'12 Season Opener - St. A's!

I've touched down in St. Petersburg, Florida for the first race of my 2012 season – the coveted St. Anthony’s Triathlon. I’m very excited to get the season going as I’ve had an interesting off-season. It got off to a bit of a late start since I was recovering from my psoaz injury from DuaWorlds, but once I healed up, things started progressing in the right direction!

As usual, I've worked hard in the pool and feel I’ve reached a new level in my swimming. I also linked up with Faster Fit Studios in AZ to conduct some wind tunnel testing. I got legitimately dialed in, having shed over 400 grams of aerodynamic drag!

One unrelated thing that also happened over the off-season was that I got into business school! Starting in September, I will be a member of UCLA’s Anderson FEMBA 2015 class!! I chose to pursue an MBA program on a part-time basis so that I could continue my full-time triathlon career. Anderson is the perfect fit since it’s my undergrad alma mater and I already train on-campus on a regular basis. Really looking forward to the next couple of years!

Back to this weekend’s race— the 45 participant Pro field is regarded as being arguably the deepest field of the year. I just came from the Mad Dog's tri club pasta dinner and there were a number of pros from a variety of countries - Canada, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, South Africa, and Australia to name a few - quite the international "championships"!

Not only is St. A’s a very popular triathlon, but it also marks the first 2012 event of the lucrative 5150 race series and crucial points are on the line in qualifying for the series finale in September. The way I see it, you can’t find a better measuring stick to gauge where your fitness falls this early in the season than a pro field like this!

Gun goes off Sunday. A full race report will follow. Let’s get into it!

Thanks for checking in. Talk soon.

-HH