First Triathlon!

The trip began by me going to work in King of Prussia while the rest of the family went to see Valley Forge.  It seems the trip to Valley Forge went as well as you might expect for having three kids along and it culminated in a bee sting on Annette's foot.  She thought her triathlon was doomed, but she trudged on in the spirit of perseverance as portrayed in the history of Valley Forge.

After work we went to the hotel and took off to the triathlon to sign in and pick up Annette's packet for the next day.  We ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant with my coworker, Doug, and his girlfriend.  We got to the hotel about two hours later than we wanted to and got a rotten night's sleep!

Annette thought that doing a triathlon wasn't crazy enough so she got a tattoo beforehand.  Just kidding.  Apparently, they write your number on both arms with a Sharpie AND they write the age you turn that year on one of your calves.  If you're the type of person to hide your age, a triathlon is not for you.

A mother's work is never done.

Never ever.

Henry was quite happy and agreeable for most of the trip.  His happiness was momentarily hindered when, seconds before his mother crossed the finish line, a very large lady who was running at a good speed (a spectator) plowed him over.  Granted, he probably staggered in front of her, but she probably should have been more careful, too.  She went flying into a crowd of people and I think got hurt worse than Henry.  I ignored it all so I could take Annette's pictures as she crossed the finish line while my coworker Doug tried to calm his wrecked nerves.

Thanks to the BYU jackets, we ran into some Alumni from New Jersey who wanted to stop and chat. We saw others with BYU garb, but didn't get to say "Hi".

Annette's pre-triathlon warmup.

Annette's in there.  This picture is like Where's Waldo.

There's Annette and her running buddy, Casey, who she met while they were standing at the starting gate.  They helped encourage each other through the first run.

 

The kids mostly hung around the bike trailer while they waited...

...and waited....

...and waited...

...but they were quite a bit more patient than I think I would have been at that age.  Little did Henry know that this was where he was soon to be obliterated by someone 10x his size.

And the triumphant moment arrives!

I was surprised she had energy to be almost silly at the finish line.

If you blow this photo up you can see her time, except you have to subtract time since she started in the third wave.  She came in 95th out of the 99 in her wave (women 29 and under).  

She found her new friend afterward and got a picture taken.

She got her time breakdown for each part of the race.  Run (1st 1.55 miles), T1 (first transition time), Bike (15.7 miles), T2 (second transition time), and Run (2nd 1.55 miles).  Total time: 1:55:36!  The swim part got cancelled due to weather/poor river conditions so they split the run up on either side of the biking so they would still have two transitions.  The running was Annette's personal best time.  Annette didn't realize until a few days before that the biking was 15.7 miles, she thought it was 15 miles, so it was the farthest she had ever biked, another personal best.

But not even Annette could be as tuckered out as these little guys.  They were as tired as if they had competed in a triathlon!  Elizabeth got to wear the finisher's medal.  I would say the only thing more miraculous than all of these events was that our gold fish didn't die while we were gone for about 30 hours.