Dad's 1st Triathalon

This weekend was filled with excitement as Daddy participated in his first sprint triathalon.

Friday morning, the kids and I packed up lunch and met Daddy at work. Harbin was so excited about this- we played on the playground near Daddy's office, then ate lunch in his cubicle, and even got to take Daddy with us (early from work).

We headed down to Peachtree City, GA (about 30 minutes south of Atl) to check into our hotel (Harbin LOVES hotels). A friend of mine from college brought her two girls over to swim and then we headed to dinner with Scott's 1sgt and his family. Harbin loves playing with their son, Skylar (little Skylar as Harbin calls him so as not to confuse him with his uncle Skylar).

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to get Daddy registered and checked in for the race. We met a former two time Ironman triathelete and even got to see the bike he rode on in 1976. Scott got a bunch of goodies including a very nice long-sleeved t-shirt and a 30 minute massage gift certificate.

The next morning was a bright and early one for all of us- ok, well bright is not an accurate description since it was still DARK!! We got up at 5:00am to head down to the transition area of the race (for those of you who don't know, this is where the bikes are all kept and the competitors come here between the swim and bike and the bike and run). There were 1000 competitors registered for the race and I think about 850 or so actually competed. You can see all of the bikes on the racks in the picture.

We dropped Daddy off so he could get set up, headed to McDonald's to grab a bite to eat and then positioned ourselves at the point where they would come out of the water. The race started at about 7:30am and we cheered Daddy on through all of the events. We moved from the end point of the swim to the end point of the bike and finally to the finish line! As you can see in the picture, this was THRILLING for the kids- actually Catherine fell asleep before Scott was out of the water and woke up about 5 minutes before he crossed the finish line.

This triathalon was called a sprint and was a bit shorter than a true traithalon. It consisted of a 1/3 mile swim, 13 mile bike, and 3.2 mile run. Scott finished the race (which is an impressive feat all in itself) in 1 hour and 20 minutes. He came in 22nd among 44 competitors in his age group- not bad for his first race ever (check the right side of the blog for a link to all race-day results). Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough with the camera to get a good shot of him coming through the finish line, but below are a few shots of him immediately following the race. All-in-all we had a blast and Scott wants to continue training and racing in more triathalons.