70.3

My husband is amazing, just so everyone knows. I have known this for quite some time, but he proved himself amazing in a whole new way this weekend. He did a triathlon, which is impressive since it requires training to master THREE ways of exercising in one race. However, however. This was not just a little triathlon of say, oh, 5 miles or 10 miles total. Nope. This was 70.3 miles.
We embarked for our journey to the High Cliff Triathlon in Wisconsin on Wendesday evening to get in a few hours of driving and to break up our 9 hour trip. This was the longest road trip Anika has been on, so I was a bit nervous. Thankfully we were able to stay with my cousin Carissa and her husband Peter and their ENORMOUS dogs Beau and Echo. Anika was a bit nervous about the size of these dogs at first, but got over her fears eventually.


We arrived in Wisconsin later on Thursday and joined the other two families of amazing athletes, Olson's and Dexters. We set up our homey campsite quickly and settled into the relaxed pace of the great outdoors.





The men began to prepare for the race, which included a test run of the wetsuits and swimming in Lake Winnebago on Friday afternoon. Anika and I went to watch Garry practice and took pictures of the beach on an ordinary day. Anika decided it was a good time to take a nap.







Saturday morning came early with getting the men ready at 5:30 AM to head down to get ready for the race and set up their transitions. So that we wouldn't have to worry about finding a parking spot, we all walked down the hill a mile to the start of the racecourse at 6:30 AM because the first wave started at 7:00. Eric was in the third wave, and Garry and Brad were in the 11th wave, which happened to be the last one of the half ironman. There were two triathlons going on that day: the sprint triathlon, which includes a 1/4 mile swim, 22 mile bike ride, and a 5k run, and the half ironman, which our men did which is 1 mile swim, 50 mile bike ride, and a 13 mile run. The green caps meant a sprint and the silver caps meant a half. Here is the excitement of the start of the event.





I managed to get a few pictures of Garry competing in the swim, but failed to take other pictures of the bike or the run. I was too busy walking up and down the mile long hill from the transition site back up to our camp. (even though Garry went 70.3 miles, I walked over 5 miles with a baby in a carrier on my back, uphill. just saying) Just imagine Garry very tired and sweaty wearing a red baseball hat and red shirt.
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When Garry signed up for the triathlon, he had hoped to have a lot of time to train. However, work was extremely busy for him this tax season, which meant he was putting in 80 hour weeks, so basically working nonstop, which left little to no time to train as he had wanted. He only started seriously training at the very end of April, and even then had to take a couple trips out of town which meant no riding bike. So going into this our goal was for him to finish the race in under 8 hours. He did it in 7 hours and 51 minutes. Hooray!

Anika did amazigly well on the camping trip. Having many hands to help hold her was a huge blessing, and God has simply blessed us with an amazing daughter. She would get frustrated that she didn't have free reign to crawl wherever she wanted since the campsite was all dirt/mud, and anytime I put her on the grass she tried to eat everything she could touch. So on Sunday morning we had a Father's Day picture at the campsite and then packed everything up and headed to the hotel in Iowa city.
Garry was working there the next week, so we dropped him off and waiting til Monday to continue our journey. Needless to say, Anika was thrilled to be able to crawl all over our room.





Happy First Father's Day to a wonderful, amazing Husband!