Despite blogging candidly about my crotch and readily peeing myself in public, I’m actually a somewhat modest person, especially when it comes to nudity. In high school P.E. I would marvel at the girls who’d casually stroll around the locker room buck naked while I awkwardly tried to shimmy my clothes on from under a poncho-sized shirt I’d stolen from one of my older brothers. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against nudity; I just prefer to keep my shit covered up to everyone who’s not my doctor or my boyfriend because the general public doesn’t need to see my intimate bits. Nowadays I’ve gotten pretty skilled at slipping out of a wet swimsuit or soggy exercise clothes and into a dry outfit without exposing a nip or a pube or a crack. I know other women are comfortable flaunting their goods and I don’t fault them for it; I just keep my head down and mind my own business, focusing on getting in and out of the locker room as innocuously as possible… …unless someone takes it upon herself to strike up a conversation with me while her chesticles are out and her unkempt pubes are exposed to the elements. That’s when things get a little awkward. Because you know what? If you’re naked and you’re talking to me, I’m gonna stare at your netherparts. How can I not? You’re freaking naked, for crying out loud, and you’re talking to me about the weather and how Ballard has a really good farmer’s market while I try not to gawk at your bare boobies. It’s human nature to stare at something that’s out of the ordinary, and a nude person chatting me up while she’s applying lotion to her ashy elbows qualifies as being a bit on the “abnormal” side of things. Take this most recent encounter. Yesterday I went to the Y to do a swim workout. I plodded towards the showers for a pre-swim rinse off and noticed a woman who was about my age engaged in a post-workout cleanse. (Random aside: the Y’s shower room has a row of exposed shower heads as well as a set of private shower stalls on the opposite side of the room. Why, if you get to choose between a set of public showers and one of the private stalls that each have a curtain and a little bench, would you willingly opt for an exposed shower? Is it a voyeurism thing? Or do you just have no fucks to give? Because I personally would rather suds up my butthole in relative privacy vs. doing it in front of a bunch of people.) She was naked, obviously, gettin’ her scrub on. I quickly glanced at her when I entered the room before looking away because I didn’t want to stare at her ridiculously huge knockers. (I mean seriously, these beasts were like wrecking balls with nipples attached.) I fumbled with a nearby shower faucet and began my quick rinse. And then: Titty McHugeBoobs: “Where do you swim outside?” Oh god. No. Don’t do this. Me, staring at the farthest corner of the room: “Hmm?” Maybe she wasn’t talking to me. Maybe she was…talking to herself? I dunno. I just hoped she wasn’t trying to get a very clothed me to talk to a very nude her. Titty McHugeBoobs: “Where do you swim outside?” Damnit. I shot a brief glance back at her and my eyes tractor-beamed back to her gigantic fun bags before I forced them to pull their gaze up towards her face. She was staring at me while sudsing her crotch. (It sounds erotic but it was...

I’m back from racing Ironman Honu 70.3. My race recap will be up soon, but first I wanted to clear something up with Linsey Corbin, the female professional triathlete who won Honu and set a female course record because she’s all fast and bad-ass and and dominates the sport in a way us mere mortals can only dream about. First, a brief explanation. Rooming with Teresa often means I inadvertently run into professional triathletes because Teresa’s a pro and rubs pointy, athletically vascular elbows with the sport’s elites and I’m often tagging along like a schmuck. In Costa Rica I met Bree Wee and in Hawaii we swam with Linsey Corbin (and by “we swam with,” I of course mean “Teresa swam with while I flailed around 500 yards behind them”). The race came and went and I was pretty happy with my performance considering the tough conditions (meaning “it was windy as shit out there”). On Sunday I had a lazy and tired recovery day, and on Monday I drove around the big island with Jason and his family and checked out the volcano. That left Tuesday as my last day to get a little relaxation in before I would return back to Seattle. Faced with one final hurrah to get my sun and drink on, I did what any Mediocre Athlete would do: I went at it full-speed. Jason and I ate breakfast, walked to the Fairmont and had a few cocktails on the beach, walked to our hotel, changed into swimsuits, lazed about all day in the sun, then went back to our hotel room and slurped down a couple mixed drinks before meeting Kevin, Cindy, and Cindy’s mother for happy hour at Ruth’s Chris. I knocked back a couple more cocktails and some bar snacks, then we went to the Mauna Lani Canoe House to cap off the evening. I was sipping a glass of wine and enjoying the sunset when I started to feel a bit off–a mixture of queasy and sweaty that is scientifically known as “sweesy.” I excused myself and started making my way towards the bathroom, feeling worse with each step. Heading right towards me emerging from the bathroom was a perfectly bronzed, statuesque figure. It was Linsey Corbin, and we were on an unavoidable collision course that would inevitably lead to small talk. The only problem was I was feeling pretty terrible and was in no mood to chat with anyone. I vaguely recall the conversation going something like this: Tall, lean, beautifully golden-hued Linsey: “Oh hi!” Stumpy-legged, splotchily tanned, soaked with sweat me: “Hi! Congratulations on your race! You did really awesome.” My brain: “Is it me or is the room starting to spin a bit?” Linsey: “Thank you! How did you do?” How-am-I-producing-this-much-sweat-this-doesn’t-seem-humanly-possible me: “I did alright!” I realized the absurdity of trying to explain to a professional triathlete that I had a good race when I finished over an hour behind her. I didn’t know what else to say, so I asked my brain for help. My sun-baked, alcohol-soaked brain: “Just keep rambling about something!” Me: “Uh, so I was a few minutes slower than in Costa Rica but the conditions were tougher here…but the run was easier.” Linsey: “Easier in Costa Rica?” Me: “No, easier here…it was tougher…there.” Awkward silence. My brain: “Hey, what’s with this tunnel vision all of a sudden?…..OH GOD, YOU’RE GOING TO PASS OUT. ABORT! ABORT! MAYDAY! YOU DO NOT WANT TO FAINT AT LINSEY CORBIN’S FEET!! GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!!!” Me, quickly: “Anywaygoodseeingyou–” Linsey: “Yeah! When do you leave?” Me: “Tomorrowwww…” I shot several nervous glances towards the bathroom and...

Warning: This post is disgusting. You probably shouldn’t read it. I wrote it because while this whole ordeal was gross and embarrassing and contains more information than you would ever want to know about my nether region, it’s still kind of funny and interesting. And there’s some science involved, so maybe you could learn something. Something gross, but hey, it’s better than nothing, right? 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: 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...

I’ve been forcing myself to go to the group swims held every other weekend in an effort to improve my swim splits this coming season from “abysmal” to “passably mediocre.” I went to the first one on dead legs thanks to two hours of workouts beforehand, then missed the second group swim because I was running on empty and needed a rest day. The third class was this past weekend, and as always, I dreaded it because it involved me getting into a pool and using horrible form to propel myself through chilly chlorinated water. For this particular swim class, however, Teresa decided to torture me further by announcing that we were all going to work on flip turns. Unsurprisingly, this mediocre athlete don’t do flip turns. I very obviously lack the coordination and skill to pull off a graceful somersault in the water and push off the wall in one fluid motion. Once I went to a flip turn clinic that Teresa was teaching at the Seattle Athletic Club, and not only did I burn out my sinuses from the military-grade chlorine that flooded my nasal passages every time I contorted my body underwater (Teresa’s shouts to “Tuck your chin!” did not help, as apparently I am incapable of scrunching my head in that manner), I would more often than not attempt to flip at the end of the lane and end up in the one next to me, having somehow maneuvered myself underneath the lane divider and crookedly emerging in some other swimmer’s personal space. “Just practice doing flip turns during your warm ups and cool downs!”, Teresa would tell me. Uh yeah, if I can’t even stay in my lane during a mostly empty swim clinic, I can’t imagine a pool full of lap swimmers would appreciate my flailing appendages slapping into them while I repeatedly apologize and insist to their bruised faces that practice makes perfect. So yeah, flip turns aren’t for me. It’s not a big deal–I’m slow and crappy enough as it is, so adding a flip turn into the mix isn’t going to be the deciding factor in me suddenly becoming as fast as Dara Torres. When I get to the wall I just turn around and push off, so it’s not like I’m taking a five minute break at each end. I’ve accepted the fact that flip turns and I will never have a future together in a pool with a yard and a white picket fence and 2.5 kiddie pools, and that’s okay. Or so I thought. Here T was trying to force flip turns on me once again. She’d have us swim for a bit and then do something dumb like somersault in the middle of the pool. Fortunately, she exempted those of us who “got dizzy” when trying flip turns, so I feigned vertigo and opted just to swim a couple laps instead. The next step was to have people swim to the end of a lane and attempt a flip turn, but I opted to splash around in the middle of the pool and daydream about the day when the swim portion of a triathlon would be replaced with something more practical like light stretching or cookie eating. After the flip turn nonsense, as the workout came to an end I thought I was in the clear. And then T did something especially dastardly: she combined my two most loathed swim activities, flip turns and relays. Teresa is a fan of concluding the swim classes with some relay bullshit, which I hate because it makes me irrationally stressed. She breaks us into groups and gives us some...

My brother was a high jumper in high school, and he was quite good. He also excelled at hurdles — at 6’4″, he and my other brother were not cursed with the dreaded Stumpy Asian Legs Syndrome that afflicts me to this day. The same track coach who coached my brother attempted to get me to try out for track, but after seeing me nearly kill myself on the low hurdles, he realized that some talents do not extend to all family members.