The Big Race

Finally, the much awaited photos of the Big Race. Here is Paul and Josh before the race, before the, "oh crap, what did I sign up for?" feeling......

and now, the feeling, there were 2700 people in this race, 2700 absolutely crazy people in my mind, but absolutely amazing too....It was insane watching all of them run into the water at the same time...how half of them didn't end up with black eyes, I don't know..

We couldn't see Josh at all during the swim, understandable so, they all looked the same....He had an amazing swim though and I was so excited to see him finally come out of the water (to be honest, I was super nervous about the swim - just seems like you can get lost in the crowd there). He looked great and swam 2.4 miles in just over an hour....amazing.

Here is Paul coming in on the bike. At some point, he passed Josh and was about 25 minutes ahead of him on the bike. He had an amazing ride also.

Here he is my hero, finishing the 112 mile bike ride...just typing that makes me tired....anyway, he did the bike in around 6 1/2 hours...again, making me tired...

After we saw him finish the bike, he started his marathon. We went back to the hotel because they were going to run past the hotel several times. When we got back, the rest of the crew was out there cheering on the runners. Here are the kids waiting for Josh to run by....

Here are the dads and Carly waiting for Josh...

Ben must have been tired.....you know from all that, um......I guess I don't know.... - okay, to be fair, the kids were jerked out of bed quite early and were awake for a very long time. They all did really great despite, the cold weather and the long day.

Paul looking good on the run......right now.....

Josh doing great....and looking good too.

Finally finished. It was super hard to get a good shot of the finish line, cuz you know there were thousands of spectators there and not very many of them were willing to let you get in to take a picture....But Johnny did AWESOME and I am very proud of his work (Johnny's). Josh finished in 12 hours and 49 minutes. Quite an amazing time for his first ever triathlon. It was so awesome to see him cross the finish line.

Here he is with his helper man. Each finisher had a person there to "catch" them or help them keep moving....Definitely a needed job....

I ran up to Josh and gave him a hug and his first words were, "don't lean on me"....He then used me to get around for awhile and I got him some food (pizza, water, etc..). He was getting cold, so we went inside where he started to shake and thankfully, my mom had an extra blanket that he used. After awhile, oh about an hour, he was ready to move again. We were waiting for Paul to finish.

The kids were so excited to see their dad....Chloe still to this day (you know about a month later), calls her dad the ironman...which he completely is, and always will be to her (and the rest of us). Paul finished quite a ways behind Josh because he had an ankle problem and walked the last half of the marathon. We had so much fun, it was a long day and we were all very happy to go back to the hotel and go to bed.