What in the TRIATHLON?!?!?!

Well... I did it!!! I actually ran a triathlon! If you had asked be 6 months ago if I would ever do this, well... I might have laughed at you! But Jessica and I actually ran a TRIATHLON!!! And it was AMAZING! My goal for this first one was to do it in under 2 hours, and I did it in 1 hour 53 min and 46 seconds! What a blessing it was that I was able to finish! I can't even describe what it felt like when I crossed the finish line... I was excited, I was pumped, I had all this adrenalin shooting through my body... it was AMAZING! My family was there waiting for me, and that was such a great feeling... getting to the end of the race and having the people I love waiting for me there, cheering me on. A-Mazing! The whole thing was really a spiritual experience, and I can't even describe how cool it was. I'm definitely going to do another one!

The total was a 500 yard swim (just over a quarter mile) 15 mile bike ride, and 5K (3.1 mile) run.
Some race highlights:

-Doing it with Jessica. We had SO much fun together!
-Using so much great equipment from The Mickelsons. They were truly life savers. I got to ride this amazing road bike with clip shoes and everything! Thank you, thank you! What a blessing that was!
-Looking down at my bike speedometer going up one of the crazy hills (I hear this was a really hard triathlon for a first one because the hills were so crazy) and realizing that I was only going 5mph... but I was still moving on my bike when many were walking the hill
-Looking at the speedometer on the downhill and realizing that I was going 35 MPH!!!!!!! Have you ever gone that fast on a bike?!? I had tears in my eyes it was so fast! (fyi- on that hill, the speed limit for driving is 25!)
-The excitement and kindness of all of the racers. It was like this big, excited family!
-Being number 21! That is my favorite number!
-Having my family come cheer me on
-Getting to see Kadon after the awards ceremony... He has been at scout camp all week and I REALLY MISSED him!
-Taking awesome pictures once it was all over


So I will warn you that this is definitely a picture overload... but what can I say, I am way excited about this!

Jessica and I also went up a day early and had SO much fun taking crazy pictures... but for sake of time (you know how fun it is to load pictures into blogger), that will be a future blog post. These are just the race pics... So here it goes!!

Here we are right before the race started! Mom, Dad, and Mackay walked up just as we were headed to the pool... good timing!


In the pool


Finishing the first loop of the bike ride


Coming in to the finish line... best feeling ever!!!


Right after Jessica came in, with the cool medals everyone got


The group that we went up with



Swimming outfits



Biking outfits


The shirts they gave us. We were really bummed that they are tank tops. We wore then over our T-Shirts for the rest of the day, but mine looked a bit awkward... Maybe with the right T-shirt...


Showing off our numbers


My family!!! Thanks for being so supportive, guys!






An awesome caricature we had done... The man was super nice and added all this extra stuff on it because we had just ran a triathlon. I think that the random stalker man in the bushes is the best part! ha ha.