Really, I don't know where the time is going!! I'm trying to remember everything that has happened since my last update. This will be in no particular order.
Matt ran in the First Annual Chicago Spring Half-Marathon in May. It was a 10k and Half-Marathon, and pretty good spectating. Matt placed 3rd over all, and got a personal-best. The weather was perfect, a little cool in the shade but still pretty good.
We also spent the morning walking around the city afterward and just enjoying the day.
We didn't really do much else at the end of May, just enjoyed the weather and got outside for some bike-rides and got to the pool a few times.
The weekend of June 12th, we took a road-trip to Lawrence, Kansas. It was a 9 hour drive, we headed west into Iowa and then once we got to Des Moines, we turned south to go the rest of the way through Iowa, and into Missouri, then west again into Lawrence, KS. We didn't hit to many construction zones, which was nice. Iowa and Kansas were surprisingly hilly. We went to Kansas for Ironman Kansas 70.3. This was the second year of this race - Matts first year, and they still have some glitches to work out, but overall it was set-up quite well. While in Kansas we made it to Overland Park for dinner to meet up with some folks that Matt worked with while on a project for SBC in St. Louis. We also went and saw the Disney/Pixar movie UP. Which I really enjoyed.
The race was on Sunday, June 14th. Matts wave started at 7:02am. We were at the race site by 4:30am so that he could get both transition area's set up.
All the bikes racked in T1, ready to go race day morning
Matt out of the swim
Headed into T2 after the 56 mile bike ride
Out on the run, and enjoying it.
The best shot I could get of him crossing the finish line.
Matt finished with another personal best, with at time of 4:25:40 - 8th in his age group and 24th over all. The highlight of the entire day, was receiving a spot to Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Clearwater, Florida. So, we will be headed to Clearwater in November. We're looking forward to it. We'll fly down on Thursday and stay until Sunday in the Tampa area visiting with Aunt Helen and family, the race is on Saturday. Then Sunday morning we are going to drive to Orlando and spend 2 days at Sea World. Flying back home on Tuesday.
We drove home from Kansas on Monday, June 15th, we had a slight detour, when the bridge that we wanted to use to cross in Illinois for Iowa was under construction and closed. It was open on Friday, and there were no signs indicating that it would be closed, so we had to follow the detour, and then ended up heading toward Joliet and had to head back north through Joliet. It worked out fine, just frustrating when there is no notification ahead of time.
This past Monday, June 22nd. My mom had total knee replacement surgery in her right knee. The surgery took an hour and a half (which I just think is crazy, only an hour and a half to replace an entire joint?), and went as well as it possibly could have. Mom came home on Thursday and is recovering quite well. For the people that had known about the surgery before, Thank You for keeping her in your thoughts. We do appreciate it.
And that brings me to now, it has been in the 90's all week and really humid. Next Saturday is July 4th, already. I love fireworks, so I am defiantly looking forward to the weekend.
Well, until next time....
