After a long and hard six-week training block in Boulder, I was starting to get race fever. My training was going well, so I made a last minute decision to race the 70.3 in Cancun. I was eager to test my fitness and see how I would do in a hot humid race in Kona-like conditions.

After suffering badly in the cold rain in Lake Placid, I was really looking forward to racing in the heat. No matter how hot it got, I would not complain. I love racing in the heat. I’d take hot and humid over cold and rainy any day! The field was competitive with some very fast swimmers; Michelle Jones, Pip Taylor and a few fast ITU girls. I knew I would have my work cut out for me. I came out of the water in 8th place about 8 minutes down on Michelle and about 3-4 minutes down on the pack. I could feel the temperature rising, so I took the first loop of the bike conservatively. It was in the 90’s and the humidity was close to 80%. I knew I had to pace myself and keep my hydration in check on the bike in order to have a strong run. The run is usually my strength and I’ve struggled with it in my past few races. I didn’t expect a stellar fast run because of the heat and humidity, but I wanted a strong steady run. I noticed at the first turn around on the bike that I was not putting any time into the women ahead of me. At this point I was really wishing that I had my Zipp wheel on rather than my beater trainer wheels. I had a little luggage issue while traveling and was forced to do the race with my training wheels. Fortunately, my Cervelo P3 is one of the most aero bikes out there, so I knew I really wasn’t at too much of a disadvantage. I picked up the pace during the second loop and started to reel-in the women ahead of me.