My Iron Man

 Have you seen this picture of the Iron Man:  

                            

 That is pretty cool, but this is how I picture 

MY Iron Man:

 He doesn't need all those extra shields, gadgets and such.  

All he needs are his own muscles, determination and hours and hours of training.

We traveled 9 hours in the car to:

St. George, UTAH

 We spent a week enjoying the scenery, climbing the rocks, hiking the trails:

 

We stayed in a condo complete with bedrooms, family room, full kitchen, and balcony overlooking swimming pools and basketball court.

Before Andrew's race he would scout out his bike and run courses. 

While he did that we played in the water as much as possible...(I say we but I mean the kids)...I tried to survive my ever so stubborn headaches by hiding in the shade reading. 

RACE DAY started for Andrew at 4:30am.  

The kids and I got up at 5:30am.  We had to drive 1/2 hour where we then we took a bus, with the hundreds of other spectators, to the swim start.

I didn't think we'd find Andrew before the race began (with so many racers), but we did!  

I snapped a quick picture and gave him a big kiss.

 We climbed on some rocks that were a little bit out into the lake.  

It was a GREAT spot to watch and a FUN place for the kids to play.

Andrew swam the 2. mile swim in 1 hour 9 minutes.  Right on his target time.

Then while Andrew biked the 115 miles in an amazing 5 hours we made our way back to our condo and rested.

We headed over to the finish line around 1pm and tried hard to spot Andrew transitioning from the bike to the run.   But somehow we missed him.  It was such a bummer because it was BLAZING HOT and no shade to hide in.  It took every ounce of endurance I had in me to hang in there until the end.  

(12 hours of standing & cheering, traveling to each transition, keeping the kids occupied & coping with heat exhaustion took it's toll).  

Here I am talking as if I'm the the one racing!!!  I had to keep reminding myself that all the people racing were enduring much more pain than I was and that I shouldn't think of complaining.

Andrew completed the full marathon (26 miles) in 4 hours 45 minutes.  His record marathon time was 3 hours 11 min. but the intense hills made it painful and difficult to run as fast as he would've liked.  In spite of it all he was very pleased with his time overall....especially since this was his first ever ironman.

Andrew's Total Race Time was 
11 hours 40 minutes.