iron men... and women

Saturday was time yet again for our church's youth triathlon.

Matthew decided about a week beforehand that he wanted to participate. 

Last year he participated in the mountain bike leg only -

this year he wanted to do the entire Iron Man

 BEST. KIDS (and leaders!). EVER. 

Modified Iron Man: swimming, 400 meters

mountain biking, 10k

running, 5k

Matt with Kimi Stevenson

He said the swimming leg nearly killed him -

but Kimi was a beast and blew everyone out of the water!

Matt's favorite category - and he was an ANIMAL, hehe!

 Matt hates running... but he's an AWESOME runner!

He lost time swimming, but made it up BIG TIME biking and running!

 Hmmm... one of the 4 times he puked...

... and looks like another shot before/after puking - LOL!

Matt with one of his good friends Calli Morris :)

Calli participated in the biking leg and she was FANTASTIC!

Matt with another good friend, Vanessa Munoz :)

Vanessa runs track and was AMAZING in the running leg!

 Matt came in FIRST PLACE!!! 

His overall time was 1 hour, 9 minutes

I can't even express how proud of him we were :)

And I must say, this came at the perfect time in his life - 

God is good, and knows every one of his children and what they need.

 * LOVE THIS PIC *

 This is seriously too cute for words -

the neighbors were so excited for him, they baked him a cake :)

* SWEETEST CAKE EVER *

We're so thankful for the leaders that plan such great activities,

and we're so proud of all the kids and leaders who participated.

And Matthew, we're so proud of you and who you are.

* WE LOVE YOU * 

nice triathlon

The Mouse turns 15 next week (!!!). For his birthday present,

he asked for a mountain bike so he could still do come cool riding

in between the times he gets to ride his motorcycle.

He did a lot of research and a lot of test riding in a lot of bike shops!

So here is one happy guy with his new Specialized mountain bike :)

I guess you could say he had to try it out for the camera...

(where is your helmet, Matthew James Walker?!?!)

Can you believe bikes come with actual disk brakes now?

I'm still trying to get over the shock that the Mouse is turning 15!

The reason we got Matthew's bike a bit early was so he could participate 

in the triathlon our church was having at Castaic Lake.

This group of boys/men are the participants from our congregation -

I've known all of them, except a few, for nearly their entire lives!

They are a terrific group of guys and leaders -

they did the whole triathlon, while Matthew did the biking segment only.

The biking segment has some gnarly hills that the participants had to 

run their bikes up instead of peddle. OY VEY. Nice job Matthew!

Fortunately though, he had ridden the course once before the race 

(thanks to those dedicated leaders I was talking about)

and he knew the places where he could get some insane speed!

He did really well and got first place in his age category - niiice!

Keep training Mouse - I'm proud of you for participating :)