might as well be an ironman

on sunday chris participated in his first olympic triathlon.

and it was phenomenal! my husband is crazy and incredible!

chris' day started at about 4ish, mine started at about 6ish. as did my lovely friend's, lainey, who very kindly came over by 6:20am. and barb showed up moments later to come and pick me up. lainey hung out with my crazy kids till 12 and i could not be more grateful to have such a helpful friend! i was very happy to hear that toph didn't wake up til 8 and lily didn't come out of her room til after 7. it took a team effort to make sunday awesome, and all the team members did so great!

so, barb and i drove down to tempe town lake for this triathlon and were not sure what to expect. chris was supposed to start at 6:55am, which is about when we parked the car. when we got to the race area, we still had no idea what was going on. some people were swimming. some people were getting on their bikes. it was craziness. then i texted chris' uncle Matt, who mentioned he would come out and support chris, and low and behold, he said chris was in the water and about to start his race in minutes! so barb and i jumped up to the bridge where Matt was standing, and there was my chris watson treading water below me!

the race started and chris was off!he looked great! apparently in the first few minutes of 'death swim' chris got kicked in the head and punched in the neck. chris in turn hammer punched some guy in the butt. great times in dirty polluted tempe town lake.

here's chris emerging from the water after a brisk 30 minute swim. i stole this picture from uncle Matt's facebook album, and his caption for this was perfect: "Chris coming out of the water with his hand on Jesus' shoulder."

so glad Jesus was with my hubby this morning!

then it was off to the bike! we got to see chris hop onto his bike and breeze down Mill Ave. by the time we got to Rio Salado (a half a mile away from the trainsition area), chris had already done a turn and came by us again! i was really beginning to love this whole triathlon business! especially cause us fans were able to take a little break to fuel up before going out to cheer our hearts out again for another hour and a half.



here is chris in the transition area getting ready for the last leg- the run!


we actually caught the butt-end of chris' bike ride. literally. as we were walking back up from starbucks, we stopped to see if we might catch a glimpse of chris again. we were looking down the wrong side of the street when it occured to me that maybe he was almost finished. so i turned and looked the other way and saw chris' butt turning the corner and going back up Mill to the transition area. i screamed. chris heard me. he was encouraged. and biked on.

here's chris starting his 10k (6ish miles).


here's my hubby running and smiling. why are you smiling crazy? you just swam 1500 meters and biked 25.2 miles and ran over 3 miles and still had 3 miles to go. clearly my hubby is on crack.


so chris finished his race in about 3 hours and 15 minutes. absolutely amazing. i don't know how people can exercise for that long. i had a seriously wonderful time hanging out with barb and matt all morning and catching glimpses of an incredible ironman in the making.

we went home (after we FINALLY found our keys, which was a 1 mile walking detour...) took naps, and went out for steaks (a great recovery meal!) with two of chris' biggest fans.