orange at heart

me and mr. easy-on-the-eyes brazilian, felipe loureiro....

the past two years, i have been more than fortunate to be a part of the breakaway training elite team. felipe & luke took a chance supporting me when i had done just two triathlons in 2008. i think they could see that i'd do my best to not blow the great opportunity :). anyway, i ended up with a lot more than training gear and race support. i ended up with a triathlon family that was was always there, supportive, positive, and flexible. i ended up as part of an amazing team that shows up at every race in bright orange and basically, i must admit, dominates.

breakaway is so much different than your typical- coach-writes-plan-and-athlete-executes-plan type of thing. sure, the plan is a part of it, but breakaway also has 4 group workouts per week (and we're not talking 2 or 3 people, sometimes up to 40!) and there is always someone your speed. its a true team. last year, i moved up to north county san diego with james, & i wasn't able to attend the group workouts as much (ok hardly ever) anymore and i really really missed it. but, i just couldn't justify driving 20 miles for a track workout during the week. so, i missed out on a lot of the daily, week-in-week out fun. but when it came race time, all my orange peeps always welcomed me as if i had been there every day.

last week, a bunch of us gathered at the dinner for the San Diego Triathlon series awards and i got to celebrate with my teammates (not in orange for once!)

at the dinner, i had a chat with felipe. he didn't know it, but i almost cried. i talked with him about some new opportunities next year that i'm excited about. i won't technically be racing with the breakaway team anymore, but he told me i'll always be part of the family (or maybe i told him that, but whatever. i'm not going anywhere! ). orange is my favorite color after all.