Rachel's Triathlon

Rachel decided she wanted to compete in a triathlon. She actually first mentioned it last year, but we had missed all of them. We told her that if she still wanted to do one this year, we'd find her one. We thought she'd forget about it and not say anything else about it. But we were wrong! So we found her one to compete in and told her she had to train for it. We weren't going to sign her up for it if she wasn't serious about it. She trained for it so we did as we had promised and signed her up. We did find out when we signed her up that she would have to compete in the 9 & 10 year old division because she turns 9 this calendar year. So even though she is 8 and won't be 9 until September, she had to compete in the 9 & 10's. We were a little bummed about that, but it was okay. For the kids 10 and under, the triathlon consisted of a 100m swim (I think this one was actually more like 75m), 3 mile bike ride, and 0.75 mile run. The fun thing was that at this pool they have a big slide at the end of the pool, so that's how the 10 & under kids enter the pool! How cool is that!!! Rachel was literally the last one into the pool of all the kids 10 & under. She passed several kids on the swim and then headed over to the transition area to get ready for the bike ride. The bike ride was two laps through a neighborhood. I think Rachel rode faster than she's ever ridden because she was motoring! She made her way back to the transition area and shed the bike and helmet and started on her run. She finished it well and then we just hung out for a while. We didn't think she'd place in the top 3, especially since she was competing in the older division. But since we weren't in any hurry, we waited around for the awards. It was hard to tell how she finished since she had been the very last one to get into the pool! We knew she had finished ahead of quite a few people, but we didn't know how she actually finished in her age group. When they started announcing the top three for her age group, we were shocked to here that she placed SECOND in her age group (9 & 10 year old girls)!!!!! She did so awesome!!! She was pretty excited about it too! She's ready for the next one. She now knows what to expect. So proud of her for doing her very best!!!