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:)!