This season started with me creating an ideal race plan for the year, completely changing that plan, and then having another opportunity pop up which drastically altered my path once again. With the 2016 Olympics being one of my main targets, I’ve had to make quite a few short term decisions that will lay a solid foundation for reaching that long term goal. Even though I’m living in the “here and now” my training and racing need to reflect the big picture in each choice I make. I can’t just speed down the freeway alone to my destination and hope to have gained knowledge and skill; I need to take the country roads, stop in new places along the way, meet new people, and develop maturity through real life experience. Thanks to my kiwi buddy, Olympian and world champion triathlete Kris Gemmell, I have gotten a chance to lay a solid foundation for my 2016 goal and really develop myself as a triathlete.
Kris made some phone calls and sent some emails to a division 1 French Grand Prix team (Grand Prix races are how the majority of the top draft legal triathletes in the world get their experience) and got me a contract with St. Raphael triathlon club. What this means is that I will get to race five, draft legal, sprint triathlons all over France (the USA doesn’t have a solid draft legal development program here yet, so Europe is the place to go). My tentative schedule will be to move to France at the end of April and live there until the end of May (the team is sponsored by a hotel company so I will be living on the beach in the south of France in a sweet apartment style hotel). I will then come home for 3 weeks and fly back in late June and live there through early July. While I’m on that side of the world, I am going to try to race as much as possible so I can gain much more Olympic style racing experience. Even though I highly dislike traveling, I am very excited about these trips and how I’m going to be able to lay a solid foundation for my career.
