Next Stop: THE IRON MAN!.....well, maybe not quite yet.

I guess everyone knows by now that Sydney has an extremely competitive personality (don't know where that came from). Well, a week ago Saturday her and her friend Kirrah were telling me and Gary (Kirrah's dad) how they wanted to enter a biathlon race in Kona as a team. Now, Kirrah's parents have been serious triathletes for the longest time (they both have over 10 Iron Man's between the two of them), so Kirrah of course has been doing Keiki Triathlons for a while now (Keiki = kids).

So we thought this was a cool idea, figured with plenty of time to train and practice Syd could do okay. She has never had any formal swimming instructions, nor has she been a distance runner. So we asked them when was the race to try to figure out if it was reasonable, and they said casually:

-"Next Sunday".....

- huh!?

And they were determined to do it. They planned that Kirrah could do the swim and Syd the run. So that same day we took them over to 4-mile beach and Gary took them on a mile run (I stayed hanging out with Hana). I asked him to take it easy on her, because she had never run distance before, and to let her know she could walk if she had to.

8 minutes later they were back. Gary said that Syd had run at their pace the whole distance and did not stop chatting while running all the way, that she could easily do a 3 mile run......so much for never having run a mile.....This while running with her Converse shoes (the only pair of tennis shoes she has)

Then we got them in the water and Syd's weakness stuck out like a sore thumb, not a very good lap swimmer....bummer. So Gary spent some time with her and by the end of the day she was doing some decent free-style swimming, with some problems on the breathing part.

Long story short, we went back to training (swimming and running) two more times last week and bought her a pair of running shoes on Friday and yesterday at 5:00 AM we headed out to Kona.

On the way there I told Syd not to be disappointed if she came in last, that this was her first race and it was about getting a feel for it....little did I know of what was coming...

Here are the trio getting to Kona's pier where the race was to start (there was an adult race as well, 3/4 mile swim and 4 mile run, the Keiki distances were 200mt swim and 1 mile run). Hana came along as part of the support team.

We got there and the swell was pretty nasty, waves were crashing on the wall breaker by the sidewalk. Syd's look on her face was one of a terrified person, oh, because she decided she was going to do the whole thing, not just the run. I told her that where the swimmers started was protected by the pier so the waves did not crash there (which was true), so that calmed her down.

The two athletes after getting into their competition outfits.

Hana not quite fully awake yet

Testing the water, make sure it wasn't too cold, or salty (we're from Hilo)

All the racers get in the water, adults started ahead of the kids...

08:07:41 Start of the swim section (adults in the background, keikis in the foreground)....

08:12:15 Kirrah comes out of the water (04:34 minutes)

08:12:52 Syd comes out of the water (just 37s behind Kirrah, out of the water in 2nd place)

then we had a little struggle with her shoe-laces, see, triathletes have these elastic laces which they pre-tie so they only slip their shoes on, Syd had conventional shoe-laces and I was in the pits doing the tying, which due to the excitement took me a little longer than she would've wanted.... so of she went, still in second but followed closely behind by a boy (who is seen in this picture passing her)....

08:20:42 Kirrah comes through the finish line in first (13:01 total time)

Syd coming out of the last curve into the final stretch

08:21:55 Syd comes through the finish line in third , 14:14 total time, just one minute 13 secs behind Kirrah......ay caramba!

Here are the two happy athletes and the support team....

Hanging out waiting for the rest of the racers to finish the course.

This was a very casual and informal race (free too), so there was no award ceremony or trophies at the end, but the satisfaction in Syd's face was plenty a reward. Now she's talking about getting elastic shoelaces (she will never forgive me for being so slow at tying her shoe laces) and even practicing riding a bike so she can enter triathlons with Kirrah.......(oh dear..)

Cow Man The Legend

At the parking lot as we were getting ready to head out to the pool we met an old friend of Gary (Gary by the way knows just about everyone on this island, and then some). His stage name is Cow Man, and he is famous for his Iron Man participation. There has been 30 Iron Man races in the story of the race and Cow Man has participated in 29 of them, he missed the first one (legally in some, not so in others, but that is a different story which should be included in a book he is writing "The Adventures of Cow Man")

Pool swimming after the race and then to feed the starving athletes....(I had a burger the same size as Syd's and struggled to finish it up, Syd ate about 95% of hers!)

Followed by some playground activity in Waimea., because, you know, they still wanted to play!....