2011 Triathlon

I wrote this post last August but never got it off my netbook and onto the web.

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I don't have the energy to do a full story on the triathlons that we did a couple weeks ago.  So here are some highlights.

The Night Before the Kids Races:

We camped.  It was hot when we started setting up our camp.  It was hot a lot.

We went to packet-pickup and to eat.  The restaurant that we chose had lost its air conditioning.  They gave us free drinks and we ate on their patio but I would have preferred cold air.

When we got back we had a camp fire with Mrk and Mg and Mtt and Mtt's family.

Matt tried to start the fire with me giving useless advice.  Mg came and saved the day with her mastery over fire.

Mrk and Mg are camping experts.

Marshmallows were roasted and s'mores made.

The kids all played together and had fun.

Bedtime was late for the kids, after 10pm.  Not really ideal for pre-race sleep.

It was a challenge getting Gwen to sleep.  After letting her cry her-self to sleep outside the tent (thankfully we weren't at the "quiet" camp ground) and a failed attempt to transfer her to the bed, I wound up sitting with her in the van. 

There were no bugs in the van and it muffled the sounds of her crying.

Eventually, she fell asleep but according to Arial, spent a good chunk of the night awake and moving.

Then there was a vicious thunderstorm.

Kids' Triathlons:

Both Frances and Johann did great.

There were no major problems for either of them.
It was really cool to see them each gut it out all the way to the end of the run.

When Johann got his medal, he beamed with pride (and looked like he got a second wind).

When Frances got her medal, she was tired.  She posed nicely for the picture but she had left it all out on the course.

I couldn't be more proud of them.

The Night Before Adult Races:

That night we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows (for s'mores).

The kids played together again, although Frances was bummed because there weren't any girls to play with and her ear hurt (which turned out to be infected).

Around 11pm Johann threw up in his sleep.  We bagged up his pillow pet, cleaned up the spot on the air mattress and put down the extra sleeping bag we had brought.

Meanwhile, Johann had curled up and fallen back to sleep.  He slept through me finishing cleaning him up.

Frances and Gwen slept through the whole vomit episode.

At 4am, I woke up to Frances screaming bloody murder.  It took me a bit to figure out that Johann had rolled onto her hair.  After extracting the hair she stopped screaming and went back to sleep.

At 5am I got up for the tri.

Adult Race:

My race went great.  I had decided to just have fun and I did, even when I was tired.

I did well for me.  There was a bit of amazement where I saw that I took 9th in my division (later I found out there were only 14 people in my division).  Arial told me that I had the 22nd fastest bike time overall (later I found out that she didn't read the results correctly and that I had the 22nd fastest T2).

T2 went fast.  I just wore the same shoes for biking and running.

On the swim, the moment that I was thinking about how few swimmers were around me, I got smashed in the face by someone wearing a wetsuit.  Cheater.

Oh yeah, the water was too warm for wet suits.  It slowed everyone down but it did make for a comfortable swim.

Mrk had a rough time with leg cramps during his (Olympic distance) run.  Even with the cramping issues he beat my Olympic time from three years ago (and wet suits were legal that year).

It was a lot of fun.  We're looking forward to doing it again next year.

mwz