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.

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.

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!

Last weekend, I swam a length and brought my head up when I got to the end of the pool. The first thing I saw was a pair of feet. I looked up and Rusty was peering down at me, instructing me to widen my left arm entry. I nodded and took off to swim to the other end of the pool. 20 yards later, I pop my head up and see…another pair of feet. I sigh and look up, and Bridget is staring down at me. What does she say? “Widen your left arm.” Gahhhhhh, I already heard that at the other end of the pool. Boo, hiss.

So now I can’t slack when I think the coach isn’t looking because the coach is always looking…all three or four of them. Group workouts just got a whole lot harder…damn those knowledgeable coaches. They really should mind their own business and let me make little to no progress in the water. ;)

Lesson learned: If you have to share a lane with someone, make sure you hop in when he or she isn’t at the same end as you. Also, getting the swimmer’s attention and letting him/her know that you’re going to be sharing is a plus. (I recommend whacking the swimmer in the head with a water noodle, or maybe dipping your toe into the water and going “Yoo hooooooooo.” Or maybe not.)

Scenario #2: Sharing a Lane
Scenario #2 occurred when Jason and I arrived at the public pool near our house to do a swim workout. We showed up after work, so the pool was pretty packed. There were four lanes available: Easy, Medium, Fast, and Very Fast. The Easy lane had 2 swimmers in it and the other lanes had 4. Logically, Jason and I opted to go into the Easy lane because it was the least crowded. (Also, we’re slow swimmers. Don’t you judge us.)

We started our workout and eventually the woman in our lane left, leaving us with an overweight older man sporting baggy red swim trunks, gigantic goggles and some ridiculous pool accessories. His workout consisted of “running” up and down the lane, and he was quickly getting irate that Jason and I were swimming and constantly passing him. He got so irritated that he stopped at one end of the pool, glared at us for a few laps, and finally resorted to complaining to the lifeguard that we were swimming too fast for the Easy lane. Yeah, that’s right, Jason and I got tattled on by an old man who was jazzercizing during lap swim.

As expected, the lifeguard shrugged at the dude as if to say, “What the hell do I care?” Unsatisfied, the man waited until we swam back to his end and started whining to us about how we’re swimming too fast, dagnabbit! (If he had a cane he would have shook it at us.) Jason pointed out to him that this lane was by far the least crowded and that it’s not fair for him to hog a lane to himself just because he’s excruciatingly slow. They continued to argue back and forth (but thankfully refrained from angrily splashing each other), with the man eventually challenging Jason to guess how old he was. Jason’s response, logically, was “I don’t see how that matters.” Our swimming companion countered that he was sixty-something years old, and I’m not sure if we should have been impressed that such a “geezer” was doing a swim workout, guilted into respecting our elders and giving him the lane, or what. We kind of just stared at him until he finished his tirade and left the pool.

Lesson learned: If it’s lap swim hours and you’re using that time to NOT SWIM LAPS, you shouldn’t get pissed when actual swimmers who need to do a workout have to share with you (and repeatedly pass your non-buoyant ass).

Scenario #3: Infringing on Someone Else’s Space
I had the following conversation with my friend Matt over Gmail chat:

Matthew: last night at the pool there was a wait
so the protocol is you put your name on the whiteboard and you start waiting
and then as lanes free up you remove your name

Me: the pool had a wait?
you don’t share lanes?
what the hell

Matthew: nope, no splitting lanes. anyway, i ended up showing at the exact time that like 4 people started their swims
so I had to wait for like 25 minutes for a lane

Me: aw

Matthew: so as soon as my lane opened up, this fat old lady with giant space goggles walks out of the dressing room and plops into my lane
and begins to “water walk”

Me: hahaha
“Ooh, I’m really movin’ now!”

Matthew: so I walked over and said “you’re in my lane, that’s the whiteboard, it’s my turn, out you go!”

Me: haha, nice

Matthew: and she said “well the lane next to this one should open up soon”
so I just stared at her in silence for like 15 seconds until she got out of my lane and proceeded to go into the lane next to it
which had a swimmer in it doing laps

Me: did he get mad?

Matthew: he stopped swimming and told her to get out of his lane
so she went into the lane next to that one
which ALSO had swimmers
it was pretty funny

Me: geez

Matthew: you think she’d get the fucking idea and get out of the pool
and go sit in the hottub and wait like everyone else

Me: so how many lanes did she get kicked out of

Matthew: well, she finally got into open swim
which is the end of the pool that’s full of fatties with large goggles
so she was reunited with the herd
like a whale lost in the bering sea

Me: meeting back up with its pod
did she jump over a kid standing on a wall pumping his fist in the air?

Matthew: FREE FATTTYY
yeah, pretty much
normally i’m not one to make fun of someone’s weight
but if you steal my lane, i’m gonna insult your weight

Lesson learned: If your pool has certain rules, you need to abide by them. Also refer back to Scenario #2’s lesson about being respectful to actual swimmers doing an actual swim workout. Oh, and finally, don’t piss off Matt when he’s swimming or he’ll insult your weight.

I finally got off my lazy ass and picked up my suit yesterday. I had to try it on to make sure it fit well, and once I squeezed my flabby body into it I wanted to take some pictures but my camera battery was dead. I ended up lounging around the house and reading crap on my laptop for 30 minutes while sweating in my wetsuit until my battery was charged enough to snap a couple photos. At one point Jason shouted from upstairs, “Do you still have your wetsuit on?!” I said, “Um…”, and he came downstairs, saw me, and burst out laughing.

Anyway, for your viewing pleasure:

I tried going for a cool superhero pose but ended up looking mentally disabled

This is exactly what I look like when I run to the transition area from the swim

The only time you’ll see me smiling and swimming at the same time

I’m looking forward to trying this bad boy out in the open water and seeing if it makes any sort of difference in my swim. I expect it to turn me into Dara Torres — I have the technology to be bigger, faster, strongerrrrrr. Or at least post a sub-50 minute 1.2 mile swim…

I don’t know what it is about swimming, but it feels like every other swim I have goes terribly. One day I’ll have what I think is a good swim. I’ll get in the pool and feel pretty good and think, “I could swim and swim and swim forever!” Then, no joke, the next time I get in the pool I’ll be gasping for air after 4 lengths and flailing my legs like a fool. My shoulder will ache, I’ll swallow roughly a gallon of questionable YMCA water, and I’ll dejectedly watch some a-hole flying back and forth in the lane next to me, doing his fancy flip turns in his one-size-too-small Speedo. (How on earth he glides through the water aerodynamically with those plum smugglers dangling is beyond me.)

And don’t get me started on the actual technique. There are at least a dozen things you have to remember to do with your body when you’re swimming. My mind keeps racing and I can barely keep track of it all. When I’m swimming, I’m thinking, “Head down. Don’t look at the ceiling when you breathe. Don’t windmill your arms. Fingers together. High elbows. Do a good ‘catch.’ Finish your damn stroke! Push! Turn on your side. Reach out. No, further. Small kicks — from the hips. Don’t bend your knees. Keep your legs up. Abs tight. Oh, breathe. Breathe!” I’m not coordinated enough to prevent myself from running into corners or tripping up stairs, let alone remembering (and sustaining) 50 swimming tips while I’m flailing in the water. If I focus on my legs, my arms get all stupid. If I’m conscious of improving my catch, my legs go all crooked. It’s like my limbs react oppositely to each other.

So yeah, swimming is bullshit. Pool swimming is stupid, open water swimming is really stupid, and dry land swim conditioning classes are uber-stupid (and make my triceps all hurty). I hate it, and yet I subject myself to it a few times a week. Why? Because I am stubborn. Because I begrudgingly want to get faster and look like less of a spazz when I swim. Because one day I’d like to be better than a mediocre athlete. And because there’s no good way to cheat at swimming (scuba gear ain’t exactly subtle), so I guess I’m just going to have to learn. I know, bullshit, isn’t it?

Teresa teaches the swim conditioning class, and for good reason. She swam for the University of Nevada-Reno and is one fast mofo. My triathlon trainer is often the first female out of the water during races, and she was the fastest female swimmer in her age division at the Kona World Championships. She is pretty much twice as fast as me in the water. It’s depressing. I remember that for my first open water swim she gave me like a 5 minute head start before swimming after me, and she and I got to the buoy at the same time. Sigh.

Anyway, I signed up for an hour of interval bike training and then did the swim conditioning class immediately afterwards. I’m not that hungry in the mornings so all I had to eat before working out was 3/4 of a Kashi Go Lean bar and some water. By the end of my dual workout I was ready to devour a mid-size farm animal.

Betsy was my swim conditioning buddy that morning. We started by squatting down and chucking a huge weighted ball back and forth to each other, then we did about 40 triceps dips. After more ball passes and a second set of dips I was already feeling the dreaded jell-o arm effect…and we were only about 10 minutes into the workout. Oh God, I was in trouble.

Let me pause and show you roughly what my triceps look like:

I have the arm strength of a feeble cartoon octogenarian, and every exercise during this class was exploiting them with sadistic, unrelenting glee.

Teresa made me get on the Vasa trainer, where I repeatedly failed to properly pull my arms back in the “catch” position. My wimpy arms were quivering under the teeny amount of weight Teresa had given me. After I half-assed about 20 reps, I switched with Betsy and dejectedly watched her adjust the tension and hammer out a ton of swim strokes with perfect form. I wish I had Betsy’s triceps. But I don’t. I have Mr. Burns-esque triceps.

After 45 minutes of non-stop triceps abuse, I headed home to shower and get ready for work. I knew I’d be in trouble when I could already feel the soreness of my arms a couple hours after the class ended. Sure enough, the next day I felt like Ralphie’s brother from A Christmas Tale, only instead of not being able to put my arms down, I couldn’t raise them more than halfway. I was rockin’ John McCain arms the entire weekend. Showering was hell, pulling my hair back was hell, rolling on deodorant was hell, changing shirts was hell. Jason quickly got tired of hearing my agonized shrieks whenever he’d try to hug, squeeze, or otherwise vaguely touch my arms and lats:

[Jason and I are laying on the couch watching TV. He adjusts his weight and brushes up against my arm.]
Me: “Aghhhhhhh, don’t do that!”
Jason: “What?”
Me: “You hit me!”
Jason: “I barely touched you!”
Me: “Well it hurt! Don’t do that!”
Jason: “You’ve got to be kidding me…”
Me: “Seriously, I am so sore…so, you’re coming to the class with me next week, right?”

You know how some people are like “I love feeling sore after a workout! It’s so satisfying!”? Well, I’m all for post-workout soreness but this was just obscene. Seriously. Friends don’t let friends get that sore. (I’m looking in your direction, Teresa.) Anyway, even though I got my ass kicked and my wimpy arms got bitch-slapped left and right, I’m determined to take the class every week to strengthen up and hopefully shave some minutes off my swim time. If nothing else then at least maybe I’ll be able to do a frickin’ pull up by the end of the season (wanna help me with that, T?).