Ryan and his buddies love to train for triathlons and about a year ago they decided to do a
Half-Iron Man race (swim 1.2 miles, bike 56 miles, and run a half-marathon of 13.1 miles).
The race was in Benton Harbor, Michigan, about 7 hours away on Lake Michigan. My parents kept the girls for the weekend and Ryan and I enjoyed a great weekend away! Thank you Mom and Dad!
A bunch of families caravanned (how do you spell that?) up there together...it was a pretty smooth trip, except for when Jason forgot that his bike was on top of his car (in a bike carrier) and drove through a Starbucks drive-through and knocked his bike off. YIKES! Thankfully, after some craziness, his bike was fixed in time for the race.
When we got to our hotels on Friday it was A DUMP. Like, it was really bad. Like my friend Meredith said "well...if we were on a mission trip to a third world country this would feel pretty nice." HA! The problem was we weren't paying third world prices...I was seriously sick to think how much we were paying for the yucky hotel room. (Because there were so many racers in the small town, the hotel room prices were bumped way up, even in crappy hotels.) Thankfully, Ryan got on hot-wire and found some great hotels in South Bend, IN (which was only about 40 minutes away and where we were planning to go to the next day to visit the University of Notre Dame, so it worked out great. Praise the Lord. We stayed in a FABULOUS hotel for HALF the price. Thank Goodness!
On Saturday we got up and drove to the Expo...
Who works out the day before a half-ironman...our boys. HA! I guess they needed a final tune-up.
So proud of these boys...Alex, Blake, Matt, Jason, and Ryan
And then let the real fun begin...
Ryan and I drove back to South Bend to tour the campus of the University of Notre Dame. Growing up, my Dad was always a big Irish football fan, so of course I was too. It was so cool driving around the campus and then taking a stadium tour!
The campus was GORGEOUS!
Let the stadium tour begin...I was a little excited...and my dad was a little jealous...
It actually ended up being a tour of all the athletic facilities, and it was REALLY cool! At the beginning, Ryan was like "this will be fun, but I'm just going because you want to go." But by the end he was like "that was awesome! I'm so glad we did this!"
And then we headed to the football stadium...I was hearing the Notre Dame fight song in my head the whole way (thanks to my dad who played it in the car every chance he got! HA!)
In the locker room...WHOA.
And then they LET US TOUCH the famous sign the players hit on the way to the field...Ryan was pumping himself up for his big race the next day!
In front of "Touchdown Jesus." (That's what they call it because Jesus looks like he's putting his arms up for a touchdown, and you can see it through the goalposts in the stadium.)
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