Shannon's Trip To The Big House (Casa Grande)

Just like millions of other people in the world, our family sets out goals for the new year in January. Mostly these are family goals, but we also try to set some individual goals as well. We generally do...ok on the family goals. The individual goals? Well, we have a wide range of successes and failures and everything in between. For instance, if my personal goal for the year was to hug my kids everyday and tell them that I love them, I have done very well with this goal. Every other personal goal I have ever set has fallen somewhere behind this level of success.

I bring this up because for 2010, one of Shannon's top priorities was to get in better shape. Now you may be surprised to learn that this one crops up quite often on our yearly to do lists. But this year, Shannon went about it in a more determined way. She shared her goal with some of her friends, one of which is named Anna Marks. Anna convinced Shannon to train with her for a triathlon in Casa Grande to be held in November. Shannon's first reaction was, yeah right, I don't do triathlons, I just want to get in better shape. But Anna was persistent and said, "We can do this. I have a program that is designed to help get people up to running a 5k in a matter of weeks and we can train for the other things as well. If I don't have someone to do it with, I probably will quit. So do it with me and we will keep each other going." (I paraphrase here to help clarify the point of the conversations. I have witnessed a conversation or two between these two and there is no way the conversation was that short. But you get the idea.)

So Shannon began. She would get up early every morning and run. At first she did it alone with many a plea to me to make sure she got up and did it and not let her sleep. In general, I was helpful. In specific, there was no way in he...heck I was going to get up and run with her, but I was very helpful in bothering her enough to get out bed. However, she took it from there.

Before long, she found a friend, Misty Conrad, who soon became her regular running partner. They trained and eventually were able to complete 3 miles regularly. Swimming was not really an issue as that is her favorite part. Bicycling...well, she was kind of on her own with that one, but she did it. (By the way, when she told me that she had made it all the way up 1st Ave. in Thatcher by herself without stopping, I had to try it myself to see how bad it really is. It's bad. Ten more feet and the local police force would have been finding remains of my coyote ravaged carcase on the side of the road days later.)

So the day of the race arrives. Ok actually the night before, but it isn't really that dramatic to say, the early afternoon on the day before the race arrives. Anyway, we pack up and we leave town. We drop off Kate with our parents (for other purposes which will be discussed in soon to follow blog postings) and the five of us head off. The vehicle's eventual destination is Mesa where we will be staying with Danae and Lamar. However, Anna lives near Tucson and Shannon was staying the night with her and travelling to the race with her so we went to Mesa via Tucson. This actually led to a long conversation with our kids about the meaning of the word via. Long story short, going to Mesa from Thatcher via Tucson makes for a looong drive.

We stopped off for a pasta dinner that was quite good and then we dropped off Shannon. Now we left Thatcher at 4:00. By the time we had the pasta dinner, dropped off Shannon, made it through the two wrecks on I-10 before we could even get to Tucson and then made it to Mesa, it was 10:00 p.m. The fact that to keep the peace with Abby I had to listen to Radio Disney for a good portion of the trip did not somehow make the time go faster.

The next morning, our little family made its way to cheer on our favorite soon to be triathlete. We started down the road to Central Community College and who do we see bicycling down the road? Our MOM!!!! Yeah!!!! So we got to the campus and set up waiting for the opportunity to take this picture.



We then got to see her take off running (walking, but very quickly) and began the wait for her to cross the finish line. About 40 minutes later, we got to cheer her home and Shannon was able to call herself a triathlete, and she even has the medal to prove it.



We are so proud of her and all she did make this goal a reality this year. We appreciate all those who helped her get there including Anna, Misty, Stephanie DeSpain and I am sure many others. It was a really neat day and now she is excited to take on the next one.

Meanwhile, the finish of the triathlon was just the beginning of our adventures. Check back in a day or two to see what happens next.