IRONMAN 2014

On Saturday May 3rd Joel, Kyle and John ran the Ironman again.  We picked Kyle up and I dropped them both off at the buses that take them out to Sand Hollow to start the race.  They looked happy and ready.

Josh, Ben and I were stationed at mile marker 9 on the bike path.  It was the 2nd area needed for pointers.  Sophie and Brycen were at the first one up the road 5 miles before us.  Both areas had city workers there too so it was so super easy to help out.  We just basically stood there and cheered everyone on.  From where Sophie was she could hear the cannon go off to start the race and all the music and excitement.   4 hours after that we were done.  It was perfect!  We could see that they survived the water and then we could go home watch the last half of David's soccer game and all of Ben's game.  These games were important because they were the FINALS.  Each of them were playing for 1st place plaques and they were excited.  David didn't help out because his game started at 10 that morning and he didn't want to risk missing it.  He is their #1 goalie and scorer but that'll be the next post.  We were right next the Hurricane airport and we got to see 2 differnt airplanes take off and land.  I didn't get a picture of the first one but he was much closer to the ground and looked like he was going to run over a biker.  It was crazy.

John, of course, was the first one to pass us.  He was smiling the entire way.  You could tell he was enjoying every second of the race.

 

Then my friends Sterling Cabana and Tiffany Gust came by.  Both we looking good.

 
 Then came Joel. Here are a couple from the lake that Jolene Ispson took before the swim and as Joel was getting started on his bike. In this group picture if you look right in the middle to the right of the tall guy you'll see Joel and John is in between the front guys fingers.

 

Joel had learned the hard way from last year that he had better stop and let me take a picture or he'd be in BIG trouble.

 

 What a great picture!  And it only took 20 seconds and then he was off.

 Shayne- This is the church right behind Three Falls.  Just so you get some sort of idea of where this all is.  This is also the same road that curves and leads up to Mason's office.

 
Not to far behind was Kyle.  He was doing great but he said that as he was going up Snow Canyon, he hit a wall.  He hadn't been training a whole lot in Hawaii and needed a bit more bike riding.

When we went to see Joel finish I sent Sophie and the little boys over to the bleachers with JoEllen and I stood on the Round-a-bout because I was in official volunteer garb and they weren't letting anyone else stand there.  Josh had run up the street to see if he could find him and came running back yelling at me that Joel was right there.  Needless to say, I wasn't ready and these pictures are kind of blurry.  We were pleasantly surprised to see him because last year we waited for over an hour for him to finish.

 He had knocked 2 hours and 3 minutes off of his time of last year!  It was awesome!  The guitar is the new sculpture that is right in the center of the round-a-bout.  It's really cool.  It's about 20 feet tall.

 

We were so proud of him.  All of his hard work had paid off. 

 John had finished an hour and a half earlier and we were mid soccer at that point so we didn't see him finish but here are some of him that I took off of others people's Facebook pages.

 Next came my friend Wally Brown and I ran into Lance Hiemelright while we were waiting for Kyle.  Matty and Evan decided to keep cool in the fountain.  It was 90 degrees and we were starting to get worried about Kyle.

I decided to go back to the Round-a-bout to see if he was coming and then out of nowhere came KYLE!  We were so relieved.  He looked spent and happy to be done. 

 

I went to the finish to see how he was doing and they were already leaving.  George was helping walk to the van and I called JoEllen to check on them right as he passed out.  I told her that I'd run and get an IV and meet him at their house.

 Two bags of saline later he finally felt better.  He was nauseous and out of it when we started, the bowl was in case he needed to throw up, but was up and walking around a couple hours later.  Thank goodness.
 

Josh took this picture for Sophie.  I swear that girl cannot take a bad photo.  I think I'll start being in photo's with her because all of the ones with her in it even work out.  Later Joel got an IV and was doing great.  We all went to the after race volunteer dinner at the Ironman Village on main street.  It was a fun way to end the race.