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).

An accurate expression of how I'm feeling about my workouts lately

This is a taper:

Not the most traditional taper, but it’s how Jas and I roll. We’re less than two weeks away from Ironman Canada and have finally started to scale down our workouts. It couldn’t have come a moment too soon — I’m getting burned out on exercising and just want to get this pesky Ironman over with already.

The taper’s timing was pretty crucial for us — we had a Portland wedding to go to and the Lake Stevens 70.3 race to spectate, so even though we didn’t have as many training hours, we still had to cram in a bunch of stuff over the weekend. We drove down to Portland Friday night and had dinner with a friend of ours. Jason and I got suckered into having a couple beers with our buddy, and after not having drank much lately because of the relentless onslaught of workouts, a measly two beers made me feel a bit tipsy. Stupid training.

On Saturday we woke up and had breakfast with another friend of ours and his girlfriend. It was going to be a super hot day out, plus I didn’t want to run around downtown Portland, so after breakfast I went back to the hotel and ran in the fitness center. My treadmill TV was stuck on MSNBC at full volume, so I ran and watched some “Criminals Caught on Tape” show where the most recent footage was from 2000.

After the run, we showered and got a late checkout. Since the wedding wasn’t starting until 6 pm, we had our bags held and figured we’d find a place to change later. We killed time by seeing a movie and getting some food, then we returned to the hotel and got ready for the wedding ghetto-style by sneaking back into the fitness room and changing in the bathroom. At one point someone came in and started using one of the treadmills. We got a weird look when we finally emerged from the bathroom wearing a suit and a dress. I bet she thought we were a crime fighting duo (or that we just got it on in a gym bathroom. Gross!).

At this point it was nearly 100 degrees outside, but thankfully the wedding was indoors. Unfortunately, the air conditioning didn’t help too much, and by the time the reception started and people were dancing and acting goofy, we were a sweaty, sticky mess. Since we planned on driving back to Seattle after the wedding, I only had a glass and a half of wine while Jason took it upon himself to drink it up one last time before Ironman Canada.

A wined-up Jas and a sweaty me. We aren't in workout clothes for once.

When the dancing started, we had the following exchange:

I start dancing in front of him
Jason, looking concerned: “How much have you had to drink? Are you going to be okay to drive back?”
Me, looking sheepish: “I’m not drunk, I’m just a crappy dancer!”
Jason, laughing: “Oh.”

Thanks, Jas. Eventually we left the wedding and I drove us back to Seattle. I was tired and thirsty and wondering if I’d be able to get up at 4:30 am to catch the start of the Lake Stevens 70.3. We got stuck in construction traffic (seriously, construction traffic at midnight on a Saturday) and didn’t get home until 1:30 am.

Three short, unsatisfying hours later, the alarm went off and Jason got up to head to the race. I was still really tired, so I decided to meet the crew later so I could try and get a bit more sleep. Jason and his dad caught the start of the race and I met up with them before our team finished the bike portion. It was hot and sunny outside, but people seem to race well on the course despite the fact that the lake smells like garbage and the bike stretch is full of rednecks, so our team mostly did well.

Jim and Jas in front of the TN Multisports tent

After the race, we headed home and I went straight for the bed. I had been feeling pretty tired lately, and the weekend took a lot out of me. I slept like a champ, and when I woke up my ear was aching. Cue the paranoia: OH MY GOD I’M GETTING SICK I KNOW IT’S AN EAR INFECTION I WON’T BE ABLE TO RACE CANADA ALL THESE MONTHS OF TRAINING DOWN THE DRAIN OH NO OH NO OH NO

I rested the remainder of the day and got a good night’s sleep, and by Monday I felt fine. Crisis averted! Tapering is a funny thing. On the one hand, it’s giving me some much appreciated time to rest — I’ve been feeling tired lately, and all of the downtime is letting my body finally take a break and recover from the incessant wave of workouts. On the other hand, I feel like sitting on my ass and only doing the occasional two hour workout instead of the customary four in one day is kind of odd. It makes me start thinking crazy crap like, “I’m going to gain weight! I’m going to lose my athleticism and everything I’ve built up! OH GOD I’M WASTING AWAYYYYY”

Since this past weekend, it’s been no more drinking (alcohol, anyway — bring on lots and lots of water) and no more crazy workouts. We’re down to the final stretch — another nine days of taper and rest, and then it’s race day. Holy shit.

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.