Tomorrow I’m racing in my first premier triathlon since May. I’m surprisingly not nervous, despite a world class field of athletes, like Javier Gomez, Greg Bennett, and a dozen other elites from overseas. Perhaps my lack of nerves is because I’ve been training hard leading into this race, and I’m not rested at all. My sights are set on the last World Cup of the year in Mexico next month, so how well I race tomorrow is only an indication of where my weaknesses may be. (spoiler alert) My guess is that 10 weeks in a wrist brace will mean my swim is definitely not where it needs to be.
The 10th Annual Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Triathlon Presented by Toyota is the penultimate event in the Life Time Fitness Toyota Cup, which wraps up in Dallas next week. This series has more prize money being handed out than any other series, aside from the World Championship Series and Hy-Vee World Cup (which isn’t a series). It’s also the premier non-drafting Olympic Distance race series in the world. So a big time thanks to Life Time Fitness, Toyota and Kaiser Permanente for presenting us with world class triathlons like the Los Angeles Triathlon.
I arrived in Los Angeles late Wednesday and stayed with a friend in Hollywood. As I discussed in my last post, LA is much bigger than I previously thought. To save myself some time and allow for a little more down time, I decided to come stay by the airport with Rory. I’m now just 20 minutes from the race site, instead of 80. I’m deathly afraid of riding my bike in LA, so I rode a trainer at the USAT Endurance Mobile Tour booth in the race expo. It actually drew quite a bit of attention from passers by, and my Clif Bar Jersey inspired quite a few training and racing nutrition questions. It also got Timothy Carlson, the sport’s premier journalist and photographer, to come ask me a few questions, like why is my hair so big.
aw, you did shave!
Fear The Fro!