My Man of Iron

This year has been a crazy journey of training and races for Chris. He has worked so hard and come so far over the last twelve months. I'm super proud of him! Especially for sticking with it even when the rest of us indulged in sweets galore or pure laziness.
A few weeks ago he ran in the big Hood To Coast race with friends from work. He had three legs of running and he had a blast doing it. We picked him up at the beach when he finished for a 5 day camping trip. Thinking back, we won't be doing that again. It is too hard to recover from a big race and set up camp on the same day.
All of his races, training, and healthy eating were getting him ready for his half-iron man race this last weekend. It was held out at Foster Lake in Sweet Home, OR. It takes about 2 1/2 hours to drive there. Since it was such a long drive, and the race started early in the morning, he decided to get a hotel for the night down there. He went by himself since we had a busy Saturday with three soccer games and a birthday party for the kids.
The race itself was a 1.2 mile swim (in the lake), 56 mile bike ride, followed by a 13.1 mile run. Pure craziness! I can't even imagine doing it. The more I thought about it, the more I felt bad about him being down there all alone with no one to even see his great accomplishment. I managed to rearrange our activities and found a way to get me and the kids along with Chris's parents down to the park to cheer him in to the finish.
The park was gorgeous. It was a smaller event so it was nice for the kids to have space to run around especially after such a long drive. We made it there about 30 minutes before he finished. The best part was that we totally surprised him. It was really fun to see him coming and cheer him to the finish line!

 Good job honey! We knew you could do it! Way to persevere. You are our rockstar!

Afterwards we enjoyed relaxing by the lake while he recovered a bit and ate some food. The kids had a blast playing in the swimming area of the lake. I didn't bring them swimsuits, but they had fun pushing the limits on how far I would let them go out. At least the weather was pretty perfect. It was a great day! Now he needs to come up with some new goals for the next year! 

Also some pretty awesome art pieces!