kiawah island triathlon

well...its a week late but i got the pictures to help tell the story of aaron's dominance :-) so we (us and the casey's) got down there late friday night and had a lazy saturday morning. once we finally got our act together we hit the beach on saturday. unfortunately, we forgot the camera because the whole day was like a scene from animal planet! when we first got there we saw a bunch of dolphins jumping out of the water. it was prett sweet...there were a lot of them and they were just frolicking, having a great time. so we hang, play some beach bocce, etc before we go in the water. standard beach agenda.

then we went in the water. and it all got a little crazy. this is going to sound a little dramatic...but i don't care. it was both dramatic and traumatic at the time. so we're swimming and all of a sudden i feel some serious pain in my wrist. it felt like something was biting me and i needed to shake it off my arm. yeah, it hurt that much. so i whip it out of the water and start yelling and shaking it around. great visual i'm sure. i never saw the beast but i imagine it was a very hungry jellyfish/man-of-war thing. i've been stung before but this was pretty different so i think it was something else. so it immediately gets huge, red and swollen. so right now you're probably thinking..."i saw an episode of friends once...i wonder if that works"...well we thought the same thing cause at that moment, you don't care how gross that is, you just want the pain to stop. let me educate you for the future if this should ever happen to you...it doesn't work. so the rest of the day we watched my injury spread and morph. i had swelling, redness, strange spots, lost feeling in my arm, the whole deal. at one point, i got nervous because pain was moving from my wrist, up my whole arm, down the armpit, and all the way down my side till my waist. i'm thinking, ok, i think traveling pain is probably a bad sign. but that went away in a couple hours. and since then, it has morphed more times. the picture below in on the day it happened but it kind of hard to see so its not a very good representation. but it gives you an idea i guess. a few days later, the swelling had gone down and it started to itch instead so i'm thinking it'll be gone in a few days. but no...just a few more days later the thing flares up! now i have hive-like things spreading further than the actual sting, dark red spots where i'm guessing the tentacles hit, and the swelling it worse than at the beginning! sheesh! so everyone keeps telling me to go to the doctor, probably as some of you are thinking....but i have a physical on thursday so i'm waiting till then. and please don't try to convice me otherwise cause i won't listen.

so after that whole experience some people near us (who had their fishing lines in the water all day) started to make a commotion. we think its a huge fish so a crowd starts to gather...and it was a huge fish...and then it rolled over on the sand and we saw the fin...the fin of a shark that is! yup...they caught a 3.5-4 foot shark! oh my goodness...at this point we're all looking at eachother thinking...great, this is the water we're swimming in for the traithlon tomorrow morning. at that moment i was so glad sam was our swimmer and not me. and then, they let the thing go! so we're watching the water and we see this shark swim back out and see the fin getting smaller and smaller. not a very comfortable feeling so needless to say, we didn't exactly spend lots more time in the water.

so after brief stint on national geographic, we showered and went into charleston for the evening. got dinner, hit the market, hung out at the pier. good times. and got to bed to get some good rest before the race! it was at this point that i realized that i forgot an important item. yeah, who goes away for the weekend...to run in a race...and forgets underwear! that's such an important item when you run! i'm an idiot. so after a quick k-mart run, i'm back on track...but pretty mad at myself cause i'm picky about what kind i run in...and k-mart didn't exactly have any good options.

so we get up real early and drive to kiawah for the race. its an eerie feeling cause its early and still dark, you're nervous, and so is everyone else. so we get there, check in, get your number, set up the transition area, etc. time to get going!!! we walk a mile down the beach to start the swim. the swimmers swim out and them swim across back the way we came for a mile. it was pretty choppy so i'm sure it was tough. (sidenote: as one guys gets out he's telling his friend that a jellyfish "lit him up") i wasn't the only one! but aaron was third out of the water! off to a good start!

then comes the bike. heidi was awesome and aaron was good too. except that he coudn't clip out of his bike pedals when he got back. he's still got a little learning to do on the bike :-) then the run. now i have the unfortunate position of the last leg so i've been up since 5, and waiting at the race for a least two hours since it started just letting the nerves build. when heidi came in and finally passsed me the timing chip i was so ready to go that i took off. and quickly realized that was not smart. the first mile of the run was through sand. tough. not a good idea to wear yourself out running on sand when you still have 5 miles left. but i made it to the road and passed aaron on my way (yeah, he was already on his way back).

so you wait and eat after you're done until they announce the results. aaron won his age group! there's a picture of his sweet plaque below :-) he came in sixth overall. so good. team rodrigo (me sam and heidi) got third in the mixed relay category. don't get too excited, there weren't very many in our category. but it was a ton of fun!

and this is for your viewing pleasure...yes, someone actually wore this to do the swim. and we had to capture it!

and i will leave you for now on that note. next on the agenda...updates on emmy's wedding!

back blogging!

well, enough people have called me out on being a blogging slacker...so i'll get on it and start where we left off. we spent labor day weekend day with allison and mike. they treated us to a wonderful weekend of fun! we got down to atlanta on friday night and then continued the trip over the Auburn. Allison and Mike are both Auburn alumns and now Mike's sister goes there too...so we met up with her and went out to a nice dinner down there.

So the special thing about this weekend was that it was opening weekend for Auburn football. And if we learned one thing from that weekend, its that Auburn students are OBSESSED with Auburn football. people tape off tailgate spots the night before the game and there's an unspoken rank system within that too...as far as where you're allowed to tape off. and people obey it too! weird. so saturday morning, the tailgating begins. i've never seen such elaborate tailgating...far cry from messiah chessy dogs i'm sad to say. they have entire entertainment systems set up with satellites to watch all the other college games that are going on all day. serioulsy, i walked around with my mouth hanging open the entire day. the entire campus is busting with people (who had driven in as early as tuesday to get spots)...wearing a sea of orange and navy. it was a really amazing atmosphere...really opened my eyes to what a different college experience people have. not that i'd trade my messiah days for anything...but it would've fun to be a part of something like that.

so the game starts at about 7 and they have a huge spectacle going on... armored cars ushering in the refs and the real live eagle that flies in to start the game... a "tiger march" of the players marching campus into the stadium, etc. nuts. also, the game experience is just soooo different in the south. i couldn't get over it. i was probably one of the only females not wearing a sun dress (and an innapropriate one at that) who gets dressed up to go to a game?!?! what happened to painting your face or chest or something??? no, we have to put on as much makeup as we can, and get dressed for a summer party in our best little dress. and the guys...polo's and khacki's at the very least. really strange. but all in all...it was a rediculously fun day...so much energy and excitement. aaron and i came out yelling auburn cheers as if we'd gone there too...allison and mike were glad to claim us as honorary alumns :-) so here are a few pics of the 87,000+ people in the stadium...

so we stayed over that night and then drove home sunday. we took sunday to relax and lay around all day cause the big race was monday morning! it was a nice day to relax. aaron and mike went and drove the 10K course while allison and i shopped fo some carbo loading dinner materials. i was soooo nervous about this race. i don't really know why...maybe cause i heard it was really hilly. so they came home and didn't calm my fears at all...saying that it was the hilliest course they've ever seen and whatnot...nice of them huh? the race was great though. they weren't lying...it was all hills...and mostly uphill too. but it went well (mostly for aaron). there were 12,000 people in it. i've never run in an environment like that...its great cause it distracts you a bit when you really don't want to be running anymore. also annoying cause they didn't take waves of people to start the clock. they said go and we were at least a few minutes back from the starting line, walking with the 12,000 people to get there and start but the clock had already started!!! so annoying. so i think our times aren't right. but either way, we did all right. i finished in about an hour and aaron finished in way less :-) he ran the whole thing in a 6:20/mile pace. which i think was actually faster cause of the starting issue. but he did well and won a lttle medal....i think he finished 48 out of the 12,000. no doubt beat by all the kenyans there...all three top finishers for the men and women were kenyan or ethiopian. such a monopoly on this sport! so after the race we went to the water park (the race finished there and we got free admission for running in it) hit a bunch of rides and then head out. it rounded out a great weekend! here are the three racers after it was all over....allison didn't run cause she doesn't like heat or hills...and now i totally understand :-)

so, next on our calandar was the kiawah island triathlon with the casey's... i have to get pictures from sam and heidi because i disgraced all females by forgetting to bring my camera to this adventure...but once i do i will continue this life update! lets just say it was an awesome weekend again and i'm married to a freak of fitness nature :-)