Mike Hebe of Team USA at the ITU Long Course World Championships in France.
Team USA athlete and 717 Endurance Head Coach Mike Hebe lays out the ups and downs of being a triathlete in his latest race with Team USA Belfort in the 2013 ITU Long Course World Championships Triathlon.
The qualification process for this event started a full eighteen months prior to race day. To earn a Team USA spot you need to qualify for Half-Ironman Nationals the year prior to Worlds. To qualify for Nationals you need a qualifying race in the year prior to that. I qualified for Nationals when I raced in Kona at Ironman distance Worlds. I qualified for the International Triathlon Union Worlds with a 10th place overall at US Half-Ironman Nationals last September.
On to the event. The race took place in Belfort, France. Belfort is a small town in Northeastern France, very close to the Swiss border. It was not a tourist town, which was good since it rained seven of the nine days I was in France. Rain is not bad, except when it is 45 degrees out and you share a small European hotel room with two teammates.