jack and ellie's triathlon

sparks hospital puts on a kid's triathlon each year and this is the first year that our kids have participated. jack and ellie were up for a challenge! it was on august 26th. we thought this would be pretty easy for them because they are both fairly athletic and they are very active kids. well, it turned out to be a doozy! i think we all underestimated the swimming. they were both exhausted during the 100 yd swim.  that was followed by a 2.1 mile bike ride and a .8 mile run. the biking and running, although they were uphill, didn't seem to be as hard as the swim. and none of that is taking the competition into consideration either. we expected it to be a bunch of kids like them, kids who are athletic and just wanted to have some fun. nope. there are kids that train for these things! they travel all over the sate and compete in triathlons. pretty crazy. but we are so proud of what E & J accomplished!!! it was not easy, but they were both determined to finish the race and that was so fun to watch as a parent.

 getting set up at 7 am!

jack is always looking out for little o and it makes my heart happy

you know those other 9 & 10 year olds are serious when they show up with $2000 road bikes, yikes! they put our mountain bikes from walmart to shame haha!

after waiting for what felt like forever, it was time!

9 year old girls went first in their age group.

ellie. was. nervous.

this look on her face is so like "I'm done!"

kids from the high school sports teams volunteered to run along with the kids to cheer them on. one of them was the sister of ellie's third grade teacher, so that was pretty cute and i know it made ellie really happy to run with her.

she made it!!!

her time was 25:55 minutes.

jack was able to watch ellie race and then jump in line for his. after saying, "the swimming won't be as hard for me" he had a rude awakening! it was difficult!

i think he was pretty shocked when he was the 4th person (out of 5) out of the pool... especially since two of those ahead of him were girls :)

this was a good, humbling lesson for him i think.

ran the whole thing with his shoes untied.

jack finished in 19:39 minutes. 

he came in 2nd place for the 10 year old boys (out of two boys, but that doesn't matter :).

so proud of these two, strong, healthy, adventurous kiddos!