I’m going to try and keep this one short and sweet, need to save my word count for the uni assignment I should be doing right now.
We had a very smooth trip to San Diego, direct flight from Brisbane to LA then a short 2 hour car trip. After an easy week in San Diego and adjusting to the time zone, I was looking forward to racing on Friday afternoon. The weather was a lot colder than I expected, with track pants and two jumpers my attire for most of the week. Race morning it was nice and sunny and the wind was slightly warmer than previous days which was a relief for us little tri chicks. After the two lap washing machine of a swim, I exited with a fairly large group of girls. It was very borderline to whether it was going to be wetsuit or not, so without the rubber coating, I was glad to be out of the bay! The group I was in bridged to the next chase group, making it a very large pack of girls with 8 others up the road making significant time on us each lap. They had a strong group of girls working together and they were able to take full advantage of the technical bike course, man I wish I could swim like Laura Bennett!
Out on to the run it was quite clear that we were all going to be fighting to make the top 10 as the lead group finished with a gap of around 2mins and 20seconds in front of us off the bike. I took it out quite hard and felt quite comfortable. After Moffy and Haug from Germany really picked it up on the 2nd of 3 laps, I slowly dropped off the pace. Heading into the 3rd lap, I focussed on reeling in and passing another athlete who was dropping off the pace- from there I didn't look back and ran strong to the finish. Another 10th place and very happy with my result. I have shown some continual improvement and stoked to end up with the 4th fastest run, but that doesn't count when there were so many great athletes off the front on the bike! Helen Jenkins ran an amazing race and truly made it look easy. Congratulations once again to Erin for another podium finish. Laura Bennett, the most consistent performer over an incredible amount of time took home third and consequently qualified for the Olympics. Those ladies are all class and something I really aspire too. Here are some pictures from the race...more to come when I get my hands on the pictures from our emergency stopover in Hawaii- Wakiki beach happened :)
