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!

We packed up some things for the weekend and were just about to leave when Jason randomly decided to call his dad and see if he wanted to tag along. Brief aside: Jason’s dad is awesome. He’s the kind of spectator you want watching you race because he’s genuinely interested in athletics and sports. He’ll show up at 5 am to watch things get set up and will wait around all day until the race ends. Best support system ever.

Anyway, surprisingly enough, Jason’s dad wanted to tag along at the last minute so we headed to his parent’s house and picked him up for the long haul to Penticton. (Or, rather, we drove to Jason’s parents’ house and Jason’s dad drove from there. Woo hoo, free ride!) The area in and around Penticton is gorgeous — huge lakes, rolling hills and valleys, wine country galore. I’ve also never seen a town embrace the Ironman like Penticton. There were signs everywhere welcoming athletes and advertising the Ironman. Hell, the town Subaru dealership is even called “The Ironman City Subaru.” After coming from the most redneck, anti-Ironman Ironman race I’d seen, Penticton felt like I’d died and gone to athlete heaven.

I should wipe my ass with this postcard and send it to the fine townsfolk of Lake Stevens.

When we got into town, we made our way to the house that we were staying at for the next couple days. My friend/chiropractor/fellow triathlete Nathan was racing Canada and had rented a house, and he had an extra room to spare. What I didn’t expect was for the house to look like the family who owned it had just left hours before we got there — personal photos and whatnot were left out, making me feel like I had just broken into someone’s house and decided to crash there, Goldilocks-style.

Undoubtedly because Nathan despises me for canceling so many chiro appointments, he decided to save this room for me and Jason:

That poster of Zac Efron holding the camcorder was pointed right at the bed. Ew.

It's like the Disney Channel barfed all over the walls.

Okay, that's just creepy.

Not only was this girl obsessed with Zac Efron…

…she also seemed to side with Team Brown:

Awkward.

Jason’s dad opted to sleep on the floor since he was a last-minute house guest, so the three of us spent the night inside a 13-year old girl’s room, surrounded by glossy two-dimensional teen heartthrobs, nightmare-inducing clowns, and a lavender phone shaped like a pair of lips.

Race day arrived, and we awoke to find an amusing checklist left on the counter top by one of the racers staying in the house:

Gotta remember to glide that chode!

We headed to the start to watch the race and to support our friends.

Swim course

I was absolutely blown away by the crowd of people who showed up to support the race. There were groups of spectators everywhere, and they cheered just as loudly for non-pros as they did the pros. It was by far the most supportive fans I’d ever seen. (No joke, Jason, his dad and I even got cheered on by people when we went for a 6 mile run. It made our wimpy little workout seem like a major accomplishment.) The race was amazingly well organized, too — I’ve never seen anything like it. The last couple of people who emerged from the swim received deafening cheers and screams because they were dangerously close to missing the swim cutoff. Thankfully, they made the cut and were able to enjoy the thrill of getting their wetsuits stripped off by volunteers. (BTW, if you’re looking to purchase a wetsuit, be sure to read some triathlon wetsuit reviews before choosing the right one — you definitely want to have a good fit if you’re dragging yourself through 2.4 miles of water amidst 2,500 other people.)

All day long I saw all sorts of people racing Canada. There were pros, old people, young people, overweight people, (lots of) skinny people. I even saw the guy who races each year with a new “gimmick” — I’ve heard that in previous years he’s raced dressed as Elvis and using a one speed bike. This year he once again went the costume route:

I’m not sure if he’s supposed to be a leopard or a cheetah, but either way, that is one impressive getup considering how swelteringly hot the day was.

My favorite race outfit, however, was the guy sporting the Life with Louie t-shirt:

I could only snap a shot of the back of the shirt, but still, that is an awesomely dated and obscure choice of attire for a 140.2 mile race (who runs a marathon in a cotton t-shirt?!).

Eventually my teammates started to pour in. Mark was first, and he absolutely spanked Canada (and deserved to — he trained so hard all year-long and exceeded everyone’s expectations). This picture pretty much sums up how other racers felt to see him nearing the finish:

It was so awe-inspiring to see my triathlete buddies approach the finish line one-by-one. Everyone had a phenomenal race, and I was so excited and proud for them.

The next morning we got up early so Jason and Nathan’s friend could head over to the Expo Hall and sign up for the 2010 Ironman Canada. After much deliberation and a bout of temporary insanity, I did the unthinkable and signed up with them (it only took 3 G-D hours to do it too, and there wasn’t even a rollercoaster at the end of it). I hadn’t planned on committing to a full Ironman so soon, but Penticton really won me over with its beautiful course and the incredible support and organization. So I HTFU’d, plopped down an obscene amount of money, and began counting down the days until next August.

I’ll keep you all updated on my training regimen from now until D-Day — it’s sure to be rife with complaints, blisters, sunburns, near-drownings, early morning grumblings and prep races. Hopefully you’ll come along for the ride and experience a year’s worth of prep for a full Ironman race. I’ll try to make my journey as amusing as possible for you. :)