Amazing Weekend

My husband did his first Half Ironman this last weekend. He completed 70.3 miles of swimming, biking and running at the Avia Wildflower. We went out to Paso Robles California with Team in Training on Friday, May 1st and camped with the New York Chapter. It was pretty amazing. TNT shipped his bike out the week before and then we followed with about 40 other New Yorkers participating in either the 70.3 or the Olympic distance triathlon.

We arrived on Friday late afternoon and it was raining! We had to set up our tent in the rain while all of our carefully packed items were getting wet. We just bought our wonderful tent, but had not yet attempted to put it up, so needless to say, it was quite a site.

We finally got the tent up and everything inside when Chris went down to the water with the coaches to do a practice swim. I stuck around camp to finish setting us up. After the swim we went to the big TNT kick off dinner in the big tent. There were hundereds and hundreds of people all from TNT all over the country there.

After hardly sleeping (the ground was hard and we were on an incline!) We woke up at 5am and started to get Chris ready for his race.

After a lot of standing around and waiting, I finally saw his wave go off at 8:40am! I got to see him come up out of the water and then transition onto his bike... off he went for 56 miles. I went back up to camp to shower and change while the sun beat down on his back... giving him the beginning of a nasty burn.




I stayed up at camp and watched him run by after he transitioned from the bike to the run. I was at mile 7 and he looked strong!




After he ran past, I gathered my stuff and took the LONG hike down the mountain to meet him at the finish line. 7 1/2 hours had gone by since he started, and I was exhauseted... I couldn't imagine how he felt!

It was such an amazing expereience and I am so proud of him. I will blog more about it later as there are many stories to tell!