Swim Coach for Hire (to get me to Australia!)

As some of you may have already seen, I raced a half ironman (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run) in Syracuse, New York on Sunday and secured a spot to the World Championships in Australia this September. I qualified through the race's roll down process --  athletes in some age groups did not take the spots available to them, so the spots were allocated to athletes in other age groups.

I've spent the last couple of days thinking about whether or not I can make the trip happen.  It's a really long way to go for a race, and it's not cheap -- I estimate that it will probably cost me around $4,000 - $4,500 when all is said and done (flight, lodging, bike transport, etc).

At the same time, it's a pretty incredible opportunity to have a chance to race alongside world class athletes and I don't know that I'll get the opportunity again.  So I'm going to try to make it happen!

To offset the costs of traveling for triathlons in the past, I've used AirBnB and rented out my apartment. This time, I'm going to see if offering myself up as a swim coach can help me generate some extra income to help cover my costs for the race.

Here's my pitch:

Let me to help you with your triathlon swimming!

Some of my triathlon swim specific accolades: Over the weekend I did a 30:48 in the half ironman swim, which was only about 1.5 mins slower than the guy who won the whole race. My fastest Olympic distance swim was 13:13 at the NYC Triathlon. If we're not counting that one (because the NYC swim is notoriously fast), I think my second fastest was at the Westchester Tri last year, where I swam a 20:49.

I started swimming competitively at age 7, and was an athlete on Boston College's Womens swim team through my sophomore year.  I was also lifeguard and swim instructor in high school and college.

If you want to help get me to Australia and need help with your swim, let me know! You can email me at maurya.couvares@gmail.com.

Brooklyn Tri Club Triathletes Liz, Alan and me after Syracuse 70.3 in our World Championship Trucker hats 

ScriptEd Students are Making Me a Website

This summer, ScriptEd has a really cool pilot program happening at The Factory in Long Island City.  Our students will work with freelance web developers to work on clients' projects over the summer. The working title for this program is "The ScriptEd Dev Shop."

The freelancers are sourcing clients for the program now, so I signed myself up as one of their first customers.  ScriptEd students will work on building a website for me during the dev shop under the guidance of freelancers.  They'll integrate my blog into the new site, and will create an online presence for me that highlights my work and passion projects.

I'll be blogging from time to time about project and about the progress the students make throughout the summer.

If you've got website needs and are interested in becoming a dev shop client, please contact Olivia at Olivia@scripted.org.