I Want to Go Back to New Zealand

My trip to New Zealand was SOOOO short! I'm already back in Noosa, Australia...I regret booking my flights so close before and after the triathlon race on Saturday. What an amazing and beautiful country...and I really didn't see much more than the downtown area of Wellington and the race course!
This announcement might be a bit premature, but I'm quite serious when I write it: I am planning on backpacking around the country for the month of December!!! More news and details to follow soon.
This blog is going to be short and to-the-point because I'm quite tired and need a quick nap before tackling the fun and smelly task of unpacking my bike box:).
My race was AMAZING! It was the New Zealand National Championships in Wellington. I finished in 2nd place behind Samantha Warriner (the top Kiwi woman) and in front of Jasmine Oeinck (my teammate and roommate)! The 4 American women in the race all finished in the top 10 overall...the red, white and blue rocked!
The race was a bit scary because we woke up to 60kph+ winds on Saturday morning. 99% of the race course was unsheltered from the wind...the harbor where we swam was full of chop and huge swells...we were battered by headwinds, left winds, right winds, and tailwinds on the bike (I'm very thankful that I didn't have any fancy deep-rimmed-race-wheels!)...the entire run course was on the pier with no protection from the wind gusts! Our final time was incredibly SLOW because of the uncooperative weather but you can see the top 10 results on the ITU website.
It's bike-building time so that I can get outside and do a bit of a cool-down-spin-out from the race. There's no rest for the weary...especially the weary who also want to do well at another race in 2 weeks in Japan:)