During her 10-year career as a professional mountain biker, Jimena Florit twice won the NORBA cross-country overall title, as well as a pair of overall short-track championships, a Pan American Games gold medal and represented her home country of Argentina at two Olympic games.

But after the 2004 season, the 33-year old was suffering from a case of burnout and decided to turn her attention elsewhere. Florit spent 2005 living the multi-sport lifestyle, training for and competing in adventure races and Xterra triathlons.

While swimming and running don’t exactly come easy for Florit, her abilities on the bike turned heads on the Xterra circuit. At the Xterra Keystone, held at Colorado’s Keystone ski resort on August 14, Florit was the 35th woman in the pro division to exit the water, but passed everyone except for race-leader Melanie McQuaid on the bike leg,. Losing a few spots on the run, Florit still managed to finish seventh on the day.

But after only one year racing multi-sport events, Florit is ready to hit the pro mountain-bike scene again, and spent last week at Interbike looking for a team to call home.

VeloNews: Why did you know it was time to retire in 2004?

Jimena Florit: My motivation to go training and racing hard wasn’t where it should have been for me to do as good of a job as I probably could have. I did not want to take a spot on a team if I did not have the motivation that I should have. That wouldn’t be fair. I am a Taurus, and you will find that we are people who are all or nothing. We don’t go half way. That’s the way it was for me: all or nothing.

VN: What is your motivation to come out of retirement?

JF: I found that I really miss mountain biking. I miss traveling to the beautiful places to ride and I miss training on the mountain bike. I have been training with coaches for running and swimming this year and they told me that my mountain biking would have to take a back seat to the other sports. I did not like that. When I go hard on the run it takes me like three days to recover, and then I can’t push myself like I like to on my bike. I like being able to do intervals on my bike until I am about to drop.

VN: Did you have much of a background in swimming or running when you started doing triathlons?

JF: I haven’t run much in 10 years other than a little jog at the end of the season that my coach tells me to do when he says don’t ride the bike for two weeks. I would never run more than 20 minutes and then be sore for weeks. That was all I did for 10 years. I ran on the track when I was in high school, but I can’t run as fast as these girls in Xterra do. In swimming I had no background.

VN: What were the benefits you received from doing triathlons?

JF: Wow. This was such a challenge for me. It put me in an experience where I was totally out of my own control and forced me to start from pretty much zero. It has been a great experience from that point of view. It probably gave me the refreshing mindset to appreciate mountain biking more because I couldn’t take anything for granted. It was a reality check.

VN: Swimming is probably the hardest of the three sports to learn. How did you fare as a swimmer?

JF: I’m pretty bad. I did improve a lot this year. I started swimming in March…you should have seen me getting in the ocean! I could not even put my head down, that’s how bad I was. But I got more relaxed and comfortable in the water. Swimming with a wetsuit was more relaxing because you float. But some of the races I have done have been no wetsuit races and that has been a challenge for me to relax without one.

VN: What kind of swimming training did you do for the races?

JF: I did masters practices in San Diego. I’ve been doing a lot of swimming with the triathlon club of San Diego as well. We do one or two times in the pool and then one or two times in the ocean a week. The ocean is what I like the most. It is the most social place to swim. I do not like the pool as much and it is hard for me to get motivated to do something that I do not enjoy. Going back and forth and back and forth in the pool is so boring. I go to the longer 50-yard pool, which makes it better.

VN: How did you feel in the races?

JF: I come out of the swim pretty much last, I get on my bike and then I am in chasing mode. Depending on the courses, I pass people and try to get to the front. Some of the courses have been very tight and hard to pass on. I ride behind the age group athletes and not all of them like to let me go by. It is actually sometimes hard to go hard on the bike. On the run I usually lose spots on the run again.

VN: How, then, were you able to finish seventh at the Keystone race?

JF: The bike course was an hour climb and a half-hour descent so I was able to make up ground on the girls. But you have to be good at all three. These girls are so good. Melanie [McQuaid], Jamie [Whitmore] and Melissa [Thomas] are just awesome.

VN: How were you received on the triathlon circuit?

JF: The girls have treated me great. Melanie came up to me after Keystone and said she was impressed and thought it would take me longer for me to break into the top ten. I have made a good friendship with Geoff Kabush’s sister Danelle and Jenny Tobin, Michael’s wife. They try to get me all fired up for the swim, which is hard to do. They told me to just to relax and enjoy it.

VN: Do you think it will be easy to go back to the mountain bike circuit?

JF: The competition will still be hard. Alison retired and some of the girls who were younger when I was there are veterans now. Look at Heather and Shonny. They are so fast this year. I can’t expect that coming back will be easy, but I’m up for the challenge.