My team, IconOne Multisport is based out of San Antonio and I have been coming down here for the last four summers to live and train. I'm super stoked to be down here year round though and hope it will enable me to take my racing and training to another level. I have a great family that has let me stay with them during the summer for the last few years and I'm staying with them again. They are a huge blessing so thank you Riley family!!! I have a lot of family in Austin which is just an hour north and my girlfriend lives in San Antonio and trains with IconOne as well so I'm super happy to be here!
It hasn't taken long for me to see some improvements and my training has been going really well since I moved down. I raced the Capitol of Texas Triathlon on Memorial day which is part of the Lifetime Fitness Race to the Toyota Cup this year. I had a solid performance there and garnered a 3rd place overall amateur earning me my right to a pro card in triathlon!! This has been a dream of mine for a long time so its very cool to have finally attained it! I realize what a long way I still have to go though to even be able to compete at the professional level and since I have 12 months to accept it I'm going to hold off a bit and see how I do the rest of the year. My goal for this year is to be consistent with my racing and to continue to improve. I also just upgraded to a category 3 cyclist and my biking is going really well right now. So far, so good and I'm excited to see what the rest of my year will bring.
I have a rough idea of my race schedule for the rest of the year and here's what I think it will look like:
-July 17: Disco Triathlon in Dallas, Tx
-August 20: Age Group Nationals in Vermont.
-September 5th: The AVIA Austin Triathlon
-September 17th: Rose City Triathlon in Tyler, Tx.
-October 2nd: Toyota US Open in Dallas, Tx
I'm currently working on a resume so I can start trying to get some sponsors and build a support team. If you have any suggestions or are interested in supporting an ambitious young triathlete please send me a message or email!!
It's going to be a busy next few months for me but I think I can make it happen. This summer I'm taking a full load of graduate classes online (3) as well as working in the lab at UTSA, helping with triathlon camps and training 20+ hours a week on top of that. There's not a lot of free time in there but thats alright. In the fall I will be doing my internship in the lab at UTSA as well as taking an additional class and my goal is to graduate December of 2011 and be done with school!!! I will also be tutoring in the fall to pay the bills and oh yes- still training and trying to get to the level I need to be at to race professionally. It will be tough but God is good and He watches over His children. I have no idea what this next year is going to bring but I'm excited about the future!!
