Triathlon

I am so far behind, so many posts I still need to put up, so I've decided to go backwards, newest to oldest....

On Labor Day Trent competed in his first triathlon. He has been training for it since April with a group of people from his class, he worked so hard and did really well!  The race was up in Austin on Labor Day.  After church we loaded up the car, grabbed food to eat in the car and headed out.  Austin is only about an hour away, just a perfect distance for all the kids to fall asleep for just a little bit.  We got to Austin, checked into our less than stellar hotel then went to the convention center so Trent could check in for the race and get his bike (that our super awesome neighbor let him borrow) and all his gear in the holding area.

The morning of the race Trent left our hotel room really early to get downtown for the pre-race meeting. His starting time wasn't until almost 9 am. I got the kids up, dressed, and fed and we headed to find a place to park and then we set off to go find daddy.  It was HOT!  We found Trent over by where the start of the swim portion of the race was.  He was with some of his classmates who were also waiting for their leg to start.

It took a while for his leg to start, the race got delayed while they cleaned the floating plants out of the river.  They were having the racers jump off one at a time off the dock, then they'd swim out to the center to start the swim portion of the race.

There really wasn't a good spot for us to watch him go in, there was a ton of foliage around the starting point.

he's somewhere in that group of heads

After he jumped into the water we headed down to the finish line to wait for him to come out.   It took him just over 30 minutes to complete his 700 meter swim (I think...)

just coming out of the water.

We cheered for him as he came out of the water, then I gathered up the kids and ran to the transition area, which was kinda far from.  I wanted to be there at the start and ending of each leg of his race.

just clipping in for the ride

riders coming in and going out, he's the blue guy

The bike portion of his race was around 18ish miles, I think. He completed it in an hour.  After we saw him off we walked around to see if we could find our friends, we got an ice cream cone, did I mention that is was HOT!?  I didn't want to miss seeing Trent come across the finish line so we headed back over to the side where he'd be coming in.  Thankfully, Andrew fell asleep for a little bit, he was so so tired (and hot). 

I thought that maybe we had missed him, I checked the time often and I was pretty sure that we hadn't, but I was worried that maybe we had.  After less than 10 mins at the finish line I spotted him coming down the street.  The kids ran to the fence and we cheered, then I gathered them up and ran to the transition area where he'd start the running portion of his race.

We got there just in time (but of course I thought maybe we had missed him, me and 4 kids don't move very fast...)

I knew this portion of his race wouldn't take too long, it was a 3.2  mile run.  We left here and went to the finish line to stand in the sun.  The kids were miserable, but I really wanted to be there to cheer for him when he made it through.  I spotted his white hat rounding the corner and the whining stopped long enough for them to yell at daddy.  

He worked so hard and had a really good race.  He finished 5th in his division.  He is certain that if his swim time was better he would have been first.  Maybe next time.