Triathlon Triumph...or at least third place

As our friends like to say, we committed athletic suicide this weekend. The race was a sweltering one down in Green River. On Friday we hopped in the river for a short swim, but before we hit the water Chris' mom saw some fish. So Jennifer and Chris' mom made Chris get in and splash around to "scare the fish away." The river was warm and very slow near the finish. It made Chris pretty nervous about the race.

Chris didn't sleep much that night; Jennifer slept a little better. We all awoke nice and early to eat delicious breakfasts of EFS and clif shot bloks. The race site was just a hundred yards from the campsite so we just took our stuff over and headed up to the swim start. Luckily the current upstream was much stronger. Chris' parents took off in the olympic wave and we waited around for the sprint race to start. Jennifer got out of the mile swim in 8th overall (3rd woman) and Chris came in about a minute and a half later.

The bike seemed to get off to a decent start. Chris saw Jennifer about two miles in when she was coming back from the first turn around. Unfortunately Chris didn't take the turn around sign very literally and added an extra half mile onto his bike. This made him ride hard for the last nine or so miles to try and make up lost time. As Chris started seeing people coming back from the second turn around he yelled to Jennifer that she was in 3rd place. Jennifer's thoughts were, "There's no way...Crap! That means I actually have to race since there's no way I'll ever place good again." Chris passed Jennifer with a little over a half mile left in the ride.

We came into transition about a minute apart. Jennifer was still in 3rd and Chris was in 4th. The run seemed like a nice relaxing course, but quickly turned into a brutal maze on the golf course. Chris managed to pass one person, but he didn't know where he stood. The last mile was a fight to the finish. Chris ended up finishing 15 seconds behind the 2nd place man and Jennifer managed to keep her podium spot. Chris would have gotten 2nd overall if he hadn't biked that extra half mile. Chris once again collapsed at the finish and ended up in the med tent. After laying on the ground for ten minutes near the finish, the EMT's finally came and asked if he was okay. Fortunately, he made a pretty quick recovery. It was just a hot race.

The Mabey triathlete clan ended up doing pretty well for themselves.

Two third place overall finishes and a first and second place in age group. Not bad.