The flood of childhood memories that this one photo brought back...ohhh, to be 10 again and competiting as an IronKid! Yes, if you can get past the terrific hair-do, that IS me on the left...and the little stud on the right is Duster-Buster, 7 years old!

See anyone you recognize? Top of the podium...that's me!!! Now the best part of this photo are the two girls on my left side...Jamie Weiler and Sarah Bickerstaff...still two of my very good friends, 12 YEARS later!

That's what I call good stretching! Pre-race warm up for an IronKids race...can we please discuss the track-suit?!?!? Where did that stylish outfit go??

Talk about BBBBIIIIGGGG shoes that I'm trying to fill...that's JANET EVANS, stud swimmer/olympian/world record holder, between my brother and I! She was the IronKids spokesperson in the 90's, passing out the awards and posing for photos with the kids. I can't believe that I have that honor now...encouraging and inspiring the future generations of triathlon!

That's Dustin and Irv in the middle of the Grand Canyon...Dustin just got back from his trip as swamper/assistant...he took a bunch of great photos, I posted a few below!

Clean, Crisp, Cool water...what more can you ask for as you white-water raft through the rapids in the Grand Canyon?!? Dustin was on the river for 8 days and half of his passengers were a camera crew from the Travel Channel!

Back flip at Havasu...makes you want to sign up for a trip right now, huh?! Go to Grand Canyon Expeditions at http://www.gcex.com/

Here's the START of the Escape From Alcatrz in 2005...jumping off the side of the San Francisco Belle Hornblower...the start is signaled by the boat blowing it's fog horn!

Yep, the boat is still moving, the water is not calm, and we've got all of 4 INCHES of ledge to stand on once we climb over the railing! Good thing they rushed us to climb over, we then hung on for about 10 minutes! I'm pretty sure I'm the one with the silver wetsuit back, green cap, near the right edge of the photo.

And there we are...swimming from Alcatraz Island, The Rock...yellow caps are the Pro Men, green caps are the Pro Women. I'm one of the green caps up front!!

The Last Day, phhhhewwww

This is it…if I can make it through my second run workout of the day…I’ve made it through the HARD part! I’ve already looked ahead at Monday’s training and it’s the start of the downhill to Alcatraz! That will be my motivation while I’m out on the trail later day doing a Fartlek run with 10 x 1 minute at 5K pace with 1 minute easy between!
My mantra will be “after this, its taper time…after this, its taper time…etc”. Hey, we’ve all got our methods of getting through the madness! I’ve started out today’s training pretty good…I had a brick workout in the morning: 1.5 hours on the computrainer with a main set of 5 x 8 minutes at race effort with 4 minutes recovery followed immediately with 10 minutes of running at 10k pace and 10 minutes cool down. I was really happy with how I felt on the bike and during the run…even though I’ve been tired, I felt strong and fast (good feelings since Alcatraz is one week away)!
I’ve got all my Alcatraz travel plans mapped out. I’m taking a different approach this year…last year I kinda turned the trip into a vacation and didn’t focus very much on the actual race…this year I’m flying to San Francisco on Friday morning and then hopping on the BART train into town. No rental cars this year (big expense since I’m not over 25 years old yet). I’m getting off the BART train right outside the Special Olympic Offices and Christine is going to meet me outside.
I’m staying with my friend Christine Wilson, she works for the Special Olympics, because she lives right up the street from the start of the race! We met at the Tiburon Mile in 2004…and she is still connected to the Tiburon Mile and has informed me that there’s a photo of me on the 2006 race poster! Christine just raced the Olympic distance triathlon in Wildflower and did awesome. Now she’s going to be at one of the water stops on the run with her huge triathlon team…same water stop as last year but I’m hoping that I am moving a bit faster when I go by them this year!
So back to traveling…I’ll stay at Christine’s place on Friday and Saturday night…race on Sunday morning and then pack up for my flight back to COS that evening. Last year I was in town for a whole week and missed out on a lot of training. Since the Pro Nationals are only 2 weeks later, I think it will benefit me to get back to altitude and focus on the Long Beach race. Yeah, that’s funny; I’ll be traveling back to California less than 2 weeks later…just a different city.
Here are some of my goals for my personal race at Alcatraz.
First: to be a bit smarter about the course now that I am aware of how much it can kick your butt.
Second: be the first woman out of the water…it’s always fun to lead the race!
Third: finish in the Top 10…because they have prize money 10 deep:)
Lastly: run under 1 hour!!!
Check out the website for the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon. They’ve got a cool thing called the Accenture Triathlon Alert System that you can sign up and ‘track’ me on race day. Basically, you will be alerted (via email) whenever I cross over a timing mat and then you can watch a 30 second clip of me crossing the finish line. They have timing mats at all the major points in the race…swim finish, bike start and finish, run start, bottom and top of the infamous Sand Ladder, and race finish.

Week Summary: HARD TRAINING!

I can’t even begin to describe the last 10 days of training that I have been through…we have done some pretty intense workouts, followed by even more intensity! I got back from Hawaii on Monday and on Tuesday morning I was out on my bike with the group doing a set of race-pace efforts! And that was over a WEEK ago…the workouts didn’t stop there…Coach Cliff has really tested our abilities!
A lot of the things I’m doing are very specific for the Alcatraz race…trail runs, stair climbing, hill repeats on the bike, etc. That reminds me: I need to get my wetsuit out and swim a couple of practices with it to prepare for the 56 degree San Fran Bay water.
This morning we started at 9am with a 2 hour bike ride…first we warmed up over to the Gold Camp climb and then climbed it 4 times! The first and fourth repeats were OYO (on-your-own) pace, but the middle climbs were in group situations with people launching attacks at any point. Talk about having dead legs…the 4th climb was beyond painful and thank goodness that 90% of the ride back to the OTC is DOWNhill!
This afternoon I have a run workout with a few stair climbs thrown into the middle of the tempo run…like my legs aren’t hurting enough:). But I’ve got a date with the ice bath when I finish…I spent 10 minutes in the ice bath yesterday after our intense run workout and I know that it helps all my muscles recover faster.
Yesterday afternoon I finally remembered to take my bike to the mechanic for repairs. I had been riding with broken handlebars since my crash in Honolulu. Since I kept riding all last week, even though I knew they were broken, it was a bit scary climbing hills and putting a lot of pressure on the bars. So today I didn’t have to worry about the bars suddenly snapping in half when I launched attacks on the Gold Camp climb. It’s nice that I can pay the on-complex bike mechanic with home-baked cookies:)!
The cookies came from Tuesday night when Jasmine and I felt the need to bake. We looked up recipes on –line and decided to go with the partially-already-made cookies (reasons for this choice included: less mess, less mixing, less time, and quicker results). We used a Pillsbury recipe with 3 steps: first, bake chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter cookies about the same size; second, mix peanut butter and fudge icing together; finally, spread the mixture on the bottom of a peanut butter cookie and stick it to the bottom of a chocolate chip cookie! Voila…these delicious calorie-bombs got two-thumbs-up from all the triathletes on the third floor in building 10. We baked at Jessica’s house down the road and then brought them back to the OTC and knocked on all our teammates doors at 9pm…one bite and they were all very happy to see us:)! I don’t think any of our cookies had a life span of more than 3 hours!!

Statistics for Business Majors...The Conclusion!

What a difference one test score can make! I was looking forward to holding onto a solid “B” grade in my statistics class with an average score on the final. If I bombed the final exam, I could potentially be looking at a “C”. But I definitely didn’t think that I would ROCK the final so hard that I would bring my overall grade in to the “A” range!!
I sat down the night before we departed for Hawaii and did all the computations that required help from my text book and my binder of notes. I saved everything on my computer and only took a few necessary pieces of paper that had the test questions and correct statistics terms. During the flight to Hawaii and a few hours in my hotel room in Honolulu, I typed up my final exam report. I made sure that everything was pretty, very colorful, very explanative, and thorough.
Good thing the hotel had wireless internet access in the lobby so that I could submit my exam to the professor in time (due date was Sunday, I was actually EARLY with my submission on Friday!). A few days after we got back to Colorado Springs, I thought about checking to see if grades were posted…much to my surprise, they were posted and I was actually happy with the overall result. For the actual final exam, I aced it with 296 points out of a possible 300 which brought my total percent up to 90.4%!
So, one class down, more classes than I want to think about to go until I actually have a MBA…but starting with an A is not too shabby if I do say so myself (tooting my own horn here:)! Now, if anyone gets the great idea to ask me to perform a real statistical problem…you have NOT been paying attention for the last 4 months! But if you want me to write up a really pretty report from the results of the statistical problem, I’m really good at that…I just couldn’t find that class description when I was registering in January!

More Photos...You know you want them:)

Honolulu Triathlon Action Photos
Thanks to Brightroom.com for taking a ton of great race photos.
In the photos you can see Jasmine was wearing #54, Sarah Groff was wearing #52, and I was #53. It just happened to be that we all lined up at the starting line together.

Bronze Buddies in Hawaii! That's Haven...he got third in the men's pro race and he lives near the OTC in a little town called Manitou Springs. It's so close to Colorado Springs that almost half of my bike rides involve riding through Manitou!

JJ Jones, Lesley, and Jazz after the race! Jess is holding one of the roses they gave out at the finish for Moms because it was Mother's Day...we love you MOM:) I would love to be in this photo but I think I was out-for-the-count in the medical tent when it was taken!

HTML is CONFUSING!

But I did figure out how to put links on the side bar >>>>>>>! Look over to the right side of my blog...now I can post links to my sponsors and other cool places that I think you might like to visit! Browse my links for cool places to surf the web and to support my sponsors!!

This is Carly Leonard and I at the St. Anthony's Swim Clinic. She is a tough little athlete who just won the Presidential Fitness Award! My Presidential Fitness award from Middle School is signed by Bill Clinton...pretty scary to realize that her award is signed by only one president later:)!

Racing in Hawaii...More Often Please!

If you’ve read the photo captions already…there is no suspense for the results of my race…I finished 3rd! It was a great race and I am still excited about how the events unfolded. The day started at 3:50am on Sunday morning in Honolulu, Hawaii. Jasmine and I woke up and ate our lucky breakfast: bagel with peanut butter, honey, and a banana with Gatorade to drink. We rushed through our last minute details, like putting sunscreen on, putting ice in our water bottles, and struggling into our skin-tight race suits…then we met our teammates (Jenna and Lesley) and our coach (Barb) at 4:15am to bike to the race course.
I dropped my bag off at transition and then finished my bike warm up with some under-gearing, over-gearing and jumps (translation: spinning my legs really fast, pushing the pedals really hard, and some fast accelerations out of the saddle). After I felt nice and awake on my bike, I went into transition and set up all my gear, got body marked and started my run warm up. I did about 5-10 minutes of jogging and then went through all my activation drills to recruit my muscles and wake them up. After a few accelerations and 10k pace sprints, I felt really good and very excited to get the race started.
I checked over my transition gear one last time, dropped off my running shoes, grabbed my swim cap and goggles and headed to the beach for a quick swim warm up. We ended up sitting on the beach for an extra 15 minutes because they delayed the race start to make sure the roads were completely clear of cars (big thanks to the race director, Bill Burke, for getting such great safety on the roads). I was glad I had a towel with me at the beach to keep warm for those few minutes, the sun was still behind the mountains and it was a bit chilly if you were wet.
The men started a 6:00am and we followed them into the water 5 minutes later. The swim course was like a big, calm pool, 750 meters out, turn around a big buoy, and 750 meters back to the beach for transition 1. I swam a bit slower in this race than I normally do, letting Jasmine draft off my feet, because she and I wanted to work together on the bike. We ended up getting out of the water as a pack of 3 women (Jasmine, Sarah Groff, and I) about 1 minute ahead of the next women. We got onto our bikes and started riding hard as soon as we were out of T1. The three of us worked great together, drafting, rotating and encouraging. There was no sign of anyone catching us from behind…so the first time we saw our chasers was after the turn-around…oh yeah, I managed to crash on the 180-degree turn-around, I didn’t take out my fellow leaders, I just slid along the ground on my side and then get back onto my bike as fast as possible.
We saw that our lead was maintaining it’s size (or getting bigger) so we continued to work hard on the second half. Our coaches were waiting on both sides of transition with walkie-talkies to communicate how much of a lead we had starting the run. I was pleasantly shocked when Barb yelled that we had 2 minutes and 30 seconds…all I had to do was stay on my feet and complete the 10k and I would finish on the podium! Before we got off the bike, I whispered to Jasmine to kick Sarah G’s butt…and she did it…they ran the whole run together but Jasmine put in a great surge with a half mile to the finish line and Sarah Groff could not respond. Thanks to a slightly short bike ride, Jasmine finished in 1:56:51, Sarah was second in 1:57:18, and I crossed the line in 1:58:08 for third!!
After the race, we crammed in some serious celebrating before our 9pm flight back to the mainland. First, we had to pee in a cup for USADA because the first 3 finishers were chosen for drug testing…then we rushed back to the hotel, dropped off our gear, got dressed in our awards ceremony attire and stopped at Denny’s for a yummy post-race Grand Slam for breakfast (it was only 10am at this point!). Jasmine and I rushed back to the Ala Moana Park for the awards ceremony, got our medals and flowers, took a shower of champagne, and picked up our prize money checks!!
We met the rest of our team back at the hotel, packed our bikes and bags, walked to get coffee/mochas/hot chocolates at a café, walked to the beach, played in the water, lay in the sun, sipped Mai Tais, and shopped for souvenirs on the strip. Back in the hotel, we rushed 6 people through the shower in about 30 minutes, lugged our bikes and bags down to the van, loaded them, and drove to the airport.
Our flight home was pretty smooth, I slept for 99% of the time in each airplane, and now we are back in Colorado Springs. Training has already begun…I had a 2 hour bike ride this morning and swim practice is 2 hours from now!

The traditional champagne ceremony...my second time but really the first time I knew how to spray a bottle correctly! I got Jasmine really good about 10 seconds after this photo...and then I ducked behind Haven and stayed pretty dry:)!

The Pro Women podium finishers at the 2006 Honolulu ITU Continental Cup Triathlon...1st: Jasmine Oeinck, 2nd: Sarah Groff, 3rd: ME!!!!

Me, Jaz, Jess, and Erin paying our respects at the statue of the Duke (famous guy in Hawaii). We got a bit of camera time (pre-race interviews) for the OLN TV race coverage on this beach.

This was the amazing view we had from the swimming pool. Looking up at the rainforest-covered mountains made it tough to concentrate on the workout:)!

Yes, these two are really professional triathletes, not models! I know it's hard to believe that from their perfect posing and unwavering facial expressions...but they are workin' it in the Speedo FS2 race suit!

Check out all the pretty triathlete ladies on Waikiki beach at sunset! Left to right: Jenna, Erin, Lesley, Jasmine, Me, Barb, and Jessica.

Aloha & Mahalo (I can speak Hawaiian:)

From the lobby of my hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii! I can’t believe how beautiful the water and the mountains are here on this island…I’ve taken a few photos so far and I can’t wait to load them on my computer when I get home (unfortunately, I did not remember that cord from camera – computer).
We’ve biked around town, seen the race area, run on part of the course, drove the whole bike course, walked through the stores, eaten dinner on the beach, swam in the ocean, and enjoyed the Hawaiian atmosphere. I’m loving my time here and can’t wait for the next adventure.
At 11:30am, some of my teammates and I are walking down to the beach for a pre-race interview by OLN (they are filming and broadcasting the race:)! I’ll have to make this blog short because I need all the 2 hours between then and now to go primp and get ready for the cameras…I sure hope that everyone realizes that was a bit of sarcasm!
Later this afternoon, Katie Baker (she works for USA Triathlon and is a good friend of mine) is going to drive some of us to the North Shore and we are all going to eat dinner there! I’m so excited to see some more of the Island…photos will be taken and posted later…I promise, DAD!
Alright…now it’s time to buckle down, type out the last few pages of my Statistics final exam and then submit it online! Thanks to everyone who sent good-luck wishes to me…I really love getting those, its encouragement to race hard for all the people who have supported me through my life!
Like always…if you want to be on my race press release email list, let me know at sara7411@hotmail.com. ALOHA!

My Brain Hurts

Anybody want to take my final exam in Statistics for MBA? Anybody?? PLEASE?!
Just kidding, I would never cheat…seriously!
I’m finally reading and studying the last chapter of information and then all I have to complete is the final exam. It is due on Sunday, May 14th…Mother’s Day…and the day I’m racing in Honolulu, Hawaii! So I guess that means I will have to finish the test BEFORE the 14th…preferably before I depart for Hawaii (Wednesday morning at 4:45am from the OTC!) so that I don’t have to carry all my heavy book, notebook, and computer with me.
I will be carrying my computer with me no matter what…that’s the reason I bought it…so that I can keep in touch with everyone no matter where I am in the world.
It’s funny to think about this trip because even though it’s such a long flight over a big ocean…I’m actually still going to be in the USA. I keep wanting to pack my electrical plug converter, certain foods that I like, my passport, and other things that are a necessity when traveling this far away from home.
So far, the start list for the race only has 12-13 women entered. Most are from the USA with a few others from Canada. It’s not a big race (like a World Cup) but there are still ITU points up for grabs, prize money, and of course the prestige of winning a race. Hawaii is also the first team race in 2006 for the USA Triathlon U23 team. We have most of the team attending (one girl is not able to attend because of school) and we are going to practice our team tactics in the race (drafting, blocking, waiting, pulling though…those are all examples of how we can help our teammates in the race…mostly on the swim and bike because once the run starts, it is a ‘free-for-all’ to the finish line).
ALOHA!

St. Anthony's - Last Part

After the race was over, I headed to the transition area to see how the DeLand Gang relay team was doing. My mom finished the swim in time to see me finish, my dad was out on the bike course, and their runner was warming up. Mom and I hung around to cheer when they made the bike-to-run switch. In the end, they finished 3rd in the mixed relay category…and I beat their time again:)!
We all went back to the truck to change into nice clothes for the awards ceremony. It was a bit of a wait (about 2 hours) until they started, but they award the pro’s first so that made the wait shorter. Jasmine ended up 7th overall and my roommate Sarah Haskins was 2nd! It was fun to stand on the podium again, surrounded by some of the best women in this sport. We didn’t wait around for the relay award…we got in the truck and started heading home!
Since my brother didn’t come to the race, he drove home from Gainesville and pulled into the driveway about the same time we did. He wanted to spend a bit of time visiting since we both know we aren’t going to see much of each other this year (such a great brother, I know:). He could only stay for the evening because he had to get back for Monday morning swim practice. I introduced him to Jasmine and we all chatted and hung out relaxing…because relaxing is all we wanted to do after racing hard that morning!
It was also by chance that my Aunt Jan was visiting my Grandma in DeLand at that same time and they came over to the house for a short visit. It was like more family members in the house for 30 minutes than all year long!
On Monday morning…guess what…we slept in! LATE! And enjoyed every minute of it! Eventually, we got up and thought about activities. We decided on visiting the beach first, for swimming and sunning and shopping, followed by a long bike ride in the afternoon. For a bit of the ride, Jaz and I met up with the DeLand airport group, but mostly spun easy by ourselves. For dinner we combined a lot of leftovers and watched the movie Flight Plan with Jodie Foster (I’d rate it 3 out of 5 stars).
Tuesday morning we tried to go waterskiing at Carl’s place…but he wasn’t around when we showed up (big bummer). Instead, I took Jaz to the Drop Zone and she went for an airplane ride with my dad who was flying the skydivers. She loved it! Of course I wanted a plane ride…but I had a date with the dentist…by-the-way, my dentist’s name is Dr. Slaughter, how insane is that!?!?
With fresh, clean, shiny teeth, it was time to drive to Port Orange for a light jog and then cool swim with the DBS team. The jog was H-O-T, big surprise in Florida in the middle of the day…and the pool was GREEN, big surprise for real! But it was good to see Coach Steve and the rest of the team, say ‘hi’, swim for 5000 meters, and then get out. We rushed home to get to yoga on time…of course we didn’t make it on time…but it sure felt good to stretch, breathe, and relax for an hour.
The rest of the evening was basically a mad rush…packing laundry, packing bikes, cooking dinner, baking cookies, checking emails, and setting alarms. For 4AM!!!! We had to get up at 4AM for our 6am flight from Orlando. I can’t thank my dad enough for driving us to the airport that early in the morning (I’m not even sure that IS ‘morning’ yet?!). I was able to snag an entire row of seats on the Orlando-Denver flight and caught some much needed zzz’s.
What is the perfect ending to this story??? Jaz and I arrived in COS with more than enough time to re-build our bikes and make the 2pm Gold Camp hill-repeat workout!

St. Anthony's - Part 2

Our thanks go out to the Skaggs family (I raced their daughters in college swimming) for their hospitality on pre-race night because they let us stay at their house. In the morning it wasn’t more than 5 minutes to the race site…but we were still awake at 5am for breakfast. Setting up my race gear in the transition area was uneventful; it’s always nice to realize that you have NOT forgotten anything important. After I finished all the set up, I jogged over to the race start at Spa Beach (it’s about ¾ mile hike!). My dad had a backpack to hold all the clothes and shoes I wore to stay warm right until start time.
Timing was precise and the pro men went off right at 7am; we followed 2 minutes later. The weather had not changed much from the day before…the water was still CHOP and the whole race course was windy! After looking at the splits, I’m pretty sure that the wind pushed the buoys closer to shore and made the swim a bit short…I’m not complaining, I was actually getting a bit sea-sick near the end of the swim. I caught some of the men, expected, and headed out on the bike about 1 minute in front of the next women (which happened to be my roommate Sarah and Jasmine). I felt great on the bike, tried not to focus too much on the men passing me back, and just worried about staying out of their drafting zone so I didn’t get a time penalty.
This year I made it further along on the bike course before the first woman passed me (it was Becky, the eventual race winner) but since the field was a LOT stronger, I had about 6 women pass me before entering T2. With the winds gusting from every direction, I was very happy to see a 1 minute faster bike split than in 2005! I guess all that work in the hills in Colorado and southern California is paying off…it’s also paying off for everyone who passed me:)haha.
I think I finished the bike leg in 6th place…I had a fast transition and started my 10k. Right away, Laura and Nina (very strong runners), flew by me on the road. I pulled my hat down low and focused on my own run pace and my form. Around mile 1, Joanna passed me, but this time I felt like I could hang onto the pace she was going. I stayed off her shoulder for a while and let her be a wind blocker. Eventually, she pulled a little bit ahead of me and I was unable to close the gap. I finished strong and ended up in 9th place…good enough for a top 10 award and a bit of prize money. This was the second race of the year and I have run both 10K’s in under 40 minutes!

St. Anthony's - Part 1

The dust has official settled from my busy, fun, and travel filled weekend to Florida! I am back in my cozy room in Colorado Springs ready to dish out my story from my visit home and the St. Anthony’s race.
Thursday morning started at 4:30am because our flights to Orlando started at 6:00am (who flies planes that early??). Jasmine and I (and both our bikes) made it to Florida without problems. My dad picked us up at the airport and we were home around 4pm. I gave Jasmine a quick tour of the yard, the shop, the farm, the house, the pets…she caught on pretty quick:)! Later in the afternoon we did a light jog and swim in the lake to loosen up from traveling all morning.
Back at home it was fun to help in the kitchen with dinner (lasagna and salad…a McLarty specialty). At the training center we are deprived of all things ‘cooking’ and ‘baking’ because the cafeteria staff does everything behind closed doors. After dinner we threw a huge batch of brownies in the oven, licked the bowl clean, and enjoyed the hot ones right out of the oven! It’s those small pleasures in life that make it worth living, am I right?:)
Friday morning we had to start off with a nice sleep in…what better follows a 4:30am wake up than a 9am wake up?! Jaz and I put our bikes together in the shop and then rode to the Sugar Mill with my dad. The Sugar Mill is one of my favorite places in DeLand (and it’s not even IN DeLand). It’s a restaurant located right next to the DeLeon Springs swimming hole. The tables have griddles in the middle and you make your own pancakes with yummy batter and all sorts of fun toppings (apples, blueberries, pecans, pnut butter, etc!). Do I have your mouth watering yet? We rode home with FULL bellies and an extra loaf of Sugar Mill bread on my handle bars!
Napping occupied most of the middle part of this Friday. But after a late lunch (we were still digesting the pancakes) we headed back to the lake for a solid open water swim practice. First a big loop, about 1200 meters, for warm up; then we swam 4 short sections with drills, accelerations, different strokes, etc. It was a perfect swimming session: short, no chlorine, sunny, no black lines on the bottom, and good friends to swim with. Dinner tonight was also prepared by Jasmine and myself: a turkey, green beans that my mom picked from her own garden, and bread from the Sugar Mill (what, you though that bread was going to last more than one day? In our house??)
On Saturday morning we made an early start for St. Petersburg…thank goodness my dad was driving again…we made it across the state in 2 hours! Since I was early for the swim clinic, we grabbed a coffee and then drove the bike course so that Jasmine could be familiar with it. The weather was typical for Florida near a beach or gulf: WINDY! Tampa Bay was chop. Just chop. Big chop. White cap chop. But the swim clinic still went great. We had a fantastic turn out and I think they liked my impromptu speech and Q&A session. Most of the questions were regarding the water we were standing next to…it was a bit scary for a seasoned professional like myself:), I couldn’t imagine what was going through the heads of the novice people! I gave as many tips as I could think of for rough water swimming and after the race on Sunday I had 4-5 people come up and say that my tips helped them in the swim…that’s a pretty cool feeling!
After I passed out Speedo gear to the people at the swim clinic, my family went to Mark Weiler’s house for some lunch and R&R…well, I did some relaxing…my dad had to install some heavy shutters in the house:). Jaz and I attended the 4pm pro pre-race meeting, racked our bikes in transition, explored the race expo (no free samples…very depressing). Then we ate dinner on the pier with my family and some friends. To finish off a great day, we spent a few minutes after dinner driving around town to find a grocery store for race morning foods (not the best time to realize you don’t have what you want to eat before the race:)!

Too Busy to Write

I was so busy doing activities and training and racing that I didn’t post a single blog while I was in DeLand! Well, now I’m back in COS (got here at 10am…my bike got here at 12:30pm!!) and I have a bit more time on my hands. I will be spending most of that time studying for my final exam in Statistics…but I will not forget to write about my week at home and the St. Anthony’s Triathlon.
Right now I’m decked out in bike clothes and I’m heading out the door for some hill repeats! Wish me luck:)