I flew to San Diego this weekend to watch my sister Kate compete in her first 1/2 Ironman at Oceanside CA. From what her friends tell me, she has been training religiously for months and it showed on Saturday.

From the time she entered the water to the finish line, she had a smile on her face, so it was no surprise that she now plans to go the distance and run a full iron man at some point in the future.

We could only catch glimpses of Kate along the course, mainly just before and after the transitions. The picture above was taken as Kate was finishing her 56 mile bike. She was telling everyone afterwards about how hard the hill section was. She said it started at about 30 miles into the ride. I found this map that shows that the riders had to labor up about an 800′ climb in elevation; three quarters of which was inside of 5 miles!

This was Kate when she was roughly half way through her 13.1 mile run. I’ve also posted a bunch of additional pictures from her race here for you to enjoy. In addition to meeting her goal of finishing the race, she also came within 15 minutes of her stretch goal - to complete the course in 6 hours and 30 minutes. GO KATE!!!

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 1st, 2007 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Digital Photography, Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.