St. Anthony’s
The 25th edition of the St. Anthony’s triathlon was this past weekend in St. Petersburg, FL – this is about as close as a major triathlon event comes to my hometown of Orlando, FL. St. Anthony’s was my first race as a professional two years ago in 2006 and I have come back each year since. It’s hands-down my favorite race of the year.
I usually feel pretty motivated to have a good race at St. Anthony’s for various reasons – the professional field is always very competitive, a lot of my friends also do the race, my coach is always there either doing the race herself or rolling around the course on her mountain bike yelling timing splits at me, and my sponsor bike shop (Florida Bicycle Sports) is also always there as they are located in downtown St. Pete. What’s more, my parents usually drive down to watch the race.
And I must admit I had a pretty good race this past weekend – 6th place!
Title defense
It was exactly 365 days ago today when I won the 2007 Collegiate National Championship, and this past weekend marked the 2008 version of the event. So I was back up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama with the University of Florida triathlon team to defend my national title.
I knew beforehand that the race was probably going to come down to a race between myself and Steven Sexton of University of California at Berkeley. Steven placed second at last year’s race. This year Steve was very much up for a re-match and put down an amazing swim/bike combination to cruise to victory. It was an exact reversal of last year’s result (I ended up in second).
As a small consolation I did win the undergraduate division (Steve is a doctoral student) and I tied for the fastest run split of the day. My run tied with Andrew Hodges of the University of Virginia (University of Florida Alumnus/my former training partner/the guy who taught me how to run).
This was my last time competing at the Collegiate National Champs as I graduate on May 2nd. In fact I’m going to have to cut this entry short so I can go study for finals or else I might be back again next year…
Yesterday’s workouts
So I’m pretty much getting back into the swing of things in terms of training. Here is what I did yesterday:
2 x 4 hour nap intervals. I couldn’t quite finish the second because I was awakened to fill out customs forms.
2 mile tempo walk w/ luggage cart. This is the approximate distance between the United and Southwest terminals at LAX.
It’s good to be back to training with 9 days until Collegiate Nats.
Not-last-place
Overall my first world cup was very much a learning experience. There were ups and downs but overall it was an O.K. day.
I had a small mechanical issue upon getting on my bike – my shoe came unclipped and was dangling from my foot. It took awhile to fix it (a good 20 seconds) and being that I was the lanterne rouge of the front swim pack that 20 seconds put me in no-man’s land.
And thanks to Juraci Moreira for not dropping out – putting me in not-last place!
In New Zealand
Hi there,
I’ve finally had the time to set up this webpage for myself – all it took was a taper from training and getting as far away from school as I could possibly get! Anyways, I’m currently in New Zealand for the New Plymouth World Cup. It’s going to be the first world cup race I have ever done. The race will be broadcast live on the internet on April 5th at 8:00 PM EST for the women and 10:30 PM EST for the men. Just log onto triathlon.org and click “launch live events coverage.”
That’s all for now!
