Duathlon

Well, Yesterday I successfully completed my first Duathlon. I did the "short" distance course which was 2 mile run, 13 mile bike, and a final 2 mile run. The first leg of the race went fine with a total time of 23.05 minutes (an 11:33 mile/min. pace). Then I hopped upon my bike and did the next 13 miles. This was tough as there were a lot of hills and the wind seemed unbearable at times. Since winter has lasted so long, I've had to do pretty much all of my training on a stationary bike. It's hard to train for hills and wind! My time for the bike portion was 1 hour and 1 minute. My friend Sue did the funniest thing when I was on my last few miles of the bike portion. She surprised me by driving next to me for awhile cheering me on. Then they slowed down their car and shouted, "Hey, look, you're so fast you just passed our car!" That had me smiling for the rest of the bike ride back. When I got off my bike and my quadriceps felt like dead weights. I managed to begin running the last 2 miles. I did walk a good portion of the last 2 with a time of 29.18 minutes. Never in my training have I done more than a 12 mile bike and a 2 mile run. So, I'm pretty thrilled just to finish it AND have a decent overall time of 1:56:50. The amusing thing is the only part of me that's sore today is my neck. Weird!

I can't thank my family enough for their support in my training and on race day. Knowing that you were there at the race, believing in me and cheering me on meant the world to me. One runner passed me by, but commented, "You've got quite the crowd back there today!" I'm taking off a few days and will recommence training for the triathlon on Wednesday.

Here are a bunch of photos that our good friend, Scott Elder took (if you recall, Scott is the same incredible photographer who took our Christmas photos).

This is my awesome friend/training partner-Jen Elder before the race began.


Here I am returning from my first 2 miles:


Here I am returning from my biking:


Nate with Elyana watching me go!


I'm taking off for my final run, explaining to Nate that my legs feel funny, and giving Mikayla a kiss!


Here's Mikayla cheering me on with a cow bell!


Coming in for the final finish!

Potty Training Again?

Elyana really enjoys bathtime and has noticed that Mikayla always pottys before climbing into the tub. So she's started placing the potty seat on the toilet and saying, "pee pee." It blew me away that she was the instigator of potty training. I put her on the seat and she points to the bathtub and says, "bath?" I wish I had the time right now to go hard core with the potty training and I hope I'm not blowing an opportunity by not. The Duathlon is 2 weeks away now. I figured it's the same total distance as the Triathlon I'm also doing. So, if I can complete this one, I can definitely do the Triathlon in July. Speaking of Triathlons--My triathlon article is coming out on May 1st! I'm so excited about this one. I had to cut 1,700 words out to get it down to the word count limit I was asked to do--which says a lot about how much I had to say. Here's a picture of Elyana on the potty and an old favorite picture of Nate starting to potty train Mikayla at Ely's age: