Tiny Kiersten in the middle of the pack at the start ... the day's racing begins... 

Hanging on to Noah's wheel... 

The youngest age group still needs to learn something about drafting... Kees knows about descending though because he hit 33mph and spun out his junior gears on one big descent! 

Doing some hurting trying to bridge the gap. 

Outclimbing the little guys to the uphill finish... not an easy task when you outweigh them by 30 pounds and are a sprinter and not a climber! 

He and I both were set for haircuts this week and got cancelled ;-) 

Kiersten being cheered up the last climb to the finish... she had miscalculated the weather and had on too much clothing and got hot halfway through the race... who knew all that black would be warm?

;-)

Notice little brother in the middle of the picture cheering her on! 

Finished... hot and tired but she gave it her all! 

Lining up for the junior rollout... for some reason Kees barely passed when his bike normally rolls out perfectly. 

Thanks to the folks at Bicycle Sport Shop for setting us up with a bike for the race... it was a teeny bit too big and I watched in amazement as the mechanic took a hacksaw to the carbon post to get it to go down low enough to fit Kiersten! 

Jan Ulrich retires!

It's a sad ending to a fairly sad story... but I always loved watching Jan race and thankfully we got to see him in his last Tour de France, here finishing far behind Lance in Courcheval. 

Test Day

As part of moving up the belt ranks you have to take an oral exam and then demonstrate certain skills... here he's answering the questions from a high-level black belt. 

Sparring with a green belt. 

Right before he contacts the board... 

He breaks the board in half on his first try! 

Proudly displaying his broken board! 

Basketball

Chillin' before the game. 

As always he led his team in rebounds. 

Defending their number one scorer, but unfortunately it wasn't enough... they lost their first game by six points. 

Deja Vu!

Kiersten reminded me that her very first "triathlon" bike, her brother's 30 pound, steel-framed, 20-inch wheeled mountain bike with BMX tires (pictured here) which she won her first five triathlons on against girls on road bikes was also stolen. That was sad because it was the bike that started it all for her and had obvious sentimental value.

Because she was still too small for a road bike we replaced it with a real mountain bike with 24-inch wheels and put slicks on it. She won her first national championships at 8-years of age on it against girls on road bikes and set a record bike split... on a mountain bike! 

Stolen Bike!

Unfortunately Kiersten's favorite bike was stolen last night.

Two bikes were stolen but one recovered, unfortunately the still missing one is the one with the hardest to replace parts. Thankfully several friends from our family at Slowtwitch have stepped in to try and get Kiersten back on a bike before her first race of the season which is only two weeks from now!

Busy day... baseball tryouts and then a basketball game back-to-back!

So... today was tryout day for baseball. Unlike many of the other kids who have been working with coaches for the last month just for tryouts, we haven't thrown the ball since the end of last season. That's how we do it with every sport. A "hockey parent" I'm not ;-)

His first throw was on target but low, but he brought it up some and hit the first baseman on his numbers every throw after that.

I asked him afterwards if it made him nervous when that first ball went low and he said it did but he just corrected it afterwards and it went where he wanted it to.

He felt really good about his performance because usually he doesn't shine in tryouts (since we don't prepare for them). Since he's been on the all star team virtually every year the coaches all know him so truthfully even when he has a bad tryout it doesn't affect his draft because everyone knows his abilities. 

He was on a roll... snagging every ball thrown his way. 

Waiting in line for his at-bat. 

He had an awesome time at bat... the only kid who hit every ball... even this poorly-thrown one!