Family Alive

We’re on our Ironman Adventure!  It’s been a long week, and it took a lot of work to get here, but we finally made it yesterday afternoon. 

We’ve had a sliding set of plans for when we were going to head down to Panama City.  1st: Brian was only going to miss class on Friday, so we’d stay through the end of his Thursday class (2:50) and then drive the 4.5-5 hours.  2nd:  The inauguration of the new president of Samford was set for this morning from 10-12, and Brian was going to participate in the event in his UC Davis cap/gown.  We found out that there was a "mandatory" athlete meeting at 7:30pm, so we thought it would be best if we left at noon, and he left an assignment for his class.  3rd:  We found out that no one else could pick up Brian’s race packet, which supposedly could only be picked up until 4pm today.  We decided that it’d be best if he missed the inauguration event and left by 10am.  4th:  I got to campus at 10 to pick him up, and we left at 10:30, with a "whoops-forgot-something" trip at home.  After that, we finally left at 11am. 

Analise got to ride down with her Grandma and Grandpa, in the car with DVD player.  I had looked up directions on Google Maps and we set out with a full car, and a sleeping Josiah, much to our joy.  We made great progress for a couple hours.  We followed the Google Maps directions, even though Brian thought about another way (that his dad -who left an hour before us) ended up taking.  Poor choice.  We watched the time tick by and got more and more stressed as 4pm came and went.  We finally pulled up and dropped Brian off at 4:20.  He’d missed packet picked up.  Thankfully, graciously, they opened again for "latecomers" this morning.  He did make it to the mandatory meeting though. 

Yesterday was an exhausting day, especially since we hardly slept the night before.  We’re in a nice 4 bedroom condo with Brian’s parents and our friends, Tim and Lindsay and their son, Bryant.  Tonight, more friends are joining us, Bryant and Lauren.  Today, Brian’s gotten do a little swimming in the ocean and bike the run course, get all his gear ready, and drop off his bags and relax a bit, before the 7am start on tomorrow.  Then, just a reminder – it’ll be a 2.4 mile (2 lap course) swim in the ocean (which is surprisingly warm!), a 112 mile bike ride that he’ll fly through, and a 26.2 mile (2 lap- out and back course) marathon.  Whew!  I’m tired just typing it all.  I’ll post again tomorrow with a few more details, but if you’re interested, you can follow his progress and check to see his results LIVE on the Ironman website.  How cool is that?!?   We’ll check back in tomorrow! Post your comments here on this page to cheer Brian along. We’ll check back in tonight and then again tomorrow night after the race.

(From Brian) – For those of you who want to follow along live, check out:  http://www.ironmanlive.com  Click on Athlete Split Time on the right side of the page underneath Ford Ironman Florida. Then type in my name into the search box and there you should be able to see my splits after I finish each event. The race starts at 7AM and I should be out of the ocean by 8:30AM. Then I should be finished the bike by 1:30PM and finally be through with the run by 6PM hopefully at the latest.