6 days after being in the crystal clear waters of Belize and eating seafood every meal I found myself wating for water contamination tests with the rest of the Tempe International Racers!
12 days of being off a bike and not running but a heck of a lot of swimming was amazing! Dave paddle boarded or Kayaked next to me as we saw sand sharks, barracuda, and other large fish every night! Looking down and seeing the starfish while swimming was awesome! 
We were thrown back into reality real fast when we landed in phoenix and turned our phones back on. Training started again, work was full tilt ahead for both of us, and a race in 6 days.
Heavy rains Thursday in Phoenix led to ecoli testing per normal procedures for Tempe town lake.
Saturday ONE Elite held a transition clinic! My teammate Dan and I held the clinic this time. So many new faces to triathlon and it was great to be able to answer their questions!
Race morning came and my alarm went off at 2am. Rise and shine- time to go to work! IT and the world of software often times works outside of normal hours to provide updates to users with minimal impact. This week with so many teams making software changea we had to start at 3 am.
Dave showed up at 515 to take me to the race! A strong team in the office and in triathlon made it possible for me to do this race!
When we got to race site most bikes were in transition and Dave helped get my stuff ready while I tried to stay awake and positive. Swim was on as water quality came back ok. Time to pull the wetsuit on and get the show on the road.
The swim was good- swam my own swim, followed the race course (which seemed to be a problem for so many unfortunately) and was happy with my continuous hard effort!
T1 – nothing special – look up and see Dave, sit down to get my wetsuit off, and just want to lay down. Time to go.
Bike- Heavy legs, many u- turns, great nutrition on me from Destination Kona! And determination to keep going. I am never a fan of the in city races but what can you do. It’s a good mental test- go fast, turn, turn again, go fast, turn, and so on.
T2 – realized I need the quick laces in my shoes. I’ve never wanted these until today. Not sure why today was the deciding factor – maybe to tired to tie my shoes!
Run- Lets do 4 sets of stairs on the run. Paced myself and was happy with 7:20 averages! Another mental battle was the stairs and not trying to get annoyed. I did have enough kick in me to run the last few miles hard and felt strong at the end. Crossing the finish line 2nd in my age group and 5th female overall, I looked for the closest side walk in the sun and sat down. Checked work email and the team had landed in a good place. All in all an ok day.
Lessons learned: sometimes you will not have enough time to follow your normal race plan – and that’s ok! Sometimes you need to rely on others to help you through a race day- and that can make for some fun memories! And sometimes you just aren’t going to feel awesome out there – but you better continue to try the best you can!!
Thanks to ONE multisport, Destination Kona, Pei Wei, my DriveTime team, and Dave for making it possible for me to do what I can while I can!
Next up: Dueces Wild in Show Low!
TRI IM Gluten Free 