Congrats to ULA!

A big congrats to my roomie for her awesome fifth place finish at the IronGirl Las Vegas Race this morning! She stepped it up big time and hung in there with some major pros--we're talking world champions here!--and came out smiling, I'm sure. I'm so proud!

Inside Tri wrote up a good piece (tho poorly edited..hopefully one of these days they'll get Bec's name spelled right) about the race, featuring a nice mention of Ula...reading this brought happy tears to my eyes!

One of the happiest women in the field is Laurel Wassner, 32, of Hoboken, New Jersey, sister of elite pro Rebecca Wassner. Laurel is making her pro debut nine years after surviving a bout with Hodgkin’s’ Lymphoma and was the first cancer survivor in the United States to earn a professional triathlon license. “Last year my sister and I went to see the Iron Girls race in Columbia, Maryland, not far from our family’s home in Gaithersburg. “I was so impressed,” said Laurel Wassner. “It was run so well and I loved seeing so many women of all ages and abilities having fun together. I saw a daughter, mother and grandmother all race together and I loved the whole spirit of the event.”

Wassner emerged from an excruciating five years of exhaustion, uncertainty after a debilitating process of chemotherapy. But just a few years ago, she got a clean bill of health. “When I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease in 1999, I was on the George Washington University swim team with Jessi Stensland and psyched to start triathlon. But when I was diagnosed, I was sidelined for several years. Mentally and physically, it was the worst feeling. For three years, I felt like I was nauseated and 100 times more tired than I had ever felt before. But when I started to feel better, I did one triathlon in 2005, then a few more. The turning point for me came in 2006 when I went with my sister to the World Championships in Lausanne, Switzerland. It was bigger than any triathlon I had seen before and just really made me want to race. Right after that, I got word from my doctors at the Sloan Kettering cancer institute in New York that I was officially dismissed from treatment. Right then I started training with my sister Rebecca. Some of her hard work and drive mist have rubbed off on me, because last year I won The Nation’s Triathlon in DC. It was the best day of my life – I ran my best ever 10k – 37:15 – which took me past my old college (George Washington).” Later that year, Laurel Wassner took third overall elite amateur at the Nautica New York City Triathlon and second overall amateur at the US Open in Dallas.”