Swim, bike, run, keel over

I must confess, I haven't been knitting at all. You might have noted that this happens to a certain extent every summer--it's hard to get motivated to make items designed to keep you warm and cuddly while it feels like your face is melting off. I think it might be worse this year though--I'm at a bit of a loss without my local yarn shop and I just haven't been feeling very inspired lately. I've been dwelling too much on what to do with my life to be very creative.

But that doesn't mean that I've been sitting around all summer. My spouse got a bee in his bonnet about doing triathlons. My first thought: I hate swimming. Second thought: I kind of hate running. We've done a handful of road races in the past, but I'm pretty out of shape on that front. I love cycling though! There exist such events that are exclusively cycling, but who wants to do that right (*cough* me *cough*)??

We have a little kidney shaped pool in our backyard. I started by swimming a few laps in there. It was as terrible as when I was in middle school and on the diving team. Occasionally they wouldn't have enough swimmers to fill all of the events to they'd stick the divers in the last slots--I vividly remember having to do the 100 freestyle at one point (I think that's what, 4 laps?) and after 2 I started to doggie paddle.

Fortunately (and sort of unfortunately, because they're really good) there's a very active triathlon club in the Tri-Cities. They host weekly group swims so we had opportunities to practice swimming in open water, specifically the mighty Columbia River. And it's a damn good thing we did because swimming in open water is TERRIFYING. The first time we went I refused to put my head in the entire time. I was last to come in by at least 10 minutes.

But we kept getting better. Our first race was a sprint tri (Power of Pasco). Here's our setup:

It's our 'transition area' where you go from swim to bike, then later bike to run. And sadly that's the only picture we have, because we had no spectators there for us *sad trombone sound*. I did...okay...in that I finished. I was so worried about the swim that I kind of forgot that I'm not very good at running and didn't focus on it very much. I've been having a lot of tummy cramps since we moved out here and I got a major one about a mile in. I may have walked a ways (shhh don't tell). Spouse did a good job though.

Next we tried an Olympic distance (Titanium Man). Again, I followed the advice of our friend that has done a couple of Iron Man races and attempted to 'crush the bike' since it's the only thing that I'm good at. And yet again I got off the bike and attempted to run with calves that might as well have been blocks of wood. It was like swinging concrete around in an attempt to move forward. All these people that I passed on the bike came lumbering back around me. It was 'Yep, saw you about 20 minutes ago...hey it's the chick in pink....REALLY, THE FAT OLD GUY??...come on, didn't I pass you a half hour ago?' What I'm saying is, I may have walked a ways. Spouse did a good job though. Now he's talking Iron Man....yeah, we'll see. I kind of like having a modicum of a life other than slowly killing myself.

I'm kind of digging the swimming now, though. And I've been trying to get back the knitting spirit. I bought the fall Vogue Knitting (the 'International Issue' ooooh) last time I was at the grocery store. However, I'm not really seeing anything that is tickling my knitting bone. I don't expect to want to make all of the patterns--I mean, I don't read Cosmo and expect to try all 101 Ways to Superfreak  (or do I? ....no, I do not.) But, the only thing that really captured my interest was one of the article blurbs:

Did they seriously just make a pun based on a white supremacist group? I don't know if that's extremely inappropriate or hilarious (both?).