Easing into the 62-degree water of Lake Un-Pleasant at the TriSports.com Phoenix Triathlon, my resolve waffled.

It’s cold. It’s cold. It’s cold. It’s cold. It’s cold. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here.

Had I not been the swimmer for Team Chicken and Waffles and Grits, I would have chickened out right then and there – carrying my not-so-badass out of Lake Not-So-Pleasant, peeling off my wetsuit, wrapping myself in a warm towel, sitting in the car and thinking about what I’d done (with the heater cranked up full blast). Instead, with my two teammates, Jason “Waffles” Robert and Ross “Grits” Loftin, encouraging me from the shore, I grimly accepted my fate.

Come to think of it, they weren’t so much shouting their encouragement as they were proclaiming their relief that they weren’t in my bare feet, treading through the wind-driven white-caps of this godforsaken lake. I would like to say that it was sheer grit and determination that propelled me forward when they fired the starting gun, but actually it was more guilt than grit. I couldn’t let my teammates down… but neither could I feel my head, hands or feet.

Continue reading Lake Un-Pleasant →

The sun warmed the bones of a chilly morning, awakening Tempe Town Lake with glittery anticipation, the water as smooth as concrete.

One thousand bicycles stood sentinel on their racks, ready to roll. Shoes laced, sunscreen slathered, heart-rate monitors beeping to life: It was race day – the inaugural Marquee Triathlon – and the slow-but-fierce Bad@ss Bitche$ were ready to rhumba.

The culmination of three months’ worth of training, the Olympic relay consists of a 1,500-meter open-water swim, 25-mile bike and 10k-run. After swimming tsunami-churned surf, chasing snakes in a lake, overcoming gastric disaster at the Splash N Dash and becoming one with the wetsuit, I, the designated swimmer, said, “Bring it on!”

I was ready.

Unfortunately, Tempe Town Lake was not. Less than 24 hours before the starting gun, city health officials shut down the lake for fear of E.coli contamination.

It wasn’t me! I swear!

Continue reading Bad@ss Bitche$ Take Top 10 at Marquee Triathlon →

The Xterra Vortex-3 full-body wetsuit took my breath away the first time I used it. Literally. As a tune-up for the Marquee Triathlon, I entered the 1,000-meter Splash N Dash to test-drive my spiffy new purchase.  By the time I circled to the surface of that race, past the thrashing remnants of hands and heels, I found myself plunging down into the black depths of a nightmare.

One week before the main event, I was more confident of drowning in my own excrement than I was of actually finishing the race. It’d taken me longer to swim 1,000 meters in my speedy new wetsuit than it takes me to do 1,500 in a pool. It was the bad dream of overachievers the world over: I’m sitting in the organic chemistry auditorium with a sharp pencil and a Scantron… How did I find myself here? I haven’t been to class all semester… Alkanes? Alkenes? Alkynes? I don’t know this material… and now I have only 10 minutes to finish this exam or I won’t graduate!

WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!

Continue reading Dr. StrangeGlove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Wetsuit →

We’ve been through this before, but it bears repeating: There is no black line on the bottom of the ocean… nor is there one on the bottom of Tempe Town Lake. Most importantly, there isn’t a push-off wall every 25 meters to give my arms a little breather.

There is merely a series of buoys that I have to circumnavigate, swimming shrink-wrapped in a steel-belted radial and dodging a chorus line of heels and hands. Under water, you can’t see them, but you can feel them – in the champagne remnants of their efforts and the thud of their heels hitting your forehead, or worse, when their hands come up from behind, across your heels and hands, like a giant squid pulling you down to the 14-foot depths of a man-made lake.

Continue reading Water-Logged →

After my open-water adventures in the post-tsunami Pacific went so swimmingly, I decided to enroll in a local, lake-swim clinic to get ready for my forthcoming triathlon. It was being held at Bartlett Lake – not too far from my house – and it was free, which has a special appeal since apparently triathlon is a sport that involves a fetish for investing heavily in precious technology.

Continue reading Lake Water →