T2 and on to the run

Kiersten's Karnage

You really need to click on some of these to get the full extent of how muddy her bike got!

The FINISH!!!

Pouring rain... peanut butter-like mud on the bike and run course...

Around 150 starters... only 68 finishers... most of them quitting after succumbing to bike damage from the mud...

Kiersten... the youngest and smallest (by far) of the competitors... had her rear derailleur jam into her rear wheel at mile 6... locking the wheel... yet she continued.

She later said "I didn't come this far to quit" and pushed her bike... with a locked rear wheel... and laden with 20 pounds of mud... 4.5 miles up and down the steep trails... for almost 2 hours to T2!

She finished... like half the competitors didn't... in over 5 hours... but she finished!

Y.O. Ranch

On the way back to San Antonio we passed the Y.O. Ranch.

Pre-race fun!

The kids played on the river the day before the Xterra, and then seriously chowed down on the pasta dinner that night!

Epic Xterra

More pics and videos later!

1/100th of a second!

Wow!

Birthday girl!

Kiersten turned 14! So on her birthday she got to do whatever she wanted... so it was no morning track workout and sleeping in... lunch at her favorite hamburger joint... and shopping for cute clothes and fun accessories... what more could a girl ask for?




She loved the necklace that I got for her... I'm pretty good at getting in touch with my feminine side ;-)




And of course a sundae!

The Olympics have begun!

Looks like we'll watching a lot more TV for a few weeks and hearing a lot of this.

High school XC practice

Kiersten (who's only going into 8th grade) was invited by the coach of the best high school girls cross country team in town to work out with them this summer, and on their 4 mile run she came in 5th of the 17 girls! It was hot, the mosquitoes were out (thanks to the week of rain from the hurricane) and she was sore from not running for three weeks but she enjoyed it and was ecstatic to have done so well!

Crash!

Kiersten's friend Erika is preparing for a kids triathlon next weekend so Kiersten and Kees rode with her on the bike course for a fun/training pre-ride. After riding the course a couple of times we got back on the hike-bike trail at the university and headed back to the cars when Kees crashed. He was sitting up and stretching his back when his bike wandered to the left and slipped off the trail. We were probably only going 12-15 mph but when his bike got off the trail it hit something and stopped immediately and he hit the ground pretty hard.

For a few minutes he was pretty composed but when the adrenaline wore off and he started feeling the pain of the wounds and saw the blood pouring out he lost it! After he settled down, though, he thought it was so cool that he had crashed and had "road rash" and wandered if he could get stitches!!

He got two deep cuts on his elbow and hamburgered up his knee pretty badly since he fell onto really rough chip seal. He also got scrapes and bruises on his other knee, his chest and his hands. I can't imagine what his hands would have looked like without gloves!

Road rash!

The doctor checked him out and although some of the wounds were pretty deep and into the fatty tissue everything was OK... but no triathlon next weekend for him, unfortunately! Kees was bummed, but glad that he was all right!

He still thinks it's really cool to have road rash, and Kiersten thinks hers is better! We'll have to wait to see what the scars look like ;-)