70.3 Race Day

To continue the saga of my first Half Ironman....

Another self portrait - this time it is race day

Sarah and I smiling with nervousness. It's game day!

Time to panic. My swim cap rips in half and we are screaming to Julian to try and help me find another one! Arrgghh!! Good news - we find some random spectators who just HAPPEN to have an extra blue cap in their bag - the same one as my wave. Big sigh of relief.

Where's Waldo? My head looks weird in a swim cap. I'll blame the squished ponytail.

Chaos in the water! I did okay - I would have done much better except like a lemming I followed the people in front of me. They went the wrong way because the buoy wasn't big enough. I should have looked up more. On the bright side, I now know I can swim 2000 meters in open water.

Michael transitions from the swim. Pretend this is me since all our fabulous fans were busy with other people so there aren't too many photos of me. Also, Michael is much smoother than I am and fun to watch.

He can run without shoes on. They are on the bike. I'm not that talented.

Michael at the back. If this was me, there would be a lot less bikes in the way, that's for sure....

Proof that I made it out of the water! Julian catches me as I roll back into transition. A solid ride with 3 hours on the bike.

Proof that I ran too! Not too sure why my arm is all funky but I blame the last 13 miles on my poor form. Finish! Finish! Finish! Finish! Final time was just under 6 hours. I think 5:53:00-ish. Yeah, I could have gone faster. I'm smiling because there are people I know at the finish though. I also cried at the finish. But don't tell anyone.

The group at the finish. You can ignore the guy on the right in the black - my fault for being chatty with him and he joined our group photo. Everyone else in red is a friend - Sarah, me, Guy, Michael, Tom, Louise and Simon.

And that's the race from Spain. More photos soon since I have to share the post-race festivities. (They are censored of course)