Happy Halloween

My First Triathlon!!!!

Yesterday was my very first triathlon and I lived through it!!!!!! It's all I can think about and talk about! There were 9 ladies from our ward who did it together. And we totally bonded through the whole experience. We have been riding our bikes together at times, we did a couple of mock triathlons a couple of Saturdays, and we even went this last week and swam in the lake where the triathlon was located just to get us over the fear of the lake. You should have seen us....9 moms with about 12 children (including 4 babies). We decided to go in two waves so that half of us could watch the kids while the other half swam, and then switch. Swimming in the lake that day really helped us all feel a lot more confident. So yesterday came and it was a BLAST! The triathlon was a sprint triathlon so it was a 1/2 mile swim first, a 12 mile bike, and a 2.75 mile run. My friend Amy and I have been teasing each other that we wanted to beat each other. (very friendly competition). So we started, I did the swim in 11:45 and beat Amy out of the water. But by the time I got to the transition area and was putting on my shoes she had caught up to me....I took off on my bike first, but about 4 miles into the bike she passed me, saying "on your left missy" as she went :) I tried the whole time on the bike to catch up to her but couldn't. I did the bike section in 39:08. Then by the run I was so anxious to catch her but my legs weren't working right and I couldn't get them to move any faster. I did the run in 25:02. So my total time was 1 hour and 20 minutes!!!!! Amy came in 4th place in the novice category (with a time of 1 hour and 18 minutes) and I came in 7th!!!! There were about 62 novice competitors! So it was such a fun day! It meant so much to me to have Matt and the kids there yelling for me along the way! We had a crazy moment when they first posted the times we all ran over to see the results and poor Emma lost sight of us. Soon the announcer was saying "we have a little lost girl named Emma if her parents could come to the announcers area to pick her up!" YIKES! She was heart broken and I felt so bad for her. She didn't care that I was soaking wet, I scooped her up and held on to her tight! :)
OH! I forgot the most exciting part of the triathlon!!!!!! One of the 9 ladies from our ward is a major runner, and she swam for BYU in college. So we knew she would do well. SHE WON FIRST PLACE OVERALL!!!!!! She was in second most of the race, in fact the girl in first was ahead of Larrell by 3 minutes going into the run. But Larrell pulled ahead and beat her by about 50 seconds! She is amazing! She did the whole thing in 1 hour and 6 minutes. I was so proud of her!

This is all of us with our millions of kids the day before when we practiced in the lake.

Amy and I setting up our transition area.

Stefanie Dowdy, Jessica Martinez, Amy Lopez, Andrea Rediske, Beckie Lowe, Marie Winchester, Tracy Bosch, Me, and our winner Laurel Lockard