Heatwave Triathlon

Saturday, June 5, Jeff competed in the 25th Annual Heatwave Classic Triathlon in Ridgeland. It started at 7:00 a.m., so we were up early. We stayed at my cousin's house in Flora. (Thank you so much, Lauren, for letting us stay there! Great to see Gotta Go represented at the race site!) Jeff wanted to be at the transition area to get everything set up at 6:00. We set our phone alarms for 4:00 so we would have plenty of time to get ready, eat breakfast, pack up, and get out the door. We didn't want to wake Caroline until we got ready to leave. Tipsy woke Caroline up around 5:30, but we weren't far from waking her up. My plan was to try to get her in the car (still asleep), change her clothes when we get there, and feed her breakfast in the parking lot. Well, I got two out of three. Amazingly, she was awake the whole ride there and somehow didn't fall asleep until 10:00 (which is close to her usual morning nap time, but considering she was up a couple hours earlier, I was shocked that she was awake that long...and happy!)

Anyway, back to Jeff and the triathlon. Rain was definitely in the forecast, but it held off until we left the race site around 10:00. I guess we were lucky that it was cloudy most of the time. The sun came out a little, but it kept going back in. It wasn't too hot like the earlier forecasts had predicted. The race consisted of a 1/2 mile swim in the Ross Barnett Reservoir, followed by a 24 1/2 mile bike ride along the Natchez Trace, and ending with a 10k run along Ridgeland's Multi-Use Trail. Jeff finished 25th (out of 34) in his age group with a time of 2:33:04. This is probably the most competitive age group (as with many other triathlons), especially considering that the top two overall finishers came from this age group. This triathlon is much bigger than King of the Hill. There were nearly 500 people competing.

Getting down to crunch time! Hoping the rain will hold off.

Checking out his bike ahead of time, making sure everything is perfect. You can't waste any time in transition from getting out of the water. Every second counts!

Heading into the water for the swim. Jeff is the one in the middle, just in the water with the yellow & blue jersey and black shorts

Jeff coming out of the water. The water was very choppy, but it seems to always look that way.

Yea! Go daddy! Here he comes toward the finish line.

Sorry I didn't get any good pictures of Jeff on the bike. Everyone left and came in so fast and it is hard to get a good shot.