Busy Days in Switzerland

Since that exciting Wednesday when I won the Aquathlon World Championships (two days ago)…I’ve been focusing on the real reason I’m here in Switzerland…the U23 Triathlon World Championships on Sunday, September 3rd at 7:30am!!!
The pre-race meeting was Thursday morning…in the beautiful IOC Museum down the street from the race site. Lausanne is the home of the International Olympic Committee and the museum has a lot of really cool statues, photos, memorabilia, etc. from all the past Olympics. It also has a big auditorium room where I sat with all the other U23 competitors and coaches to listen to the rules/course/timetables related to our races.
Most of the rules I know and I’ve heard them before every ITU triathlon I compete in. This time they made an announcement that if you did NOT attend this meeting, you would be moved 10 places back at the start line for choosing your starting position. I’m glad I attended:)!
Speaking of numbers…I’m number 6 and Jasmine is number 7…so we get to start right next to each other!! You can see the official ‘start list’ for my race and all the other races on the ITU website. You will also find your local time for the live broadcast of my race…unfortunately, if you are on the East Coast of the USA…I will be racing from 1-3AM! Bummer:) But you can always go online later in the day and see my results…and watch the other American athletes in the Elite races.
Lausanne is a very expensive city because most of the industry revolves around tourism. This makes finding reasonably priced meals and groceries a fun adventure:). Fortunately, we had a U23 team dinner last night that was at a pasta/pizza joint across the street and it was covered by USAT (BIG thanks here to our National Team Staff!). I had some simple but yummy spaghetti and salad. I’m working on my carbo-load for the race!
The race is going to be A LOT of fun…I’ve been on the swim course, the bike course and the run course! Of course, the first part is going to be pretty easy for me and I think I spend a total of 2 seconds of mental preparation on the swim. Now the BIKE is a completely different story…I keep trying to STOP thinking about it because I start mentally sweating when I think about the 14 HILLS that I have to climb during the 25 mile/7 lap course! I rode 2 laps yesterday and 2 more today during training…tomorrow I’m going to give my legs a rest before killing them on Sunday morning. The run course is really simple…just 4 loops along the water front. It’s all on flat pavement which will translate to fast running (if anyone has any energy left in their legs after the bike ride I mentioned earlier:)!
In other parts of my life…I’m trying to finish my first Leadership class assignment because it’s due on Saturday. Obviously, I’m not working on it right now…you must realize what my priorities are in life:)! The assignment is an Application Paper, basically a lot of information about myself, my goals for my life and details about my business (my ‘business’ is myself – one professional athlete at your service).