St. Anthony's - Last Part

After the race was over, I headed to the transition area to see how the DeLand Gang relay team was doing. My mom finished the swim in time to see me finish, my dad was out on the bike course, and their runner was warming up. Mom and I hung around to cheer when they made the bike-to-run switch. In the end, they finished 3rd in the mixed relay category…and I beat their time again:)!
We all went back to the truck to change into nice clothes for the awards ceremony. It was a bit of a wait (about 2 hours) until they started, but they award the pro’s first so that made the wait shorter. Jasmine ended up 7th overall and my roommate Sarah Haskins was 2nd! It was fun to stand on the podium again, surrounded by some of the best women in this sport. We didn’t wait around for the relay award…we got in the truck and started heading home!
Since my brother didn’t come to the race, he drove home from Gainesville and pulled into the driveway about the same time we did. He wanted to spend a bit of time visiting since we both know we aren’t going to see much of each other this year (such a great brother, I know:). He could only stay for the evening because he had to get back for Monday morning swim practice. I introduced him to Jasmine and we all chatted and hung out relaxing…because relaxing is all we wanted to do after racing hard that morning!
It was also by chance that my Aunt Jan was visiting my Grandma in DeLand at that same time and they came over to the house for a short visit. It was like more family members in the house for 30 minutes than all year long!
On Monday morning…guess what…we slept in! LATE! And enjoyed every minute of it! Eventually, we got up and thought about activities. We decided on visiting the beach first, for swimming and sunning and shopping, followed by a long bike ride in the afternoon. For a bit of the ride, Jaz and I met up with the DeLand airport group, but mostly spun easy by ourselves. For dinner we combined a lot of leftovers and watched the movie Flight Plan with Jodie Foster (I’d rate it 3 out of 5 stars).
Tuesday morning we tried to go waterskiing at Carl’s place…but he wasn’t around when we showed up (big bummer). Instead, I took Jaz to the Drop Zone and she went for an airplane ride with my dad who was flying the skydivers. She loved it! Of course I wanted a plane ride…but I had a date with the dentist…by-the-way, my dentist’s name is Dr. Slaughter, how insane is that!?!?
With fresh, clean, shiny teeth, it was time to drive to Port Orange for a light jog and then cool swim with the DBS team. The jog was H-O-T, big surprise in Florida in the middle of the day…and the pool was GREEN, big surprise for real! But it was good to see Coach Steve and the rest of the team, say ‘hi’, swim for 5000 meters, and then get out. We rushed home to get to yoga on time…of course we didn’t make it on time…but it sure felt good to stretch, breathe, and relax for an hour.
The rest of the evening was basically a mad rush…packing laundry, packing bikes, cooking dinner, baking cookies, checking emails, and setting alarms. For 4AM!!!! We had to get up at 4AM for our 6am flight from Orlando. I can’t thank my dad enough for driving us to the airport that early in the morning (I’m not even sure that IS ‘morning’ yet?!). I was able to snag an entire row of seats on the Orlando-Denver flight and caught some much needed zzz’s.
What is the perfect ending to this story??? Jaz and I arrived in COS with more than enough time to re-build our bikes and make the 2pm Gold Camp hill-repeat workout!