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!