True Triathletes???

A long, long, time ago, when I was a sophomore in college, I checked out a book from the library about how to prepare for an Olympic distance triathlon. When I realized all of the gear you would need, I decided running shoes were easier, so I went that route...but I never got the idea out of my mind. When we were in North Carolina, our friends came up with a great idea to rent a beach house in Emerald Isle and we'd spend the weekend and do a sprint triathlon. It was the best! We had such a fun time.

Well, one morning way back in February, while Joe was getting ready for work, I woke up to him saying in shock, "My jeans are tight!" I hadn't been exercising either...I decided we needed to do something drastic. I did a little research and happened upon the Pacific Grove Olympic Distance triathlon. We decided to go for it and the training began. After months of juggling our schedules and the kids to fit workouts in and listening to Kate and Jake giggle and fight in our bike carriage, it was September 11th, and we had dropped the kids off at my sister's house (Thanks so much, Jen!) and were sitting in our hotel room getting our transition bags ready. We crawled in bed that night and didn't sleep a wink. Yes, I'm sure that means we are not true triathletes :) When our alarms went off at 5AM, Joe and I were already awake. He ate... I couldn't. I was so nervous I was nauseous...another clue I'd never be a professional :) Thankfully, we talked our friends Mike and Carrie Thompson (who had talked us into the sprint triathon a couple of years ago) into doing the race with us. I was so relieved!!!!
Here are Mike and Joe getting dressed, pumped and mentally prepared. They would start the race at 7:30AM and Carrie and I would begin at 9AM. Notice the weather isn't that great? It was cold!!!

Do you see that water behind us? We were told we'd be doing our mile "kelp crawl" in 57 degree water. Those orange buoys out there are what we would be swimming around. Why did this sound fun?? I can't remember.

The four brave souls

Joe and Mike are down there among all of those green caps...

And they are off!!!!

Joe after the swim and getting ready to hop on the bike for 25 miles along the coast.

At this point, Joe and Mike had finished the race and was now documenting Carrie and me as we did the bike and the run.

Way to Go, Mike! Nicholas is proud of his dad, but a little confused as to why he had to wake up so early!

Carrie was flying on the 6 mile run

Love you, Joe!

WE DID IT! And the amazing thing? We all finished within 7 minutes of eachother! Despite the shockingly cold water, it was fun and we felt like we had accomplished something great.

Joe beat me by about 30 seconds... does that mean we'll have to do another one??? SOOO happy we got to do this together.