We Are All Brothers Part I

We are putting together a Three part blog post this week as we all have so much to say after our first triathlon together. Each post will be from one of the "bozos" this week so please feel free to share your comments or just share our story. Thank you to each of you and of course to all our wonderful sponsors for helping make this dream a reality.
-Evan, Brent & Kyle
Walking With KPeasey

Part I.

I didn't arrive in St Pete until late on Friday evening. I was super tired from my week and I think my exhaustion hindered some of my excitement. As soon as I got to dinner and felt the breeze from the ocean I really felt the rush that you can only get from a race like this. Saturday was a pretty whirlwind of a day for us as we prepped for our race. I walked with Brent around 8:00am to check out the water, and to keep an eye on him during a warm up swim. The surf was pretty incredible and I wasn't exactly sure that Kyle would be safe riding around in waves that were white capped and cresting pretty consistently. Brent actually disappeared about 100 yds away from the beach as the surf was so high. Next we got on our bike and I had a few more bad feelings as we had some struggles to get the bike tuned up for the race. By 10:30 in the morning the heat was beating down on us and I realized we would be running in this heat tomorrow. We finally made some practice laps with the bike and then with the jogger to shore up our preparations.

I should note that after we prepped for the race I rode the bike over to the transition area while Brent and Kyle got the jogger over. Although I am not much of a biker, I was amazed at the bike from our friends at Freedom Concepts, but wondered how Brent and Kyle were going to make this tandem work on race day.

Saturday afternoon was probably my favorite of the weekend as odd as that sounds. We sat down with Matt Pearl for one last interview. Plenty of cutting up and total relaxation. Don't even remember what he asked us, but it was just good to feel relaxed during the weekend. I actually slept pretty well and didn't have any problems falling asleep.




RACE DAY:

Waking up at 4:15 am was totally easy. We walked over and had everything set up by five. As we walked to the new start for the swim, a bird decided to calm Kyle's nerves by pooping right on. I think this really helped all of us relax and put our minds at ease. As we zipped Kyle up in the kayak I got a huge rush and that feeling didn't subside until we crossed the finish line.
Brent came out after a few minutes of us holding Kyle in the water, strapped himself in, and took off. Brent came out pretty quickly and before I knew it he was done. We raced up the beach with Kyle in the jogger to a HUGE applause. We ran the half mile or so towards the bike-- this was the first time I saw all of our friends and family cheering for us. It was probably the reason we were running so fast to the transition area.


We got Kyle all situated into the bike, and Brent took off for the course. After about 2 hrs I could see Brent coming in for the bike finish and they looked great on that bike! They seemed to be pretty excited to see me as we began to push Kyle back into transition and get ready for the run. It was pushing 90 degrees out on the course but other than that it was freaking awesome! One of my favorite parts of the run besides people congratulating us was watching some of our friends from Dynamo Multisport running alongside us for encouragement. Our coach Matthew Rose and our training partner Erik Johnson ran almost double the run course just to catch us at every turn. That extra effort on their part really helped push us through that final stretch.



Crossing the finish line is sort of hard to describe. We were sprinting and cheering and then we were swarmed by our friends and family. I guess it was just the way I wanted it to end. Kyle was so excited it pretty much made any aches go away....


A few beers at lunch and now we're ready for the next race....

-Evan