Just got back from St. A's yesterday. Wow, what a long trip but it was all worth it. I ended up about a minute and a half faster than last year under much more challenging conditions. As I'm sure many of you have heard by now, they had to cancel the swim for the age-groupers due to rough and windy conditions. Tough call to make, but what are your going to do? Despite the rough conditions, I managed to beat my swim time from last year by about 10 seconds where as a good number of guys were slower. I ended up coming out of the water 11th which made me feel pretty good considering the company I was in. As you might have guessed from the water conditions, there was a bit of wind out on the bike course, but again I beat last years split by about 15 seconds, averaging 25.4 mph. I felt strong the whole way through, and was very proud with that result. On to the run, I was sitting in about 19th overall and still felt pretty good. However, after a mile or so, I just felt flat, and unable to switch into my race gear. Though I still managed to run 35:05, about 50 seconds faster than last year. I would have liked to run low 34's, but I just ran out of gas. I ended up 21st overall on the day against a field that many thought to be one of the strongest ever in the history of the race. I'll try to get some pics up as soon as possible.
Next up on the list is the Austin ITU Continental Cup in Texas against another extremely stacked field. This will be my first draft legal event of the year and I'm really excited for it. I'm completely injury free and ready to build off my good fitness leading into this race. Last year at this time I had to take 2 months off from biking and running due to injury. It's amazing how much more you can get done when your not injured!
