January 2012 Update

I have now moved to Tampa at the University of South Florida and been here for 1 week.

After a few rough days I am pretty much organized and settled in. The class’s are fun and the change in needing to use my brain is fun!

I am living on campus which has its pro’s and con’s. I am sharing an apartment of 4 with 3 internationals who lack an interest in personal hygiene or apartment cleanliness and their english is as efficient as my understanding of their language. However I have a private room to myself which is has a good desk and is a sufficient size for all my stuff. Plus the food at the diner’s is incredible and buffet so I have been going hard. The campus sports facilities are amazing as well, there is a pool, a running track and fields and courts for any sport you can think of ( although I haven’t had the courage to take on the locals at basketball just yet). Not far down the road is a a massive national park with a 10km cycle track and 50-60kms worth of running trails.

Just prior to leaving NZ 10days ago I raced the Tauranga Half Ironman. This ended up being a bit of a disaster as I had some health issues in the run. I swum fine and then pushed the pace on the bike to move a break of 3 away from the rest of the field. On the run I was running comfortably with the front group for the first 4kms however something went a bit haywire in my system and I lost fainted twice in the next 2kms. Each time I got up and kept going, the second time I reduced my pace and went for a bit longer but I was very worried something major was wrong so I had to withdraw. I have had tests since and worked out what happened and all is fine. For that race however, it was a real shame as I had put so much into preparation for the race, but that is just the nature of the sport and I have learnt from it.

Also I made a video of me training that I used at my study-fess fundraiser, here is the link
http://vimeo.com/34951737

I am currently sorting out my race schedule for the coming year but it looks like I won’t have any real races before the start of march as it is currently winter in the US (despite being hotter and dryer than a good Auckland summer).