Our Ellie can do anything she wants once she sets her mind to it and today she proved that to us again. A couple of months ago she decided that it would be fun to participate in a triathlon with some of her girlfriends and today she did just that!
This triathlon held at the University of North Florida is the largest kids triathlon in the United States with 1800 kids participating! The afternoon before we had already taken Ellie's bike over to the event area so this morning all we had to do was get Ellie there bright and early...before the heat set in. She was all smiles and ready to go!
Here are all of Ellie's girlfriends from our neighbhorhood before the race. In the front row we have Allie, Haven, McKenna, Samantha and in the back Ellie and Kimberly.
The triathlon for Ellie's age group, the Juniors, consisted of a 100 meter swim, followed by a 3 mile bike ride and then a half mile run.
This is a fraction of the bike transition area. 1800 bikes all in one place is pretty amazing to see!
Ellie and Allie were excited for their turn to finally arrive so that they could line up and get the race started.
And she is off to the pool...Good Luck Ellie!
Dan and Emory went into the pool area to see her swim while I waited outside to catch her in the transition to the bike ride. We wanted to make sure that we didn't miss any part of it and these kids were moving quickly! It's not the best photo but it was hard to get a photo in the pool area with Emory's cell phone. From what I was told, she flew through the swimming and wanted the slower kids in front of her to get out of her way. That's our girl!
When she came out of the pool, she was off and running to the bike transition area where she had to put on her shoes, shirt with her race number and her bike helmet before heading out on the three mile bike ride. She was running full speed and all smiles.
Here she is at the end of the bike ride. She was cruising past some of the kids on the smaller bikes. Just one more part of the race to go!
And here she is as she runs to the finish line! By now it was getting hot and she was surely tired but she was still smiling and running full speed. Quite and accomplishment for our nine year old. Way to go, Ellie!!!
We are always proud of her but today we were even more so than usual. She really did her best, never stopped and did exactly what she set out to do.
Might this be her new lucky number?
