I had too many photos for one blog post so I turned this story into two. The first is here.

On Sunday we set the alarm for 4:15 a.m. and drove to the venue where we could park and catch shuttle buses to the swim venue.

There were plenty of buses to get the athletes to the swim start and after the athletes all had seats the spectators could get on. We got to Lake Cahuilla by about 5:30 and the race wouldn’t start until 7. So there was a lot of time spent standing around in the cold and the dark and waiting. The athletes collected their decontaminated wetsuits and eventually found their places in the line of swimmers based on their anticipated finish times.

Here is a view of the rows and rows of bikes.

Meryl and Chris before the start of the race.

The pro-athletes went first starting at 7 a.m. The people in the water are the pros. All the others are self-positioning based on their projected times.

The non-pros entered the water in a “rolling start” about ten minutes later. I think they released 3 swimmers every 5 seconds…or was it 5 swimmers every 3 seconds? Something like that.

Dan and Meryl and I had to be patient, waiting for Chris to get to the start. Even though it was light by now it was still very cold. The sun was behind clouds for a couple of hours.

The cold was a concern for the athletes. This is a shallow lake and the water temperature fluctuates a lot with air temperature. The lake temperature was about 57 degrees.

I took this after all of the swimmers had entered the water. They swam on the left side of the yellow cones, around the far red cones, to a cone that is out of the photo to the right.

After passing around the far cone, they swam back to the finish and got out of the water.

There was a slight run to where the bags were hanging and then to the bike.

At the start of the bike portion there was a sharp left turn that went up a hill. Some chose to walk/run through that area while others struggled, especially if they started out in the wrong gear to climb the hill. This was the last place we saw Chris until the end of the bike portion.

All of us spectators had to wait to get on the buses until after 9. There had to be time for the last swimmer to exit the water, get on the bike and ride beyond the narrow road where the buses would exit.

The buses took us back to the Tennis Club grounds where everything else was staged. We only saw Chris as he finished the bike portion and ran into the bike/run transition zone.

This is close to half way on the 13.1 mile run. The athletes ran this loop twice.

This is just to give a view of the landscape. The runners are in the middle of the photo running next to the lawn. The hills and sky made a beautiful setting.

This is the second time past this point. Chris reported feeling pretty hot. That’s not surprising now that he lives in Idaho and the current highs are in the 20s or 30s. At this point we had to scurry to get inside the tennis club grounds so we could be at the end when Chris got there.

I don’t have a good photo of the finish, but Chris looks good here.

And Chris and Meryl both look great here at the end. Nice medal, Chris! And we’re proud of you.

By the way, one of the things the athletes were given in the gear bags was a white plastic wrist band. They were told to honor a volunteer by giving it to the person who helped the most. The next day on the way home, after dropping Chris and Meryl at the airport, I looked for something in the center console of the car and found the wristband and a note from Chris. He said that we earned the wristband for the support we have given him over these last years. Isn’t that touching?