My swim, much like 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,' is disappointing and runs way too long.

Take today’s workout for example. Teresa persuaded me to do the “postal swim,” which is an hour-long time trial. The rule is simple: see how far you can swim in 60 minutes. She pestered me via email and asked if I was going to sign up, and I sighed and responded with, “I don’t really want to do it, but I will if you think it’ll be good for me.” By the time I stopped dragging my feet and committed to doing the workout, there were only a couple slots left. Teresa cheerfully jammed me into the first of three waves. Wave #1 started at 7 am. On a Sunday. FML.

As if getting up at the ass crack of dawn on a Sunday morning for a bullshit swim workout wasn’t bad enough, I scanned the list of folks who were swimming in Wave #1 and realized that I was woefully outpaced among my fellow teammates. All of the fast assholes on my team were swimming at 7 am. I needed to be in Wave #3, which started at 9:30…or Teresa needed to make a separate “slowest of the slow” wave that started at noon and consisted of me and a no armed, one legged drifter named Hobo Joe.

Also making the swim worse was the fact that I was out of town this past week for work, so my weekend workouts were especially heavy duty to make up for my travel time. I spent the weekdays in Denver before flying home and forcing myself to do a swim workout on Friday. My swim wasn’t great, which gave me a glimmer of hope that, by the Law of Transitive Beccas, my Sunday swim would be better. On Saturday I had a “Welcome back to Ironman training you lazy bastard” workout that consisted of 3×1 hour bike intervals with a 15 minute brick run after each set. By the end of my 3:45 workout, I was exhausted, my legs were aching, and I was dreading the early morning swim that would end my weekend.

This morning I woke up at a soul-crushingly early 5:30 am and puttered around as nervous as I would be if it were an actual race. I was irrationally anxious and agonized over what to eat for breakfast. I even sucked down a cup of coffee, something I only do on race mornings. Jason and I hopped into the car (he didn’t want to do the postal swim either, but I nagged him into Band of Brothers-ing it with me) and drove over to Mercer Island. It was stupid and dark outside–as in “dark enough that I should still be in bed instead of driving to a turdtastic swim workout.” The island has no streetlights and the pool center was dark too, resulting in a supremely paranoid left turn into the parking lot since I was worried about missing the driveway and careening down an embankment (which, admittedly, still would have been better than swimming nonstop for an hour).

We entered the facility and made our way down to the pool. It was actually a 25 meter pool, so it was a smidge longer than the typical 25-yarder I was used to. I hopped in and busted out a half-ass 100 meter warm up, then we all began the time trial. My lane partner named Jeanne immediately began kicking my ass, lapping me like I was treading water and busting out flip turns like a boss. I sighed and puttered along, keeping a steady pace.

It was a bit tedious and difficult to concentrate on perfect form (which I don’t have, anyway) for an entire hour, so I let my mind wander towards the following:

• The nasty band-aid that was floating beneath me for about 20 minutes (eventually it made its way over to the lane next to me and kept Derek and Karissa company).
• How much phlegm I accumulated the longer I swim. At around the 30 minute mark I had a string of drool hanging from my mouth for about 100 meters before it finally broke off and presumably floated over to hang out with the band-aid in the Corner of Gross.
• Getting half-drowned every 10 minutes whenever Derek and I would briefly end up side by side (I say “briefly” because that bastard is an astoundingly fast swimmer) and his massive, manly wake would push into me and make me gurgle and partially choke on chlorine, band-aid juice, and errant loogies.

By the time the clock finally ticked down to its last seconds, I was halfway done with a length and finished at the deck end of the pool at around 1:00:25. I looked up and saw that the crowd had grown from about five teammates who were counting everyone’s laps to around 30 people who were waiting for their wave to start. The sudden audience made me feel a bit sheepish in a “Oh hey guys, how long have you been standing there? I was just taking ‘er easy for that last 10 minutes…oh, you’ve been here for 20? I meant 20. I did a 20 minute cooldown. I’m not normally this slow…” sort of way.

I hopped out of the pool, and Addy, my lap counter, looked up from his seat to give me my distance.

Addy: “2325.”

Me: “What?! I was between 25 and 50 when time ran out!”

Addy, helpfully: “Well, I wrote down ‘2325+.’”

Me, sulking: “Well I’m going to round up to 2350.”

Addy, rolling his eyes: “Whatever.”

Me, embarrassed: “…I need all the distance I can get.”

Teresa told me to shoot for 2400-2600 and Jason the Overbearing Boyfriend said I could do 2800. I did neither of those. In fact, if you calculate my pace for a half and full Ironman distance, I swam slower today than last year’s Rev 3 swim time and my Ironman Canada swim time. How nice to see that my swim times are getting progressively worse the longer I do this sport. I guess you could blame my sluggishness on the fact that my legs were dead from the previous day’s workout, but Jason had a 5 hour interval workout and he busted out a great swim time, so I can’t even really make that excuse. I guess I just suck, plain and simple.

I’m starting to get desperate here–at this point I’m actually entertaining the notion of joining a master’s swim class or two. Sure, I’ll get humiliated a couple nights a week, but at least I’ll have someone who can keep an eye on my swim form and yell at me whenever I do something wrong (which would be every 15 seconds). I’ve been better about hitting my swim workouts lately but I’m still not seeing consistent gains. How much do I need to be swimming each week to improve? And will this improvement be anything substantial, or will I basically negate any gains I make this August at IMC if I end up needing to take a three minute bathroom break in T2? Do I truly have the potential to get substantially better at swimming, or will I always be weak at it no matter how hard I work? I’m not whining here, just genuinely clueless about what it takes to improve my swimming. Maybe I need to harvest Michael Phelps’ tears or something…

“Not by a long shot!” my chipper coach Teresa most likely exclaimed as she loaded up my workouts with classes and utter bullshit. For example, here are just the classes and group workouts I’ve got scheduled for this week:

Monday: dryland strength class (It sucked; I was tired and Bridget made us do burpees with a biceps curl, one of the poopiest circuit workouts along with triceps pushups, which she also made us do. I hate Bridget.)

Tuesday: track (in which I get to do a speed test which basically involves running as hard as you can for 30 minutes so Teresa can assign me new heart rate zones. FML.)

Wednesday: dryland strength, cycling class

Friday: swim class

Saturday: group run

Sunday: cycling class, swim class

That’s not even counting the additional swims (two) bike workout (one), core workouts (two), and runs (one) I’ve got this week. Tell my wife and kids (meaning “Jason” and “pie”) that I love them, because this girl is going to be living and breathing fitness for the next 10 months.

I had a speed run workout scheduled, so Jas and I headed to the Greenlake track on our lunch break to bust it out. The plan was to do a 20 minute warm up, then two miles all out with a five minute recovery, then 4×100 at my previous all out pace with a three minute recovery, then a 10 minute cool down. Total workout time: 1 hour. I started my warm up then began my hard effort. It sucked. Bad. My stomach was really sour and I felt like I didn’t have any speed. I stopped after one mile, figuring I’d do my recovery and then I could do another hard mile. I started my recovery time and the sour stomach went into overdrive. My easy set quickly incorporated some “awkwardly mosey over to the portapotty and unleash the fury” time (at least there were portapotties nearby — I wasn’t about to fail my #1 goal).

When my stomach quieted down, I left the portapotty and dejectedly made my way back to the track. Okay, so my two mile hard effort was kind of a bust, but at least I could do my 4×100 sets, right? I started one and had a decent lap time, then did a recovery lap. During my second lap the stomach acted up again, and once again my recovery lap included a sprint to the bathroom where I had to do the walk of shame past the same tennis players who I had just passed five minutes ago. I felt like waving and announcing, “Yes, yes, it’s me again. Yes, clearly I’m having some sort of bowel issue. Thank you for noticing. Yes, I have seen Anna Kournikova on The Biggest Loser. Uh, no, I don’t really like her more than Jillian. I mean, she kind of sucks and she’s got the crappiest team, so…you know what, speaking of ‘crappiest,’ I really gotta go. Again.”

After Wave of Number Two #2 came and went, I managed to bust out a super sad cool down mile, figuring that the workout was a complete bust considering my guts weren’t letting me run hard. Instead of 7-7.5 miles, I managed a fairly sad five. We drove home and I had some soup and some tea to try and quiet things down, then I headed to the allergist to get my weekly shot.

I needed to get a swim workout in but wasn’t sure I’d make the swim time at our gym, so later that evening after my shot I headed over to Medgar Evers to drop in on their lap swim time. When I got there, the employee recharged my parks & rec card and was about to scan it when I looked over at the pool and noticed an unusually large amount of pre-teens occupying the lanes.

Me: “Uh, is lap swim going on right now?”

Employee: “No, it’s a youth swim clinic.”

Me: “Oh…how long does that go for?”

Employee: “From now until 6:30.” Damn it all!

Me: “Does lap swim start after that?”

Employee: “Yeah, from 6:30 to 7:00.”

Oh, what the hell. 30 minutes for lap swim? Maybe the average swimmer could do my workout in that time, but Rebecca the Floating Turd was going to need about 50 to bust this out. No swimming for me.

I headed back home and thought, “Okay, the run didn’t go well, the swim didn’t happen, but I have an hour long bike workout scheduled tomorrow that I could do today” (I had been shuffling around workouts this week since Jason and I are traveling to Chicago this weekend). Jason pulled out my bike for me and I went to pump up my tires. I finished pumping up the front one, and when I removed the pump from the valve stem, it imploded into itself and my tire immediately went flat. FUCKKKKKKKKKK. Now I’ve got the saddest flat tire imaginable — an indoor trainer ride flat. Who gets these? Becca gets these.

I sighed and replaced the flat tube. By this point I was tired and in total “Fuck it” mode, so I did a pretty lazy spin while watching Teen Mom recordings from my DVR while Jason simultaneously laughed at and felt bad for me for having a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day. I ended up laughing it off with him — I mean, when three workouts go horribly awry, you gotta just roll with the punches, right? Thankfully, most of my workouts lately have gone relatively well coming off Injuryfest 2011, so I’ll take a shitty workout or two…just as long as this doesn’t become a regular thing.

Back in 2008, I was training for my first half Ironman, the not-quite-half-Ironman-distance New Balance race in Victoria. I was a sorry sight, riding on a borrowed road bike with mountain bike pedals and swimming even more terribly than I do now. I was basically the Tai to Teresa’s Cher if this were the movie Clueless.

"Rollin' on a road bike..."

Teresa urged me and Jason to do the Issaquah sprint triathlon so we’d have a little bit of race experience going into the Victoria half Ironman. Since it was my first tri, I was ridiculously nervous.

Swim Summary

The swim was a teeny tiny 400 meters — it would take you longer to get your wetsuit on and off than it would to actually swim that distance. Of course, I was convinced I was going to drown. I swam with a handful of other girls in my age group, stopping at every buoy to gasp for air and gaze longingly at the shore.

Swim time: 10:29 (2:37/100 meters)

As embarrassingly crappy as my swim was, it marked the only time I’ve beaten Jas during the swim portion of a race. Since this was his first ever open water swim, he panicked and flailed in the water and I ended up edging him out by a minute or so. (Check out the only Mediocre Athlete post my lazy boyfriend has ever written for a recap of his swim from that race.)

Transition 1

My transitions have always been decent, even from the get-go, and my first race’s T1 was a respectable 2:14. I think I’m just anxious to get out of my stupid wetsuit as quickly as possible. No matter the reason, my transitions aren’t that bad.

Bike Summary

I hopped on my borrowed bike and made my way along the 15-mile course. It’s an out and back and I just puttered along with all the other racers. I didn’t have a bike computer at the time, so I had no idea how fast I was going or what my cadence was (it was probably pretty shitty). I momentarily went the wrong way when I followed some schmohawk who took a wrong turn, but thankfully the race volunteers quickly corrected us.

When I was a few miles from transition, I was descending a hill when I noticed an odd noise coming from behind me. “That doesn’t sound normal,” I thought, so once I got to the bottom, I got off the bike and checked my rear tire. It was dead flat. Great, I’d gotten a flat tire during my first triathlon and not only did I not know how to change a flat, I didn’t have any tools or spares with me so I couldn’t even attempt to figure it out. I kind of stood there for a while, not knowing what to do, before eventually click-clacking down the road while pushing my neutered bike.

Eventually my teammate Beth came along and, bless her heart, stopped to try and help me. She had a spare tire and tools, but the only problem was she didn’t know how to change a flat, either. We both fumbled around for a bit and got as far as taking the rear tire off before looking at each other, stumped and covered in sweat and bike grease. Jason rolled up and stopped, but since he didn’t know how to change a tire either, he resorted to staring at us quietly before offering up an extra spare just in case and taking off.

I felt so helpless and frustrated. I should have been done with this stupid race by now, but instead I was stranded on the side of the road with a shitty bike with one flat tire that I didn’t know how to fix. My mood kept switching from anger to embarrassment to amusement. As Beth and I continued to fumble, I looked up and saw a tiny middle-aged woman running across the street with a pump in her hand. She pulled a Nick Burns, Your Company’s Computer Guy on us and commanded us to “MOVE!” before taking over and expertly changing the flat. I stood there and watched her in awe. This lady knew her shit. (She informed us she cycles and that we indeed did not know what the hell we were doing.) With my tire now fixed (it was a good thing Jas stopped to give us a spare spare, because we broke the valve on Beth’s and ended up needing a backup) and feeling eternally grateful to both this Good Samaritan and to Beth, I took off and finished the rest of this godforsaken bike ride.

Bike time: 1:26:23 (a whopping 10.4 mph)

When I rolled into transition, it looked like a ghost town. Most everyone had been finished with their race for quite some time now while I still had to run three miles. Because of my ridiculous stubbornness (thanks to both my Korean mom and my Kelley genes), however, I soldiered on, intent on finishing this fucking race. I can’t quit my first triathlon! No matter how terrible my finish time, I needed to cross that finish line.

Transition 2

Because my transitions have always been halfway decent and since I was fueled by “my bike totally sucked” rage, I practically hurled my bike at the rack, grabbed my shoes, and was in and out of there in 1:29.

Run Summary

My legs were relatively fresh thanks to the excruciatingly long rest I had on the bike leg, so I blazed through the run course, passing the handful of people who were still racing. Most of them looked miserable, but a couple of people looked as pissed as me, which led me to believe that they also had some bike issues. The run course was pretty crappy — I ran through sprinklers, an industrial business park, and through a wet and grass clipping-filled soccer field before heading back to the finish. My shoes got destroyed but I didn’t care, I just wanted to put this whole damn thing behind me.

Run Time: 24:31 (8:10 min/mile, which was pretty fast for me at the time)

Overall time: 2:05:07

I came in dead last in my age group, but I did manage to beat a few people overall.

Even though my first ever triathlon was a spectacular failure, I did manage to learn quite a few things:

1. No, you won’t drown during the swim portion of the race — just stay calm and focused and you’ll be fine
2. Know how to change a freakin’ tire; you will be tested at some point, whether it’s during a race or just during a training ride (that season I ended up getting five flats, so by the end of 2008, I became a pro at changing tires)
3. Don’t expect the race to go perfectly, because something can (and oftentimes will) go wrong
4. How your race goes depends on your attitude and how you react in the face of adversity
5. Don’t ever give up on yourself

So yeah, my first triathlon was a big clustercuss. Oh well, they can’t all go great, right? I’ve gotten a lot better since then and have learned even more about myself and about the sport, so barring some sort of catastrophic incident tomorrow, I should be able to post a huge course PR. Of course, if I get another flat tire, I’m going to assume it’s the Triathlon Powers That Be’s way of telling me I shouldn’t do the Issaquah sprint ever again…but at least now I know how to change a flat, so even if I go in expecting the worse, I can still come out on top.

I’m all for these folks feeling empowered and strong and getting into good shape, but fast-tracking Biggest Loser contestants into elite races is ridiculous. Just because they’re a quasi-celebrity doesn’t mean they should be able to bypass the stringent qualification requirements or shouldn’t have to throw their name into the lottery and hope, like thousands of other athletes do every year, that they get chosen. To me, letting a Biggest Loser contestant do Kona or “run” the Boston Marathon is a slap in the face to the hard working athletes who bust their butts to train and qualify for these races.

I know the argument is that they’re inspiring people to get off the couch and get in shape, but the same point can be made by having them sign up for a regular Ironman event or marathon. The majority of these alumni can’t qualify for Boston or Kona. Hell, most fit people can’t qualify, yet NBC is telling us that all we have to do is become morbidly obese, get on a TV show and let a couple of melodramatic trainers scream at us while we struggle to do box jumps and lose weight, and then we can move to the front of the Kona or Boston line? Screw the 3:10 qualifying marathon time — all my boyfriend has to do to race Boston is gain 100 lbs and he’ll be invited to power walk it in a Biggest Loser t-shirt while tens of thousands of hard working, serious athletes run by him.

The triathlons are even worse. The Biggest Loser recently invited some alumni back to do an Olympic distance triathlon and awarded the winning male and female each $25,000. Yep, $25,000. For an Olympic distance race. Do you know in which place you would have to finish at the Ironman World Championships to make as much as these stupid contestants made for finishing their crappy race?

2nd place, which pays out $30,000.

Yeah, that’s right, the 2nd fastest Ironman triathlete in the world only made $5,000 more than a Biggest Loser contestant who wouldn’t even be able to win his or her age group in a typical Olympic distance triathlon.

Former Biggest Loser winner Matt actually raced Kona in 2010, and guess how he did? He didn’t make the official cutoff and instead finished after 17 hours. With proper training and barring any physical or mechanical malfunctions, there is practically no reason you can’t finish an Ironman within the cutoff time. It’s a formidable distance, sure, but they give you an extremely generous window in which to finish. Matt wasn’t in good enough shape to do an Ironman, let alone the World Championships, plain and simple. Yet millions of viewers think, “Wow, Matt is an Ironman and a hardcore athlete because he competed in the World Championships!” Well, not really. He didn’t make the cutoff time. He cut corners to get there, and look what happened.

I think Tara will do better than Matt — she seems like she’s in better shape and can actually finish Kona in under 17 hours, provided she puts in the training and takes it seriously. But do I think she should be racing Kona in the first place? Unless she qualified, got a lottery slot, or bought a charity slot (and by “bought,” I mean that she bought it, not NBC), no, she shouldn’t be participating in the World Championships. These races were designed for the best of the best, not the least fat of the formerly fat.

The Biggest Loser is so focused on making overweight people feel better that they’ve disrespected and overlooked those who train not just to be healthy and fit, but to be the very best among the majority of the field. As a middle of the pack athlete who will probably never be fast enough to qualify for Kona and who would have to work really hard to qualify for Boston, I think it’s pretty ridiculous how quickly and easily these contestants can achieve the dreams and goals that so many legitimate athletes desperately try to reach every day.

“Mr. Goodman agreed, though his main concern now isn’t how he looks in the mirror, but making sure that he isn’t ‘chick-ed’ at the next race — slang for being beaten by a woman.”

Really, Mr. Goodman? You’re more concerned about being passed by a female triathlete than you are about how fit and healthy you are? You’re a fucking asshole.

This isn’t the first time I’ve come across a blog post or an article either written by or about a male triathlete where they get all butthurt about the possibility of getting “chicked” and talk about it like it’s the most demeaning and horrible thing a triathlete can experience. Ordinarily, I’m a pretty laid-back person with a sense of humor, but I find the stigma of “getting chicked” to be offensive and sexist. Do these guys honestly expect to beat every woman who’s racing? If so, they damn well better be Craig Alexander because unless they’re a professional triathlete at the top of their game, they’re gonna get passed by a girl who’s faster than them.

The best and most obvious example of a woman who chicks most of the field is Chrissie Wellington. In 2009 she took first place at the World Championships in Kona and set a new women’s course record with a finish time of 8:54:02. Perhaps more impressive than her champion title and course record is the fact that she took 23rd place overall, beating 79 male pros and 1,245 amateur men. Chrissie Wellington and the other active female pros are faster than the average triathlete. Hell, they’re faster than most elite triathletes. They’ll certainly out-race a chauvinistic age grouper who gets his panties in a bunch at the thought of someone with a vagina out-swimming, biking and running him.

It’s not just the female pros who will kick your ass — I know plenty of female age groupers who can out-race most of the competition, male or female, and make it look easy. Many of my teammates have busted out Ironman times that the average male triathlete wouldn’t dream of accomplishing. They swim like dolphins, bike faster than you can believe, and run at a seemingly unsustainable pace. They take top accolades at most of their races, and they work hard and train long hours to get as good as they are. To be disgusted by the notion of getting “chicked” is not only insulting to all female triathletes who are racing and trying their best, it’s ignorant and dismissive of the athletes out there who truly excel in the sport and deserve recognition as being great instead of “pretty good for a girl.”

Let’s return to Mr. Goodman. On June 6th, 2010, he participated in the Hope in Motion walk, run, and ride event. Mr. Goodman placed 289th out of 571 people. Over 100 women beat him. He also did the Jarden Westchester Triathlon on September 26th, 2010, and finished in a time of 2:31:38. 18 females had a faster day than him. Looks like he got “chicked” hardcore. Maybe Mr. Goodman should stop worrying about a female passing him on the bike or catching him on the run and instead focus on his own race. After all, the chances are high that he’s already been beaten by a female — she was just so fast that he never saw her.

Don’t make a big deal about getting “chicked” — it makes you look like a sexist douchebag who’s more focused on out-racing girls than on being healthy and active and racing the best race you can, period. Females are tough, fast, and determined. If you’re threatened by that, you better either get a hell of a lot faster or stop doing triathlons, because we’re not going to hold back to avoid hurting your machismo.

Lookin' good, stud

Three things:

1. I’m pretty sure this isn’t legal for races (along with water wings, flippers, and a river boat fan strapped to your back)
2. If you need this head snorkel device to swim, you probably shouldn’t be doing triathlons
3. I bet this dude swims faster than me

If I saw this dude in the water before the race, I’d smuggle some Nerds into the lake and dump them into the snorkel before the gun went off. That’ll teach him!…yeah, he’s definitely a faster swimmer than me. They all are.

Update: According to Jason, who was un-lazy enough to do 30 seconds’ worth of research, the USAT apparently does allow snorkels, although the Subaru series and Ironman Canada does not. You could feasibly use a snorkel at Ironman Tempe or Coeur d’Alene, although you’d look like a humongous dweeb (albeit a potentially slightly faster swimming dweeb).

I woke up at 5:30 am and de-groggied as best I could before meeting my swim group at Madison beach at 6:15. The previous several days had been very warm and sunny in Seattle, so naturally the morning of the swim was gray, windy, and chilly. The Weather Gods seriously hate me. When we drove across 520 towards the swim start, we could see the wind whipping the water up against the floating bridge. Of course. The first time I do this stupid race, Lake Washington decides to release the Kraken and try to drown me. This is why I hate swimming.

We arrived at Medina and picked up our packets, then watched the wind swirl the chop up so it was nice and terrifying. Docks were swinging, swimmers were chattering and shivering, and I stared across the lake convinced that the shoreline across from me was getting further and further away.

Me looking like a paunchy old Asian man asking Sara if we really need to do this

There were four waves of swimmers distinguished by their swim caps: Fast, Less Fast, Respectable, and You Swim Like a Toddler with Raptor Arms (also known as the Pink wave). Naturally, Teresa stuck me in the slow wave because she wasn’t certain I’d even be out of the water by the time Ironman Canada started.

Slow in the water, but fast and fierce eaters

The event itself started at 7:30, but since I was going last I got to watch a multitude of athletes crawl into the water and promptly get bitch-slapped by the waves. I killed time by trying to look bad-ass in my wetsuit that gives me the illusion of having muscle definition:

It didn't work

Eventually it was our turn to climb into Lake Washingmachine. I lucked out since I breathe to my right and the chop was coming from the left, but that was the extent of my good fortune. The first half hour or so went decently — I swam fairly well with my group and sighted off our kayaker since I couldn’t see anything remotely sightable on the other side of the lake.

Soon enough, however, I stopped thinking, “Hey, this isn’t so bad” and returned to my regularly scheduled “I hate this shit, this sucks so hard” mindset. I thought about how warm and cozy Jason was still sleeping in bed (all you have to do to get out of Swim for Life is launch yourself 30 feet off your bike) and cursed Teresa for encouraging me to do this. (I tend to curse her a lot when it comes to swimming-related activities. When will the day come where I curse her for buying me a giant delicious cake?)

To make matters worse, the chop kicked up and I’d often find myself plunging my left hand into air as a wave would pick me up and toss me around like a rag doll. Even breathing to the right didn’t help much after a while — there’d be rotations where I’d try to breathe and end up catching a flood of water. Even worse than that was the fact that the kayak seemed to instantly disappear, leaving me with nothing to sight off. I’d look up and see the kayak, swim three strokes, and then look up again and see that the stupid thing had drifted like a mile away. I was still too far away from the shore to be able to see the condos prominently, so I just gave up and swam in a general direction, hoping for the best.

At one point I popped up to see where I was at, and while I was dutifully estimating how much further I needed to go, some kayaker from another group ran right into me. He apologized a million times while I tried not to get pulled underneath him. I just sighed, shoved away from the kayak, and resumed swimming. This swim was the suck.

After what seemed like several hours, two things happened: first, I finally spotted shore and was able to make out both the condo landmark and a bunch of people on the beach. Secondly, out of nowhere I started craving an English muffin with peanut butter on it. Fueled by ravenous hunger and the overwhelming desire to get the hell out of the water, I pushed on.

Unfortunately, simply spotting the beach didn’t insta-warp me to shore. I swear that from the time I spotted the crowd of swimmers who had finished the swim to the time I actually got there, I mysteriously swam an extra 4 miles despite the fact that the distance was only 2.5. It took FOREVER. I was so frustrated that I wouldn’t exhale in the water so much as force the air out of my lungs with a guttural scream.

I never felt so happy to hit the milfoil that grows close to shore. That tangly feathered nastiness was such a relief, and I dragged my frustrated, half-drowned ass onto the sandy beach. I took roughly two steps ashore before someone sneak-took my photo, paparazzi-style. I have no recollection of this whatsoever:

What Batman would look like if he were more Asian and could barely swim

I ran into Kirsten, my swimming buddy, who had also just finished. As I followed her to retrieve our gear bags from the kayak, I stopped to hoark a giant phlemmy loog in a horrifically un-feminine way. Kirsten smiled politely as I bashfully muttered something about how swimming makes me mucousy. I hung around long enough to steal a giant apple, then ducked out so I could go home and tell Jason how he missed such a joyous swim.

After the race, I received an email from the Swim for Life organizer that started off with this gem:

“In the middle of the night, five hours before the start of this year’s swim, the floating dock at Medina was rocking so violently in 40 mph wind that its two ends alternated being completely and loudly submerged. Not surprisingly, even though the wind had abated a bit by 7:30 AM, we still had our choppiest swim in 13 years and had more swimmers than usual requesting to get pulled from the water.”

My swim time was about 10 minutes slower than where I wanted it to be, but considering the conditions, I guess I didn’t do too bad. Hopefully things will go more smoothly in Canada — I guess if I can swim 2 1/2 miles in rough, ugly chop, I should be able to bust out 2.4 in a much calmer lake while drafting behind hundreds of athletes.

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.

First of all, Lake Stevens sucks. If Washington state had a hillbilly cousin, Lake Stevens would be that hillbilly cousin’s poo-crusted butthole. It’s such a crappy town that the only thing the official Ironman race catalogs can advertise about the area is that it has a Buzz Inn Steakhouse, which looks about as classy as the bar where Jodie Foster got raped in The Accused.

Her haircut is still considered trendy in Lake Stevens

The town literally consists of this skeezy restaurant, a Subway, a crappy foodmart, a burger shack, and, inexplicably, a town museum (maybe they wanted to commemorate the day they scored a Subway franchise). To answer your next question, no, there are no hotels in Lake Stevens, so if you’re thinking of flying in to do this race then lucky you, you get to stay in Everett or a neighboring city. (And no, Seattle is not “twenty minutes away,” as I heard one race official tell someone over the phone; it’s more like 50 minutes.)

Secondly, the “lake” part of Lake Stevens is filthy. It smells terrible and is full of garbage. When Jason swam in it the day before the race, he said the bottom of the lake was littered with beer cans and junk. Teresa said she spotted an old rusted chair while swimming. Jason and his dad once saw a half-submerged mattress in the lake after they finished a bike ride, and I had the pleasure of experiencing an obese kid with a rat tail throwing firecrackers into the lake as I was standing in it for a post-workout ice bath.

This is a form of child abuse, people!

This lake is the town’s urinal — they don’t give a crap about it and they certainly don’t take care of it, so excuse me for not wanting to pay a couple hundred dollars to do a race that involves swimming in it for 1.2 miles.

Thirdly, the bike course is horrible. It’s two loops and is a challenge for sure, with a few tough hills, a lot of false flats, and many twists and turns. However, what I hate most about the course is that the town’s inhabitants are so mean and inconsiderate to cyclists that it makes for a stressful, miserable ride. Every time I’ve ridden the course I’ve had some redneck in a Ford F-150 angrily honk at me as he passes me at 50 mph. And surprise surprise, Ironman didn’t close off the course during the actual race so my friends said they kept getting passed by jerks in cars who would angrily swerve and honk at all of the cyclists who were racing. Jesus Christ, this race is one day out of the year — you’d think that these a-holes could show some courtesy and put up with a few hours of inconvenience, but no, they’ve gotta get to Walmart or a monster truck rally or a Larry the Cable Guy viewing party or wherever the hell they’re rushing to.

And yes, this is the type of place that would likely have drivers who buy "truck balls" for their vehicles

The cherry on top of this turd sundae was the expo hall for the race. Race organizers had the expo hall in Everett, because, as I’ve already mentioned, there is nothing in Lake Stevens. Fun fact: Everett has an events center. Logically, you would think that the packet pickup, race briefing and expo hall would be at the events center or somewhere similarly sized…and you’d be wrong. Apparently the organizers decided that they wanted the expo hall to match the ghettoness of the actual race itself, so they held it in a Holiday Inn that was simultaneously hosting a Cash for Gold trade show. The lobby was a mess of athletes running into old, obese people who stank of ashtrays and were trying to turn in their gold brooches for fifty bucks.

Typical Cash for Gold customer at the hotel

Organizationally, the expo hall was a disaster. There were nearly 900 people signed up for the race, and the organizers were forcing each athlete to attend a mandatory meeting before they were allowed to pick up their race packet. There were four meeting times, one of which was reserved for the elite triathletes. The meeting room held about one hundred people. You do the math: clearly, not everyone is going to be able to squeeze into the room for the meeting. Did they think about this obvious logistical nightmare?

No, of course not; instead, they had some pissy volunteer with a beer gut and a 70′ porn ’stache angrily turning away athletes at the door when they tried to squeeze in and attend the meeting, sighing as if it was a huge personal burden. “Jesus Christ,” he’d whine, “There’s no more room. You have to come back in an hour” before shutting the door in their faces. Fuck that guy — the whole point of a volunteer is to make the athletes as comfortable and as prepared as possible. When you’ve got volunteers being rude to the racers, they’re creating a hostile and unwelcoming environment. Racing that distance is stressful enough as it is — you don’t need a poor man’s Burt Reynolds with a power trip barking at you and telling you what to do.

"Go away, we're full."

Speaking of the “mandatory meeting,” that is the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard. I’ve done three half Ironman races and I’ve never been forced to go to an athlete meeting before picking up my packet. There is nothing unique about the Lake Stevens race to where athletes have to be subjected to hearing someone drone on for forty minutes about the course and the token safety information. Oh really, the swim starts here and ends here, and the bike is a two-loop course, and the run is ALSO a two loop course? Wow, I haven’t heard that information since I read it on the goddamn website! Thanks so much for rehashing this for me! Seriously, offer the meeting to people who are nervous and haven’t done a race of this caliber before, but let the veterans and pros skip it — that’s what waivers are for, people.

I honestly have never seen a race this ghetto, unprofessional, cheap or poorly organized — not a half distance, an Olympic, a sprint, or any running races. There’s no way this race is worth a $225 sign up fee. My advice to anyone who’s not raced Lake Stevens before and is considering it — skip it. And to the Ironman race organizers, my advice to you is to either lower the registration fee by $100 or move the race altogether. Lake Stevens is a shithole that doesn’t respect athletes or take care of the course. Washington has better locations for a half Ironman. If the organizers want to maintain the prestige and value of the Ironman brand, I suggest they do something to improve the image of the Lake Stevens race.