Last weekend I went up to Washington with my team to participate in the Monroe EDR race. EDR stands for Elie Development race and is an opportunity for athletes to practice racing in a draft legal format.

As always, anywhere I go with my team is a great time! I’m pretty sure that I laughed the entire trip. It was really cool getting to see the Junior Elite team do so well. They are a bunch of very talented, very determined youngsters, and I feel pretty lucky to be able to witness and participate in their development as triathletes.

About the race…going into it my coach had me on a moderate recovery week. So basically by the time race start rolled around I had so much energy I was practically shooting lightning bolts out of my fingertips! It was a quick race, only a sprint and I finished in 1:04.08. This was such a great race for me! I stayed very aggressive throughout the entire race, especially on the swim which in the past has always been an area of difficulty for me. Wait what? Zara the swimmer has a hard time on the swim. Well you see in a draft legal race the swim is not just a swim, it’s a full contact sport. Think really really fast water polo. Out on the bike I took control of leading the pack and tried my best to direct the girls so we all raced a fair honest race. No one likes the girl that sits on the back of the pack for the whole bike only to run her way to the finish. We held a pretty consistent pace and came off at about the same time. We hit the run for a two loop course around the lake, the girl who won had a killer run and pulled away by the first quarter of the race. The girl in front of me got about a 30 second gap which I managed to close down to 15 seconds. I even PR’ed my run time!! I held a 6:02 average for the run and a total time of 19:28, which judging by the finishing times of all the participants, including Alan Webb, the American National Record holder in the mile (3:46.91!!!) means the course was a little longer than 3.1 miles. All in all it was another really great race with the people I consider family.

Now it’s only two more weeks until my first international race in Toronto Canada!! I can’t wait!

Nope. I’m not nerdy at all.