First Place in A Race!

Man it feels good to win something. Even if it was the smallest organized 3 mile race ever to have been run. Took the family up to my grandparents house on Lake Rosemound in St. Francisville for a holiday weekend of some R and R. Went up Saturday night and spent Sunday and Monday hangin' out. My brother and his wife were there on Saturday night and Sunday. The brother and I spent some time fishing. Took the kids to the beach at the lake on Sunday morning and had a blast. I forgot my swimming trunks, so I had to wear my Tri shorts to the beach. The wife was lovin' that let me tell you. She can't believe I wear them with no shirt on at a triathlon where the 150 other people have on the same attire. Wearing them at a lake just hanging out, is just not cool. The wife and I took turns doing some open water swimming while the other watched the kids. I put in about 1000 yds over the course of a couple of hours. Nothing like working training into family time. We brought the bikes, but never found time to ride them. Ran into a couple people I knew including Rocketboy who is one fast swimmer, a fast triathlete and one great race director.

On to the race. On the way in Saturday night, the banner for the memorial day celebration said "Fun Run" on it in addition to the other announcements. The wife said "We ought to do that on Monday morning". Sure why not? Got up Monday and the wife sent me down to the beach/pavilion area to see if they were going to have the run. Sure enough, they were setting up and passing out numbers (sheets of white lined paper with permanent marker, very low cost I must say). Got back and everyone got changed real quick and we headed down for the race. The wife signed up for the one miler and me for the 3 miler. 9 am rolls around and it is time for the one-miler to start. I give her an atta girl and off she goes. My 2.5 year old son and I run a mini one-miler, about 0.2 miles over the bridge and back. He loves to say he races. The large crowd of 10 cheered him down the chute on the way back in, he loved every second of it. When he finished, he put his hands on his hips and in a serious voice said "Where's the water?" It was hilarious. Got him some water while me, his sister and my mom waited for Melissa to finish. She ended up getting 4th out of about 25 people in a time of 8:25. As soon as she was finishing, they lined us up for the 3 miler.

We were all at the front, since it was only about 15 of us. There were two other triathletes in the race. We had all struck up a conversation due to me wearing my Lonestar race shirt. Anyway, didn't know how fierce the competition would be. They sounded the horn (screamed Go!) and off we went. I was in the lead with 2 teenage girls about 13 years old. I ran an easy pace to start and we all ran side by side. One of them stopped at about the 0.5 mile marker, I tried to convince her to keep going, but she said she couldn't go any further. The other girl made it to about the 1.1 mile point and had to stop. I felt bad because I was going to let them win if they could have run the whole thing, but they just didn't have the endurance. Tried to slow down for them, but they couldn't run at all after they stopped. Ran a 8:00 first mile, about a 9:00 second mile (trying to wait on the girls) and about a 8:20 on the third mile for a 25:18. Not impressive I know, but good enough to win by 6 minutes. 2nd and 3rd place were within 5 seconds of each other and would have made an awesome finish if they had been running for first place. Bummer...Third place was a woman who has only done two triathlons, but is going to do the New Orleans half next year. Talked to her and her husband a bunch later in the day at the memorial day celebration. Got my first place ribbon and went to the house to get changed for another morning at the beach. Took these pics back at the house.

3/4 of the family with the first place ribbon.

Austin with "his" ribbon. Since he was the first down the chute, he won the race!!

Spent the rest of the day having fun. Back to reality today. Got up at 5 am and headed to the Y. Most people were still draggin' from the weekend, so the parking lot was expectantly light. Put in 2 miles and spin class. Ready to finish out the next two weeks before vacation and then hit the training hard after our trip to Mexico. Only the wife and I, no kids!!!