70.3 in 7:03

Dave had his big triathlon, The St. George Half Ironman, on Saturday, May 4.  He did such a great job with his training putting in hundreds of hours and dropped 17 pounds!  All his hard work paid off and he had a great race.  It was a 1.2 mile swim, a 56 mile bike ride, followed by a half marathon (13.1 miles for you non-runners!)  My dad Popcan also did the race.
Here are a few pictures of preparing for the race and checking in:

 Here are some shirts I made to show our support.  I wasn't planning on wearing one, but I didn't print the first iron-on in color so we had an extra one.  I realized that the shirt was relevant for me, too so I decided to make myself one.

 Tanner cheering on Dave:

The race started at Sand Hollow reservoir.  (These pictures are from the day before when they dropped their bikes off.)  Dave had about a 45 minute head start because of the difference in their ages.



I waited with Brady and Tanner to try and see them come into the transition area from their bikes, then they crossed again at that spot starting the run.  We were there by the time that Dave thought he would be coming through.  We waited and waited for 2+ hours and we still hadn't seen either of them.


 I was imagining all sorts of things like Dave had a flat tire or had crashed on his bike. I was starting to get worried, but it didn't cross my mind that he had done better than he thought, which he had.  We finally caught Popcan coming in and he hadn't seen Dave to tell me if he had already been by. Turns out that Dave had passed the spot we were at 20 minutes before we got there!

After we cheered Popcan on, we wandered over to the splash pad to play for a little bit before we were going to wait by the finish line to see them come in.  We were planning on being at the finish line at 2:30 pm to watch Dave finish.  It got a little stressful because we were hot and tired, there were thousands of people around and Tanner was starting to want to eat.  I didn't really have a choice but to try and feed Tanner as inconspicuously as possible and let Brady play and hope he wouldn't run off.  So, I'm sitting there on a bench at the splash pad at 2:20 trying to nurse Tanner with so many people around and Dave comes and sits right next to me.

We had missed him finishing!  I felt SOOOOOO bad!  He had put months and months of training in, and we didn't even see him finish!  Luckily, it was because he did so well.  He finished in 7 hours and 3 minutes.  He said he felt awesome coming out of the water, so he pushed it hard on the bike.  The half marathon was tough for him, with it being about 90 degrees and the last event.  But his overall time was better than he was hoping for.  Like the good dad he is, he played with Brady on the splash pad before he even went and got some food.

We were so proud of him!  It was a tough race, but he did it and felt good about his performance.

Dave ran back to the condo to hurry and shower before we watched Popcan finish.  Dave and Popcan passed each other on the run right as Popcan was starting and he said he was hurting pretty bad, so Dave thought we had lots of time.  We waited by the finish line and he wasn't coming in and wasn't coming in.  They have a cutoff time and as it got closer and closer to it, we were getting nervous that Popcan wouldn't finish in time.  When some guys close to us said their friend was pulled from the race, we thought that Popcan had been pulled, too.  After the last person came in, we went and looked for him, but he was nowhere. Dave checked and saw his bike was gone from the Transition area so we decided to wander back to the condo.  Luckily I spotted Popcan on our way back and he had been done over an hour and had made up a lot of time on the run.  His overall time was 7 hours and 41 minutes and he had finished with plenty of time to spare.  I'm not sure why we missed him because I thought I was watching everyone finish.  So, out of the 4 opportunities to see them, I only saw Popcan that one time and missed both of them finishing!  Guess I'm not the best cheerleader!  I wasn't too happy about it because I had tried entertaining 2 kids for 6 hours in the 90 degree heat. (I know it was not as bad as actually doing the race though!)

We were proud of both of them for doing such a hard event!