From Left: a few of the Tim Crowley tri team guys. Nicholas, Jerred Shoemaker, Omar Nour, and Sean Jefferson.
It’s funny, or even strange, how some things work out these days. It might be as small as listening to Ke$ha on satellite radio’s Hits 1, and saying to my friend sitting right next to me: “Turn it to BMP, maybe we will get lucky and this Ke$ha song will be on but as a remix.” Sure enough, we turned to the other station and as coincidences may have it, we started rock’n to a remix of Ki$ha’s “Don’t stop!”
Or it might be as significant as my first triathlon ever being the Florida’s Great Escape Triathlon in 2007, and my first professional triathlon being at the Clermont USAT Elite Development Race/ Draft- Legal Sprint just a few weeks ago. Not the same race of course, but both were in Clermont, both at Lake Louisa state park, both in the same water and on the same roads, and both in the month of March, only four days apart. Is this a coincidence too, I’ll let you decide.
Preparing to do my first International Triathlon Union (ITU) in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico, my swim coach/manager, Louis Tharp and I headed to Clermont, Florida to compete in a USAT 2012 Development race. My second draft-legal race of my career provided some great feedback on where I was in my fitness and training, and where I needed to be. After a decent swim in mid-50s water, I made my way to transition, where I grabbed my bike, and took off to experience a draft legal bike leg. While I am very strong on the bike, I soon found that it did not matter if I could not stay with my draft pack, since three bikes are faster than one.
At the end of lap one, on a four loop bike, I lost some ground on some technical turns as the road winded in one particular part of the bike course. Soon enough I was about 100 meters behind my bike pack where I stayed, time trialing for the rest of the race. If I had stayed with my pack, we would have caught up to another pack, that eventually merged with another bike pack and my race would have turned out differently. But without one person in the pack I was with, they were not strong enough alone to continue to close on the pack.
Nicholas Sterghos with the fifth member of Tim Crowley tri team, Alicia Kaye.
Even with the upset on the bike, I still manage to turn in a good run time and finish in 16th overall out of a field of 37 with a time of 58:09. In all, I had a good race. Although there are things I need to work on, I believe that I am much further along in my fitness, training, and experience than I was last fall. In addition to a good race, I finally got a chance to meet up with some of my TC2 teammates, who are all coached by my Tri coach, Tim Crowley. Athletes included, USA Olympic athlete Jarred Shoemaker, Egyptian athlete Omar Nour, Sub-4 minute miler Sean Jefferson, and Canadian Olympic Athlete Alicia Kaye (shown left). This race also provided Omar and Sean, with the first professional triathlon of their career.
I look forward to seeing all my teammates in Mexico, where I will compete, along with Omar and Sean, in our first ITU race. Thanks to all my sponsors – Total Immersion Swimming, sbill swimming, TGI Healthworks, Serotta, and Sable Water Optics, who provide me with the means to start my professional racing, my tri coach Tim Crowley and swim coach Louis Tharp who have prepared me for this level of racing, and finally thanks to all my family and friends, who have supported me and gotten me to where I am today, so I can live out my dreams as a professional athlete.
