Swim...Bike....Run....Crazy

And here it is....the entire reason we drove all the way to Kansas. How cute is this Hansel and Gretel house? Okay, I kid.....this wasn't the ONLY reason we drove to Kansas. ;-)

My husband, athlete extraordinaire, competed in the Ironman Kansas 70.3 Triathlon. For those of you unfamiliar with the insane elite sport of ultraendurance triathlons, this is what is called a "half" Ironman. A "full" Ironman is a 2.4 mile swim in open water, followed IMMEDIATELY by a 112 mile bike, followed IMMEDIATELY by a marathon...yep, 26.2 miles...running. (Actually it says in the rule book they're allowed to crawl. CRAWL?)

So, you guessed it, a "half" is half that. Still, a completely menacing amount of working out in one day. Levi did his first "full" Ironman nearly two years ago. It was a bucket list kinda thing.

He signed up, trained, did it. I was in awe.

Then he got hooked.

So here we were last weekend....in the dark, in Kansas, up at 3am to get to the race.

The water looked cold to me. Apparently it was warm.
By insane triathlete standards.

Yep, look at that chicken skin on me...I was freezing.

Levi, on the otherhand, was cool hand Luke. He was ready.


He was in race mode. It's a gaze....a far off gaze....apparently he's had it since high school....then through college track....and now.
Don't bug him when he's in race mode. You won't get a response.




There he is! Do you see him? (Me neither). But he's one of those bobbing white heads. This was one of about 20 waves of athletes. There were over 2200 competing that day.



He finished the swim....and now he's off on the bike. Go crazy Levi, go!



And the run....it was hot by then. By everyone's standards.

He's finished!! In the short amount of time of 5 hours, 48 minutes.

Now the real preparations begin......the next full Ironman is in September. He'll be ready.

Can you tell I'm a little proud?