Ironman Day!

4:30 am Saturday morning my alarm goes blaring off.  I run and wake Braxton up for the big Ironman day.  We head out to meet up with Niccole and off to the starting line we go.  The winds a blowing... I say 40mph and the water is COLD.  The swimmers line up and get ready to begin.  The gun shot goes off and they are off! A bunch of green and pink heads a swimming away.  The waves nearly drownding them  I have to say I was scared for everyone with the swim in the first place but the waves and wind made it worse.  After 1:34 minutes the first person we were waiting for arises from the water... Oh gosh I think my heart was beating a million miles a minute.  Then 15 minutes later the next comes out.  Whew!!! A little easier to breathe!  Others came in by the boat load and boy was it scary.  We then watched as all the swimmers transitioned to the bikes.  Screaming and cheering as they  all went by I think they were unable to pick out who was yelling but knew they were cheered for.  We loaded up and headed out for the bike race.  We didnt know how we would make it to see the bike race because it was on the clear other side of town and we couldnt leave until the last person biked off from the lake.  We decided we will just find somewhere that people were biking and sit to cheer.  We did, I think we were at mile 67 of the bike race (they took two loops around)  and just sat on a side road.  It was actually one of the best locations ever because it was more personable.  Braxton was cheering his little lungs off. Every single biker that came by looked at Braxton and would say thank you!  He was so excited for them all, they did shift their gears at us because the hill started to decline and that worried him haha!  Then here comes our people.... Braxton just cheered so loud I couldnt do anything but laugh.  Knowing people as they ride by is soooo much cooler then just cheering.  We saw four of friends pass by and were amazed at their strength and ability to push so hard.   This was a moment of just smiles.  Pure excitement they were half way done and they were still doing it.   We hurried back into town to meet up with friends at the transition.  We knew we had a couple of hours so we just talked, watched the first place man come in, and then we needed to leave.  Braxton and I loaded up and headed to my nieces Baptism.  It was such a beautiful sweet baptism.  We then headed back to finish up the Ironman.  We rejoined a ton of friends and just cheered for everyone we could.  Allison, Jasmine, Braxton and I were yelling for everybody by there number to make them feel cool.  They smiled a ton which made us feel good.  Then it was close to the last 12 miles and boy were these future Ironmen tired.  Braxton was looking for one as the rest of us were waiting so he ran down the course to find them.  He found them and ran right along side cheering and chanting.  He was so excited... it was fun to see Braxton think the Ironman was that cool.   We moved around a lot to make sure we were at many different locations along the path because for me knowing someone is there just pushes you a little harder.   So push comes to shove, we saw people puking, we saw people leaving the race early, but the best was we saw all of our friends finish the Ironman. At 11:34pm our last guy came in for the race and Braxton and I loaded up and headed home.  20+ hours on our feet and seeing some amazing results.  We loved the Ironman!!!!