a sprint race.

Swim Recap
I gathered near the swim start with some teammates and waited for my wave to start. As with previous years, I was able to watch the “elite” wave start and finish their swim well before my wave started. I saw Teresa exit the water like a champ and dorkily cheered her on before I got in the water and peed in my surroundings all jerk-like (you may be faster than me, fellow age groupers, but have fun swimming through my urine! Suckers!).

When the gun went off, I just went a steady pace. My neck was a bit aggravated due to a chafe mark from a long swim I had done a couple days prior to the race, but I was able to mostly ignore it since the distance was so short. I felt pretty solid during my swim and was able to pass some stragglers from the wave before me. My goal was to finish the swim in under 17 minutes, and when I got out of the water and checked my watch, I was happy to see I succeeded.

Bike Recap
After I emerged from the water, I waddled over to transition and had some difficulty taking my wetsuit off. My new suit has padding that goes so far down the leg that I can’t cut the cuff at all, so the material is much tighter down by the ankles and can be a pain in the ass to yank off quickly. As with last year, in my mind I felt like I was taking forever trying to get the wetsuit off. I finally wrestled free from it, shoved my shoes on my feet, helmeted and sunglassed up, grabbed my bike, and took off. During my graceful exit out of transition, I inadvertently kicked the weird running toe shoe of the dude who was set up next to me and sent that sucker flying. I felt bad, but not bad enough to stop and retrieve it.

I had a strong ride and only needed to hoark up one post-swim loogie (hooray!). When I neared the little hill climb up to I-90, I saw an arrow that signaled we were to stay on the road to the right, yet I saw a bunch of cyclists taking the road to the left. Both streets take you to the bridge and I had raced the course enough times to know that the path to the right was the correct way, but somehow I just went into auto-pilot and followed the other cyclists onto the technically wrong street. I think a volunteer yelled at me, but it’s about the same distance so no harm, no foul.

My bike portion was going well, and I was able to pass a lot of people. I only got passed by one dude who was decked out in an aero helmet and looked like Elitey von ProRacer, so I wasn’t too bummed out. When I turned around on I-90, I felt a cross wind pick up but it felt pretty cute compared to the bullshit I had to endure at Boise, so it wasn’t a huge deterrent.

I got log-jammed going down the little hill to get off the bridge, and from there I got stuck behind some douchetard who was riding in the middle of the lane with his ass crack hanging out of his shorts. I kept trying to go around him, but I don’t know if he kept swerving or if I was just grossly distracted by his hairy, un-manscaped arsehole, but I was unsuccessful. Eventually I got really frustrated and just shouted out, “On your left, MAN!”, and he finally swerved over to let me pass.

Why does my back look like an alien is about to burst out of it? Aero is not an attractive/photogenic pose.

Eventually I rolled into T2 thinking I had biked well. I wasn’t sure what my time was since I thought I borked up my watch, but I felt pretty good. On the way in, I saw Teresa (who had already finished the race and ended up taking 2nd — story of my life, she races so fast that she has time to finish her race and probably shower and hit up a breakfast buffet before I’m even back from the bike) and my teammate Brent (who wasn’t racing that day) cheering me on. She exclaimed that I was doing GREAT in her unique Teresa way, and it made me smile and pumped me up for the run.

Run Recap
T2 felt pretty fast and smooth thanks to the racing Zoots I planned to run in — those suckers are nice and easy to slip on quickly. I puttered out of transition and started running at a good pace — it was fast enough for me to feel like I was pushing it, but not so hard that I felt like yakking and burning out. Some freakish 14-year old girl who I blew by on the bike returned the favor and owned me on the run, but aside from a few dudes who zoomed by me, I was surprised to find that I wasn’t getting passed by too many people. I guess my run has gotten better.

I got to the hill and climbed it pretty steadily, passing a number of people who were tired and walking up it. All of those runs around Capitol Hill have conditioned me to be a somewhat better hill climber, so my 2010 run up the little incline felt much less pathetic than the 2008 attempt. I got to the turnaround spot and ended up getting passed by a girl in my age group. Frick! I sprinted down the hill hard to try and catch her, but by this point I was starting to get a bit of a side cramp. Boo, hiss. Fine, go ahead and beat me. (I ran into her later and told her I unsuccessfully chased her on the run, and she laughed and said she had done the same to me on the bike, which made me feel better knowing I passed her on the bike portion and she couldn’t keep up.)

When I reached the final stretch, I heard my teammates who had already finished cheering me on, and I saw Jason giving me the “I’m proud of you but don’t want to display too much emotion so I’ll just nod stoically in your direction” look of approval. I turned on the burners and crossed the finish line.

Blurry photo of me nearing the finish. I don’t know why my left arm is all Gumby bent.

2010 Results
Swim time: 16:54 (2:06/100 meters)
T1: 1:55
Bike time: 35:23 (20.3 mph)
T2: 1:11
Run time: 23:31 (7:35 min/mile pace)
Total time: 1:18:54
Total place: 213 / 1104
Division place: 7 / 85

I wasn’t sure what my finish time was when I crossed because I messed up my watch splits, so when I checked later I was pretty surprised by my performance. I thought it was going to be difficult to break 1:20 this year, but I was able to do it and improve across the board over last year. I was happy with the swim but kind of hoped I’d be low to mid-16s (although Teresa swears that the swim course was a bit longer than 800 meters due to the elites’ slower than expected swim times). Maybe next year I can finally do a sub-2:00 / 100 meters.

My bike time made me quite happy — I was 1 mph faster than last year’s time, which was a huge confidence booster after all of the shit rides I’d had lately. The run was huge for me. I’ve been trying to run a sub-25 minute 5k and was able to smash it. (Technically I ran a sub-25 minute pace at the Mt. Rainier duathlon, but that was for 3.7 miles and part of me still doubted I could run that fast for 3.1. I know, it makes no sense. I’m just not used to how well I’ve been running lately.)

Overall I was really stoked with my time and my age group placement. Jason also took 7th in his age group and raced a 1:12. I honestly think next year he could place in his age group or maybe even win if he pushes it hard since the times that beat him were all so close together (less than a minute, I think). I, on the other hand, would have to shave quite a bit of time off to place but hey, you never know what could happen.

We celebrated our good day by eating an irresponsible amount of dim sum and taking a glorious nap. It was the third year in a row where I really enjoyed racing the sprint distance and had a lot of fun both competing and cheering on my teammates. I’d like to do it again next year but am considering doing the Vineman 70.3, which usually falls on the same weekend. I kind of hope I’ll be around to do Seafair since it’s such a fun race and it’s always been a good luck charm for me. :)

Rollin’ in Wenatchee

We started riding along Highway 97 and experienced the bittersweetness of a newly paved road. The upside was that the road was nice and smooth, but the downsides were that the tar was hot and toxic-smelling, and the shoulder had a ton of gravel and debris from the paving. We rode amidst the pebbles and chemical fumes, dodging the occasional snake carcass. (Seriously, I swerved around about a half dozen coiled up serpent corpses. What is the deal, do they all decide to slither to the side of the road when nearing their life cycle so they can curl up and die?) After a ludicrously short amount of time, Jason had to stop because of a flat tire, so I waited on the side of the road, baking in the sun while he and his dad changed the flat.

Jason pretends to know what he’s doing while his dad does the actual tire changing

They blew through a couple cartridges but couldn’t quite get the tire fully inflated, so we rode a short while until we got to a little store, at which point we stopped and asked some fellow cyclists if they had a pump. They only had a craptacular hand pump that barely worked, so Jason and Jim used another cartridge to fill up the tire even more. I killed time by buying a jug of water and ingesting most of it. It was the highlight of my workout.

After squandering more time on the flat, we finally got to the mighty McNeil Canyon climb. This sumbitch is a nightmare — it’s a several mile-long hill up the canyon that offers zero shade or any sort of breeze. It just keeps winding forever and ever, and you never get a reprieve — no small descents, no flat stretches, nothing until you get to the top. I climbed McNeil a couple months ago with Teresa and some girls during her bachelorette weekend, and it took me an hour to ascend it. I had to stop multiple times during the climb to let the lactic acid dissipate from my burning quads. I’ve heard McNeil has a reputation among seasoned cyclists as being the worst climb in Washington.

My ultimate goal is to conquer this thing without having to stop, but unfortunately that didn’t happen this time around. I started climbing and immediately felt the heat — it was so stifling and intense that I had to stop after a short while and rip off my helmet so I could get some semblance of air to reach my fat noggin. I repeated this process a few more times, but the heat just sucked the energy out of my legs and I didn’t want to have nothing left by the time I got to the top since we were going to have to ride another 20 or so miles before we got to a store for more fuel and water. I threw in the towel, having only climbed up half of McNeil, and told Jason and Jim that I’d wait for them at the park at the bottom of the canyon. They soldiered on slowly, intent on conquering McNeil since they hadn’t climbed it before.

I got to the bottom of the canyon and rolled into the park. All of my water bottles were full of hot, unappetizing liquid, and all I wanted was something cold to drink. Unfortunately, the drinking fountain next to the bathrooms had such pathetic water pressure that I was going to have to tongue kiss it in order to successfully ingest anything (most likely herpes), and I wasn’t quite that desperate. Another drinking fountain near the courts was shut off, and a third spigot was broken. What the hell, it’s the middle of summer and 100 degrees outside and none of this shit works. *shakes fist*

Frustrated, I gave up, parked my bike under a tree, and waded into the river clutching my water bottles in hopes of cooling them down a bit. I sat in my makeshift refrigerator for a long while before returning to the park and sitting at a picnic table in some shade. I considered riding out and back along 97 while waiting for Jason and Jim to return from climbing McNeil, but I was paranoid about missing them and figured it’d be best to just sit tight. “Sit tight” quickly translated to falling asleep. Oops.

After my little cat nap, I woke up feeling even more dehydrated and had now thrown groggy into the mix. Great. Where the hell were they? Finally I saw them descend down the canyon. When they got to me, I heard the standard grumblings about how effing miserable that climb is and how hot and tired they were. We sat in the river for a while to cool off, then rode back to the store, which was quickly becoming our desert oasis.

Jason’s dad cooling off much like how a dog would

Jason hydrating like a champ

At this point the heat was really starting to psych me out. It was going to be similarly hot in Penticton for Ironman Canada, and I was worried about not being able to handle it. I texted Teresa in a panic:

“Riding in Wenatchee and having a crisis about riding in the heat. Giving me doubts about Canada.”

She responded with this gem:

“Dump water over head!”

I countered with “My water’s too hot!” It doesn’t really feel refreshing to dump liquid over your head when it’s the same temperature as your pee.

We finally managed to tear ourselves away from the cool refuge of the store and continued along 97 back to the car. Jason and his dad both started to cramp from the heat, and by the time we finished, neither Jason nor I were in the mood to do a 30 minute brick run in 100 degree temps. We opted instead to drown our sorrows in an obscene amount of barbecue and iced tea.

Wenatchee is a fiery mistress, and riding along 97 and climbing up that bitch canyon is great training for Canada, but it was so hot that I was really worried about how I’d be able to handle the heat on race day. Thankfully, we had a training weekend coming up in Penticton, so I’d be able to experience first-hand how conditions would feel…

She often was in the water for eight to 12 hours daily, resting one day per week.

Swimming 8-12 hours a day?! Eff that ess. I’d flail around for an hour, say “Screw this,” and drag my sodden ass out of the river to go get some frozen custard. (Speaking of which, the swimmer celebrated the completion of her journey with ice cream and a beer, which I wholeheartedly endorse, but also with a veggie burger. Really, a veggie burger? Swimming 981 miles should require you to celebrate with at least a couple tons of animal flesh, even if you are a vegetarian.)

I can only imagine that Ms. Hughes emerged from her 12 hours a day, 2 month-long swim looking something like this:

It’s a prune, in case my ghetto Photoshop skills aren’t clear

She did swim in the Ohio River, so I’m guessing she had to dodge quite a bit of discarded LeBron James merchandise. As much as I hate all things Ohio, at least she didn’t attempt her feat in the Detroit River. If she did, she’d likely have emerged depressed, gunshot, and looking for a bailout.

via reddit, where I get my daily Internet fix

If I saw dudes dressed like this cheering me on at races, I would race all the freaking time.

“Welcome…to Jurassic Park!”

I snapped a picture of Jason as he tried not to look like he was drenched in sweat:

I made him take a picture of me before we ventured on:

It’s not a fanny pack, I swear

After a little bit, we stopped so I could do the requisite “self-portrait attempt” with my long monkey arms. 10 times out of 10 this results in me cutting off the top of Jason’s head in the photo (stupid 11″ height differential). Here’s attempt #3:

He gave up and crouched down to my height

We ran a bit further and came across a little foot bridge that took us over a tiny stream trickle and some rocks:

The roaring waterfall

Foot bridge over the mighty rapids

Since it was so hot outside, I splashed some of the cold water on my arms and neck. When I turned around, I saw a little butterfly. “OMG, NATURE! MUST TAKE PICTURE!”

Jason patiently waited for his dorky girlfriend. When I was ready to leave, he jokingly said, “Don’t slip and get swept away by the strong current.” I was like, “Hurr durr, I won’t,” and then promptly slipped on the rocks, fell on my ass, and slid a few feet down towards the foot bridge. It was so ridiculously inept that I couldn’t help but laugh:

Then: “Wait a sec, I didn’t sit on the butterfly, did I?”

Thankfully, I did not have a squished butterfly corpse smeared across my ass. After laughing heartily at me for a few minutes, Jason helped me up, cleaned me off, and we finished our trail run.

From that trail head we drove over to the Garden of the Gods, a park that has a bunch of cool rock formations and a bunch of intersecting trails. We got a map at the gift shop and decided to do a 4 mile loop. While running, we came across a couple who offered to take a picture of us in front of some rocks. It turned out pretty ridiculous:

We so tiny!

We had to dodge a ton of horse crap on the trails because a bunch of dooshers were riding horses and couldn’t be bothered to clean up the giant dung piles their animals left behind. Running amidst steaming horse shit on a hot, sunny day aren’t my ideal hiking conditions, but to each his own.

Jas and I tried to head back to the car to complete our 4 mile loop, but since all of the trains intersect and run into each other like one huge clustermuck, we ended up on the wrong trail and went in the opposite direction. This happened roughly 4 or 5 times, and we both got crabbier and crabbier. My stomach started to get upset due to lack of calories combined with the elevation and heat. At one point we came across a deer and I considered mauling and eating it for sustenance, but since we had only been wandering around for a couple hours, I figured I should wait a bit longer before resorting to drastic measures.

You lucked out, deer. Next time it’s venison for you!

We kept getting turned around and had to double back multiple times. I was sweaty, stinky, and tired, and I wanted this stupid trail run to be over. (Jason later told me that I had “murder” in my eyes. He knows me well.) Finally we gave up trying to make sense of the 50 random trail paths and hiked up to the road, and we ran along it until we were able to get our bearings and figure out which parking lot we needed to head towards. Our 4 mile run turned into about a 9 mile nightmare, and we ended up running probably about 15 miles total. I convinced myself that it was good training for Canada.

Jas and I got back to the hotel, cleaned ourselves off, and drowned our “we suck at hiking” sorrows in various fried foods at a nearby New Orleans-style seafood restaurant. Nothing like immediately replenishing the calories you burned plus an extra thousand! The hike went as expected for us: it started out fun but got mucho sucky towards the end, but we were still glad we did it and can laugh about it now. (Come to think of it, that’s usually how races go, too.)

We got to Chehalis and found two stores that were open: Wal-Mart and K-Mart. Faced with the worst Choose Your Own Adventure path imaginable, I opted for K-Mart since it rang of nostalgia instead of evil corporate greed. We pulled up and initially thought the store wasn’t open yet due to the vacant, post-apocalyptic parking lot, but once we let the tumbleweeds roll by, we checked the store signage and found that K-Mart was indeed open for business.

I headed into the store and stopped first for a bathroom break, where I got to enjoy listening to the morning cleaning lady argue with someone in Spanish while sitting in the stall next to me. Afterwards, I marveled at the “Layaway Pick Up” sign (how 80’s!) and wandered the aisles looking for any of the three items I needed to purchase. I couldn’t find anything except for nine variations of “World’s Greatest Dad” t-shirts, so we asked the cashier for help. I found out that they didn’t have any of the items I was looking for — I could maybe understand not having gloves, but a store that doesn’t carry jackets or electrical tape? No wonder they’re going out of business.

Frustrated, I begrudgingly resorted to stopping at Wal-Mart to procure my items. I found a black $7 windbreaker that looked like a Hefty bag and had “Chinese child labor” written all over it. After nabbing electrical tape and some cycling gloves, we were finally able to exit this middle American wasteland and continue on to Mt. St. Helens.

We arrived at the school where the organized ride started and picked up our registration packet. After meeting up with some teammates who were also doing the ride, we all embarked along the road that would lead us to the top of the mountain. It was cold and rainy — my sunglasses fogged up almost immediately, and riding too closely behind Jason resulted in an immediate spray of muddy water all over me. Fantastic.

The climbs weren’t bad at all — gradual and long, but I must be getting better at climbing hills because the stubby Asian legs were doing pretty decent that day. Climbing also kept me warm; unfortunately, when we stopped at the first aid station and I stopped working, I got pretty cold relatively quickly. We attempted to shake off the cold and damp and trudged on to aid station #2.

When we stopped at the second aid station, one of the race organizers discouraged us from going the final 13 miles to the summit, in typical Gandalf fashion. Apparently temperatures were continuing to drop, and the top was especially cold with a mix of rain and snow. Several cyclists were getting hypothermia and had to be shuttled down, and they were running out of shuttle rides.

While we all debated on what to do, the waiting around meant I started to get colder and colder. I scanned the aid station and saw a huge group of cyclists grouped together and wondered what they were doing before realizing they were all huddled three athletes deep around a huge fire pit, trying to warm up. They looked like spandex-clad hobos minus the woeful harmonica music. (One cyclist later told me the huddled masses reminded her of the scene from March of the Penguins where the animals huddled together with their eggs at their feet — also an apt visual.)

Jason and his dad macho-ly wanted to continue to the top, but I’ve seen Alive and I know how much those two can eat, so I didn’t want to get stranded up there and have to fend off two ravenous Panamanians who felt like partaking in some Korean BBQ. We compromised and decided to head back down the mountain and make up the lost mileage by climbing back up a ways.

As soon as we began our descent, my brain screamed, “I immediately regret this decision!” My shoes and gloves were soaking wet from the rain, so my hands and feet instantly froze as I shot down the mountain. My faith in my motor skills declined sharply as my hands grew stiffer and stiffer, so I rode the brakes with three functioning fingers as I wobbled downhill, fending off shivers. I saw Jason and his dad waiting for me in front of the Mt. St. Helens Forest Center and stopped to meet them, shaking like a scared little bunny.

We headed inside to warm up and figure out what to do. I scanned the lobby of the Forest Center and saw about a dozen cyclists looking like soggy and miserable refugees. Some were given blankets, while others were so desperate for warm clothes that they shelled out money in the gift shop for commemorative Mt. St. Helens fleece pullovers (which I hope were adorned with the exclamation “I had a BLAST at the Mt. St. Helens Forest Center!”).

The three of us were ushered into a back display area and plopped next to a radiator. One of the employees handed me a cup of coffee, but I immediately had to put it down because I was shivering so hard, the cup’s contents were threatening to splash all over the place. To keep me occupied, another employee showed me pictures of Mt. St. Helen’s path of destruction way back in 1980.

Jason and his dad opted to continue down the mountain back to the school where we started, but I was too cold to be able to descend all the way down so I elected to wait with the other wet and freezing cyclists and hope for rescue. I took brief refuge in the ladies’ restroom and virtually molested the hand dryer for about 20 minutes in a sad attempt to dry my gloves and clothes.

After a while, it felt like I was waiting with a group of people plucked straight out of The Grapes of Wrath. I heard them pine for warmth and sun as if they were dreaming of a new life out west:

Cyclist #1: “I hear they’ve got warm showers back at the school!”
Cyclist #2: “And pipin’ hot beverages and pasta!”
Cyclist #3: “I tell ya, things will be great once we get to the bottom of this here mountain.”

Meanwhile, a couple of cyclists and I conspired to pool our money together to try and bribe some Forest Center tourists to give us a lift back to the school.

Lady: “I have fifteen dollars.”
Me: “I’ve got one dollar.”
Lady: “We have sixteen dollars!”

As we were plotting to commandeer a tour bus in an epic Lord of the Flies-like fashion, out of nowhere the Montana Boys Choir sauntered into the lobby and decided to randomly belt out two religious songs in front of an audience composed of smiling, awestruck Forest Center employees and scowling, shivering cyclists.

Eventually, a school bus pulled up and we click-clacked onto the bus while wielding our cumbersome bikes and our drenched gear. I managed to get two compliments on my Cervelo P2, which ended up being the highlight of my day. We all couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of a bus full of cyclists with their bikes sticking straight up in the air, balanced on one tire.

We finally got back to the school and I changed into a dry pair of clothes. My 82 mile training ride turned into 32 miles of shivering failure. I drowned my sorrows in a gigantic hot chocolate and about half a pizza, wondering when I’d be able to finally get in a decent bike ride. Sigh.

Traveling to the Race
As per usual, Jas and I loaded an obscene amount of gear and fuel into the Subaru and trekked across I-90 at a glacier pace thanks to various construction areas and generally crappy traffic. We stopped in Yakima (the self-proclaimed “Palm Springs of Eastern Washington,” which means that either Palm Springs is a total dump or the entire town of Yakima is severely delusional) for lunch, and when I checked my email I noticed a message from someone who reads the Mediocre Athlete blog and had signed up to race Boise this year. Hooray, another fan! Pretty soon I’ll be autographing people’s gu packets and reading celebrity gossip about myself (“Rebecca Kelley Caught Skipping Workouts, Pigs Out Instead”).

We continued on for a while before stopping to get gas. When I got out of the car, I was nearly blown over by strong gusts of wind. It was at this point where I thought, “Hey, this sucks…I hope this wind dies down before the race.” [Insert ominous foreshadowing here]

Pre-Race Preparations
We rolled into town and checked into our hotel. The next day we stopped at a bike shop so Jason could get his front brake wire replaced (he noticed it was out of commission during our drive over and had a momentary freakout until we got it fixed), then headed over to the Expo Hall to pick up our packets. We got ushered from section to section until I got corralled over to a volunteer to confirm medical details. When I looked at the printout of my information, I started laughing. A couple months ago, when I had signed up for the race through Active.com, I quickly grew irritated by the incessant onslaught of required questions I had to answer before submitting my race entry. As a result, I filled out some silly and stupid answers that I had forgotten about until I was asked to review my race information:

I like how my jokey answer is juxtaposed with the serious response to the “medical allergies” question. The best part is that the volunteer who reviewed my sign up sheet didn’t even notice.

Finally I got ushered over to pick up my race packet and was given my participant’s t-shirt. The upside was that this year we got an actual performance shirt, whereas last year we were simply given a cotton tee. Unfortunately, the race organizers must have ordered this year’s shirts in child sizes. My size small shirt would have comfortably fit a ten-year old but looked decidedly less flattering on someone with my adult stature.

A bit tight for my taste (notice the full-on cling in the jelly roll midsection area)

My “fat guy in a little coat” impression

After we picked up our stuff, we headed to T1 to drop off our bikes and to meet our teammates for a swim. Race officials wouldn’t let us swim in the reservoir, so we resorted to practicing in the park area below the race start. It was cold, but I rocked the thermal cap and was able to get in a decent pre-race swim.

Yes, I’m the only one with my eyes closed. Go figure.

After meeting with the group, we headed back to the hotel, grabbed dinner, and prepped for the big race by organizing everything we were going to need.

Sugary goodness for the race

Race Day
I got a good night’s sleep and felt pretty confident about the race. We grabbed breakfast and I was able to eat more than I did last year. I had some stomach issues but didn’t hoark up any foamy vomit, so that’s an improvement over last year. We headed over to T2 and set up our run gear, then hopped on a bus to get shuttled over to T1, having learned from last year that it’s better to take the shuttle bus (even though they shamelessly charge athletes $8 to ride it) instead of relying on Jason’s dad to try and navigate through multiple closed streets and drop us off at the race start seven minutes before transition closes, as we had done last year.

We arrived at the race start with plenty of time to spare, so we set up our transition area and hung around in what little shade we could find. It was a warm, sunny day with a slight wind (notice how I say “slight” at this point since it’s only 11 am and the race doesn’t start until 2).

Seeking refuge in the shade of a giant truck. (Don’t ask me why one of my pant legs is rolled up — I’m guessing it’s a pathetic gang sign or I was just being dumb)

My bike at T1. I managed to score a sweet end spot on the rack.

This year we had to put up with a “clean” transition, meaning we weren’t allowed to have anything laid out of our assigned transition bags. This was a considerable change from last year, where we were allowed to lay out our shoes and other items and just had to make sure that we didn’t leave anything out before taking off from T1. The modification meant that athletes were going to have to dig in their bags for their shoes, helmet, and glasses, and would then have to shove all of their swim gear inside before leaving. It was going to slow people down a little bit for sure.

Another big change was a new USAT rule stating that you couldn’t have your bike shoes already clipped into your cleats at transition — now you have to run out of transition already wearing your cycling shoes. One of the athletes racked near me complained to several volunteers and anyone else with ears standing near her about this rule change. I later checked her finish time and saw that she took first in our age group, so clearly it didn’t slow her down that much.

It’s Go Time
As with last year, I was in one of the later waves. The race started at 2:00 but I wasn’t scheduled to go until 2:30ish, and Jason was once again in the last wave at 2:45. I stood around baking in my wetsuit, my feet burning on the hot pavement, watching wave after wave take off and start the race. As I waited, the wind started to get stronger and stronger. Much like last year, I had the distinct pleasure of watching helplessly as the weather slowly but surely turned to shit, only this year it wasn’t a rain and hailstorm and frigid temperatures that we athletes would have to endure, but 20+ mph wind gusts. Joy!

Swim Summary
By the time my wave got into the water, I was so hot from waiting around in a neoprene sausage casing that the cold water felt pretty good. We started swimming and I felt pretty strong swimming to the first turn buoy. My group was pretty rough, but I followed the advice of my teammate Connie and fought back whenever I got bumped or kicked (some douchette who was kicking like an epileptic frog nailed me in the ribs at one point, but I shook it off and swam over her).

When I got to the first turn, the water got considerably choppy and it became harder to navigate in a straight line. I was blown off course from the wind and the chop and didn’t take the straightest route to the final turn. I eventually rounded the bend and swam to shore at a decent pace before emerging to finally peek at my watch and see how I fared.

Goal time: Anything that started with a “4″
Actual time: 47 minutes. I was pretty stoked by my time. Loyal readers (all four of you!) know that I’m a craptacular swimmer. In three years of triathlons I hadn’t broken 50 minutes in a half Ironman swim until now — my previous best was 52 minutes for 1.18 miles at Victoria, and last year’s Boise swim was 57 minutes thanks to the stupid storm. I think I could have swam a 43 or a 44, but since the wind churned the water a bit and threw me off course, I was a bit slower than I think I could have gone. Regardless, it felt damn good to finally escape the 50’s. I’m still a painfully slow swimmer, but I’m happy to have graduated from “tragic” to truly “mediocre.” Huzzah!

T1
I tried out the wetsuit strippers for the first time in a race, figuring I’d give them a test run before Ironman Canada. It felt weird to run up to someone and lay down at his feet expecting to be disrobed, but the process was relatively quick and painless. T1 felt slow due to the “closed” transition rule. Last year I blew through T1 in 2:34, but this year I had to rummage through my bag and dig out all of the random crap I’d need for the ride, so that slowed me down a bit.

Goal time: Mid-2’s
Actual time: 3:07. Oh well.

Bike Summary
I’ve been putting in more bike time this year to prep for Canada, so I was prepared to bust out a much-improved time over last year. Unfortunately, the wind blew a major wrench into my plans. As soon as I started riding, I could feel the gusts man-handling me all over the road. The worst thing is that the bulk of the ride was spent battling a side wind — I could have probably dealt with a head wind since it would have been frustrating but safer. The side wind, on the other hand, was absolutely brutal.

Within ten minutes of the ride, my left hip flexor cramped up and I had to stand up to stretch it out. By mile 30 the top of my hamstrings and my butt were aching and screaming for mercy. My forearms were getting sore from the constant death-gripping of my handlebars whenever a gust blew me four feet to the left. The wind never relented — we got a tail wind for probably about five minutes of the race, but that was about it. Even the descents were pretty pathetic due to the gusts — when you’re only going 18 mph down a steady decline with a cadence of 73, you know something is seriously wrong.

This was the second year in a row where I felt like an idiot for getting race wheels. A couple pros with disc wheels actually got blown off their bikes because the wind was so strong, and one guy even got blown off a freakin’ bridge (it was a bridge that crossed over a pedestrian footpath so he only fell about 7-10 feet, but still…). I would later find out that Chris Lieto, arguably one of the best cyclists among the pro triathletes, stated that this was the toughest bike leg he’s ever raced, and that it was worse than any year he’s raced Kona (the World Championship bike course is known to be very windy). Of course, I didn’t know all this at the time; all I was thinking about was how horrible my race was going and getting more and more discouraged about Ironman Canada. If I felt this miserable riding 56 miles, how was I going to survive 112 and a marathon?

When I was nearing town (right around the spot where I almost creamed a squirrel last year), feeling shitty and wanting this stupid race to be over, I saw another racer pull up beside me. The guy looked at me and said, “You wouldn’t happen to be the bloody shoes girl, would you?” I laughed, surprised that he was able to recognize me, and said “That’s me!” Wouldn’t you know it, I ran into another reader of my blog. He told me he loved Mediocre Athlete and that I was part of the reason he was racing today. Then he paused and joked, “I hate you” (presumably because he felt as great about the wind as I did at this point), and we both laughed and pulled into town. He found me at precisely the right moment in the race — just when I didn’t think I could hate life any more, this guy came along and perked me up when I needed it the most.

Goal time: 3 hours or less
Actual time: 3:27. I was eight minutes slower than last year’s bike time, despite the fact that overall I’m a stronger cyclist this year. My teammates (along with most of the other athletes racing, I presume) also biked much slower than expected, with many people finishing a half hour slower than usual, so I guess 8 minutes isn’t too bad in comparison.

T2
T2 went pretty well — I was in and out in 2:01. This time, I made sure to pull on some socks so I wouldn’t have torn up feet this time around (although since it wasn’t pouring rain this year, it probably wouldn’t have been an issue but I didn’t want to take any chances).

Run Summary
Most of the time when I race, I don’t typically run into nutrition problems unless the weather is exceptionally abnormal (like in Cancun when I battled 98 degree temperatures, obscene humidity, and unrelenting sun). During the bike I battled both the wind and the heat, so as a result I don’t think I fueled properly while cycling. When I got to the run, I had the dreaded bloat belly. I was also uncomfortably hot — it was in the 80s and sunny, and I tend to run warm even when the weather’s mild, so the heat combined with my little Somalian stomach made for a less than ideal run.

I came up with a relatively good strategy to deal with the heat. At every aid station I’d grab a sponge and shove it in my top, then take a cup of ice and pour that down my shirt. The ice/sponge combo would last me a couple miles until I’d eventually replace them with a new sponge and some more ice. I’d also dump water on my head and guzzle Gatorade and water every so often (in hindsight, the guzzling probably didn’t help the belly bloat — I think I have to reassess my drinking habits for Canada).

At the end of loop one, I rummaged for my Endurolytes and looked up to see my non-racing teammates cheering and yelling at me, which made me grin like an idiot:

One of my teammmates/friends shouted out, “Show us yer boobs!”, which snapped me out of my race lull and made me laugh and go, “What?” I don’t think my sweaty, nasty chesticles were something anyone wanted to see at that point.

Speaking of nasty, I’ve never seen so much carnage on a run before. The ride really must have taken its toll on the athletes, because I saw people puking, hunched over, walking with dazed looks on their faces, you name it. I saw people on stretchers, people lying on the ground waiting for medical assistance, people shaking — it was a rough day. Craig Alexander, who won the race two years in a row, ran 11 minutes slower than last year. That big of a gap for a pro indicates how tough things were this year.

Jason caught up to me halfway through loop 2 and we ran together for about 4 miles before he took off in the last mile so he could unchivalrously (yes, that’s a made up word) cross the finish line before me (kidding — he was ahead of me in time, anyway, since he started about 14 minutes behind me).

Nearing the finish and getting high fives from my team

Goal time: 2 hours or under
Actual time: 2:08. My best half Ironman run to date, but I know I can do better. Damn that gut rot!

Goal race time: 6 hours or under
Actual race time: 6:29. Sigh. I really expected to PR by much, much more, but considering how difficult the race ended up being and how I was one of two people on my team who PR’d at all, I’m happy I at least managed to shave off 9 minutes from last year’s time despite the tough conditions. Still, it’s a hard pill to swallow when I think about how I won’t be able to do another half Ironman until next season. Oh well, I guess that means I have another year to train hard and finally achieve that sub-6.

After the Race
Jas and I headed back to the hotel to shower so we could meet our teammates for some late night pizza. I inspected my feet and saw that the only real damage done this year was a blood blister that ended up healing pretty quickly:

Gross, but still a marked improvement over last year’s carnage

The worst souvenir I got from the race was a nasty chafe burn from my race belt. Here’s what it looked like when I finished:

And here’s what it looked like a couple days later:

The scab is gone now but I have a dark mark on my side that will probably end up leaving a scar. It looks like a doctor with questionable credentials removed my appendix. Blerg. Also, thanks to racing in the sun all day, my weird forearm tan I picked up in Penticton evened out a bit but, unfortunately, the watch tan continued to grow even stronger:

Final Thoughts
Okay, I gave Boise another try but honestly (and I mean it this time, damnit!), I’m not going to do the race again next year. Maybe one day I’ll do it again, but I really dislike the afternoon start time. It throws off your pre-race nutrition and, more importantly, it leaves too much time for the weather to turn. Both years, the weather was much better in the morning. If the race had started at 7 am (or even before 11 am), most athletes would have been off the bike by the time the wind got really bad. After talking to some locals, I found out that they often have strong wind gusts in Boise, and that the wind gets worst by mid-afternoon. Why the hell would race organizers plan a race to start at the worst part of the day? If they want it to be a challenge, why not just make the race in December so we athletes can battle snow and freezing temperatures?

I know that there’s really no such thing as a perfect race and that the weather is definitely something organizers can’t control. However, if you know that weather conditions tend to worsen as the day grows longer and you still opt to plan a race that starts at 2:00 pm, you’re often screwing athletes out of a decent race. Since I have no control over what time the race starts, my only option is to skip Boise next year and shoot for a different race instead. I’ll likely come back at some point just so I can try and end on a high note, Costanza style, but for now, Boise, I think we need to take a break.

Our bikes’ temporary home

View from our hotel room

On Saturday Jason, his dad and I woke up and prepped everything for our ride. We parked a few miles from the transition area and started setting everything up when I realized that the black rolled up wad of fabric I grabbed and shoved into my bag wasn’t arm sleeves like I thought, but rather compression sleeves for my legs. Fudgers! It was going to be a gray, chilly day, and my wimpo arms were surely going to freeze without some sort of cover. Jason suggested I just wear my compression sleeves as arm warmers. I didn’t have any better options, so that’s what I did. I ended up with 90 miles of compressiony goodness, but unfortunately I realized two things after the ride:

1. The sleeves, which typically go from under my knee to my ankle, weren’t long enough to cover my entire arm.
2. Even though the sun wasn’t out, that doesn’t mean the rays weren’t poking through the clouds.

As such, I ended the ride with this B.S.:

This is not a good look for me

The watch tan I’m used to. The half-forearm tan? Not so much. (I’ve grown accustomed to the hairy arms though, so deal with it.) Anyway, I started riding for a whopping minute before realizing that, no fucking way, my bike computer’s cadence sensor wasn’t working again. What the shit, I just replaced this stupid thing two weeks ago! I angrily fiddled with it for a while, and it went from not reading my cadence to not reading anything. Great, now I was going to ride 90 miles with no indication of my speed or cadence.

Frustrated and fueled by rage, I took off and anger-rode for an hour. After a while, Jason appeared next to me, slightly out of breath, exclaiming, “It took me forever to catch up to you! You need to slow down!” Apparently I was averaging about 24 mph and was climbing rollers going 20. To be fair, the first 30 or 40 miles of the Canada course are pretty fast, with lots of flats/downhills and a few inconsequential hills. I pouted a bit more about my broken computer but decided to slow it down in anticipation of Richter Pass.

Before we got to the pass, Jason’s dad got an epic flat by running over a huge kinked wad of wire. He wrestled it out of his tire and changed the tube but wanted to stop at a gas station to properly fill the tire with air. While he was fixing his bike, I stopped inside to use the bathroom and buy more fuel. When I came out, I saw Jason barely hiding his irritation while a filthy grifter with roughly four teeth peppered him with questions about our bikes. Apparently this Canadian mountain man had been marveling at how nice our bikes were and said that someone should build an eight person stealth bomber out of the same carbon fiber our bikes are made from. He then paused, looked at Jason, and said, “I see you’ve got a belly under all that gear! You must work in an office, eh? This is good exercise for that!” Jason muttered a “Yeah…” while murdering the dude with his eyes, and I resisted the urge to laugh. What kind of person makes remarks about a complete stranger’s stomach? Dudes with meth mouth, that’s who.

“Your belly offends me and my professional appearance.”

After our brief break, we continued on and hit the pass almost immediately. I gotta say, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Don’t get me wrong, Richter Pass is no picnic, but you get to climb for a bit before shooting down a decent decline, then lather, rinse, repeat for a while and before you know it, you’re done. Unfortunately, after you conquer the pass (and are rewarded with a nice downhill), you get hit with a bunch of rollers that are pretty sucky, especially when you factor in a craptacular crosswind (which we got hit with on Saturday).

We skipped an out and back portion of the ride and continued on until we hit the second significant climb, which is the stretch of road leading to Yellow Lake. (Brief aside: who names a body of water “Yellow Lake”? Nothing screams “urine-soaked” like that moniker. It actually is a pretty lake though, and not at all yellow. Still, not the best name.) I thought this climb was uber-shittier than Richter because unlike Richter, which has steep climbs but brief reprieves where you get to descend, the Yellow Lake climb is pretty much a long, arduous, gradual, relentless son of a bitch until you get to the top. On the way up I saw several banana peels and wondered if Jason was trying to take me out, Mario Kart style. If only I had a red shell…

I’m gunnin’ for ya, Jas

The last several miles of the bike course shoot you down a pants crappingly fast descent that scared the bejesus out of me due to the semis and crosswinds. Operation De-Chunkify has been going well for me, but at that point I wondered if I should have actually gained an extra 15 lbs instead of lost weight so I’d be better anchored and wouldn’t get bitch slapped by the wind and cars. At several points during the descent I envisioned myself getting blown over the guardrail and falling to my death while still clipped into my bike.

The next day Jas and I ran the middle portion of the run course, which is the same stretch as the first part of the bike course. We did about 15 miles in the sun and I thought about how miserable I was going to be racing in 90 degree heat considering I was already feeling overheated at 70 degrees. The “inconsequential” hills I mentioned earlier on the bike suddenly seemed like a jerk crusted bastard during the run. This will not feel good on race day.

We spent the remainder of the weekend enjoying the gorgeous scenery and buying roughly an asston of wine:

View of the swim start from a vineyard across the lake

Loitering in some Canadian’s vineyard

Jason’s mom gets inspired by the boobalicious mermaid statue

Our Ironman training fuel

Before we left, we flailed around in the freezing lake (“freezing” being 55 degrees) for about 20 minutes, making me think that I really need to do a couple more open water swims before Boise. Poop. Other than that, though, it was good to explore the Ironman course and dump my paycheck into many, many wine purchases. I can’t wait to come up with the team in July and do it all again. Hopefully Teresa will have some good advice on how to pace myself for the ride, and I’m counting on doing more wine tasting with some of my teammates. Don’t let me down, Ironman crew!

By the way, let me interject by saying that after nearly three years of this sport, I’ve gotten seven flats and have ruined three tires (the first of which was for a bike that wasn’t even mine — I had borrowed it from a former coworker). Jason has had one flat that happened during a training ride, and he didn’t even have to change it because his dad did it for him. I call epic bullshit on this, which makes him mad because he’s convinced I’m jinxing him for the biggest bike fail ever when we race in Canada.

Anyway, back to the rear tire. There goes $40 right there. I also had to buy a new bike computer because my old one has been acting on the fritz lately and the cadence sensor stopped working. When you start training with a bike computer, you quickly become unnaturally attached to it. I mentioned before about how I almost forgot it before Boise 70.3 and went into a panic because I wasn’t going to know my cadence while racing. I replaced my bike computer with a new wireless one that cost $110. Pricey, but necessary in my opinion.

Where’d the rest of my money go? Frickin’ fuel. I’m starting to spend more on training fuel than on actual groceries. You’d be surprised by how many stupid gels we consume in a week. This crap never seems to last very long. I shelled out a dumb amount of money for drink mix, Rocktane, and Hammer gels. One time someone mentioned to me how he doesn’t understand why I need to refuel with calorie drinks and gels during workouts because he never does and he seems to do fine. I had to remind him that exercising for 1-2 hours at an easy to moderate pace isn’t the same as a four or five hour workout and trying to prep your body to be able to carry you through a several hour-long race. It’s easy to forget that the general public isn’t as insane as us endurance athletes.

So just like that, I dropped nearly three hundred bones in a short amount of time. You’d think that’d be the end of the spending, but I still need to get a new helmet, replace my sad, pathetic bike trainer, and hopefully spring for a new pair of sunglasses and recovery tights sometime this season, not to mention the perpetual wave of team gear that Teresa seems to always be ordering. *shakes fist* I actually have most of my receipts from each season, so maybe if I’m feeling especially depressed, I can add them up to see how much I spend annually on this sport. I’ll save that for a future post…in the meantime, I’m accepting donations for a real grocery store trip because I don’t think Jason would appreciate a dinner of pineapple Roctane and watermelon sport beans.

Last year I raced a 1:36:37. My only goal this time around was to PR and to try and bike 50 minutes or under (I biked a 51:22 last year). Jas and I showed up and set up our transition areas. It was cold but sunnier than last year, and it ended up warming up fairly quickly so I just raced in my usual tri gear and threw on some arm warmers for good measure. Some of my training buddies raced in bike shorts, which I cannot fathom how comfortable it is to waddle-run with a huge cushy load near your ass and taint.

Not ideal for running

Most of my teammates raced the long course but five of us represented Team Shorty. We started the race and I pushed myself to run a good but not super strenuous first leg so that I wouldn’t feel like collapsing once I got to transition. After the first 1.6 mile run I grabbed my bike and embarked as fast as I could. I felt pretty good and kept mentally telling myself to push it during the bike part of the race. When I got to the Mud Mountain Road hill, I had my best climb to date. Don’t get me wrong, it was still kind of crappy and I got passed by better climbers, but I felt pretty good and steady and was able to scale it without feeling like I was going to crap myself afterwards. (Plus, I re-passed just about everyone who passed me on the hill, so suck it.)

When I got back to transition, a couple of my teammates who weren’t racing that day shouted some words of encouragement and told me, to my surprise, that I was the third female to finish the bike portion. I clickity-clacked into transition to rack my bike and pull on my Zoots, and Jason’s parents cheered me on. Jason’s mom said, “I think you’re the first female!” When I responded with, “I heard I was third,” she said, “Oh…those must have been some manly looking women then.” I chuckled and started run #2.

My pace felt a bit fast but steady, and I just kept thinking push push push. I still felt good and just wanted to have a good race. At one point I passed a female and got excited, but then another female went blowing by me and I never caught up to her. She ended up beating me by about 30 seconds. *shakes fist* Anyway, I was maybe less than a mile from the finish when I thought I heard someone shout “Bec!” I threw a side glance over my shoulder but didn’t want to turn around and lose momentum. Shortly after that, someone emerged beside me and said, “Good job, you’re doing great!” To my surprise, it was Jason.

“How am I ahead of you?” I asked incredulously. He should have been done with the race by now — I estimate he’d have finished about five or six minutes ahead of me. It turned out that Jas had a great first run and bike, but during the second run he missed turn #2 due to half-ass course markings. I guess quite a few racers missed the turn. Jason ended up running about six minutes extra (three out, three back to the correct course), which is a big oops when the run distance is only 3.7 miles. The competitive, non-chivalrous side of Jas didn’t want me to beat him, so he turned on the afterburners and passed me. I’m used to chasing him during runs, so puttering behind him wasn’t anything new for me.

At one point I looked down at my watch and noticed that if I hauled ass, I could finish in under 1:30, so I took it up a notch, Costanza style, and ran a bit harder to the finish. I clocked in at 1:29:36, sixteen seconds behind Jason and a seven minute PR over last year’s time. Huzzahowie! I later found out that I took first in my age group and was the third overall female to finish. This was a race to go down in Mediocre Athlete infamy, as I’ve never really legitimately placed well in my age group. Sure, last year I took 3rd in the duathlon, but it was out of 5 girls so it kind of put me in the middle of the pack (a placing I’ve more than grown accustomed to). One time I took 2nd in my age group at an Olympic distance triathlon, but that was out of 3 and the third girl never even showed up to race. Thus, my top finish was the first time I placed well and actually beat people who showed up. Pretty awesome.

Me with the 2nd and 3rd place age groupers

For winning my age group, I received the following trophy courtesy of what I’m assuming was the Enumclaw junior high woodshop class:

Yes, that is indeed a block of wood with a cassette gear shoved into it and a piece of chain crookedly glued onto it. My first homemade 1st place trophy! (I make fun, but I’m proud of it — it’s a fitting trophy for this mediocre athlete.)

When I got home I checked the official results and found that I had improved across the board over last year. Both runs, my transitions and my bike time were all faster (I biked a 48:15 and hit my under 50 min goal); in fact, my runs averaged out to be a 7:31 and a 7:25 minute mile pace. I’m not accustomed to seeing my run pace not start with an ‘8′ — it seemed as if I was stuck running in the 8s forever. I guess those track workouts are starting to work wonders for me.

The duathlon was a nice confidence booster for me and a good assurance that I was on the right track with my training this season. However, there is a downside to my good race — I know for a fact that Teresa’s going to make me do the long course next year, where all of a sudden I go from being a big fish in a small pond back to a mediocre fish in a pool of elites. Long course racers are pretty hardcore, so next year I get to look forward to resuming my regularly scheduled mediocrity. Ah well, for now I shall bask in my win until April 2011.