We arrived in St. Petersburg this morning to sunny weather in the mid-80’s. There as been little time to relax since we arrived (much to my dismay after only getting about 4 hours of sleep last night!). After checking into our hotel, we grabbed a bite to eat along the shorefront, headed to race registration, then picked up our bikes. After walking the bikes back to the hotel, many of use headed to the water and donned our wetsuits to do a little open water swim.

The water was thankfully calm, even somewhat late into the afternoon. It was interesting swimming along the shore, as there were huge pockets of vastly differing temperatures of water. One aspect that I hadn’t considered of the swim here was the salt water. It’s really salty. Some people have said they don’t mind it, but there were a number of times that I felt like gagging as salt water dripped into my mouth and down my throat as a breathed. I’m going to have to tweak my breathing technique a bit ASAP. Thankfully we have another practice session scheduled for tomorrow morning.