These races are packed with thousands of athletes! The start times began around 7:30 am and both days Trent's start time was around 9 am. Saturday morning we woke up, drove to the race site and dropped Trent off. You see, the transition area closed at 7:30. So even though Trent's start time wasn't until around 9 he had to be there before 7:30 to get his transition set up. My mom and I took Jonah and found a little bagel shop to eat breakfast. Saturday we arrived at the race around 7:45 and miraculously found Trent in the sea of people.
Our friends, the Conry family, were there as well which always makes watching the race more fun when we have Richie and Trent to cheer for. The race was delayed about 15 minutes due to getting all of the roads closed which pushed the start times back a bit. After waiting what felt like a million hours it was time for Trent's wave to begin. The first athlete was out of the water and I knew that Trent shouldn't be too far behind. There were six of us watching for Trent and Richie. Richie came out of the water and Trent was nowhere to be seen. I knew he should be out of the water around the same time as Richie. Time went by and I didn't see Trent come out. Slow swimmers were beginning to finish and I knew this wasn't right. Something was wrong. Did I (and the other 5 people watching for Trent) miss him? Did he get hurt during the swim? Was he picked up by a boat? I didn't feel right about this. I told my mom to watch Jonah so that I could try and find out what happened. I raced through the crowds of people and tried to look for his bike in the sea of thousands of bikes. To say the least I began to panic. I called Trent's coach because I didn't know what to do. I also called Trent's parents who were watching the live feed online. I wanted to know if his time online showed that he completed the swim. The live feed was having technical difficulties and was not up to par. I began to feel helpless. There were people everywhere!! I felt lost in the sea of people. I was on my way to find a race director (not knowing where to look) when my phone went off and Trent's coach said another team member who was watching the race by the bike course said that she saw Trent. She was positive! WHEW!
After the race Trent said that he was confused because he didn't hear us when we came out of the swim. But he chalked it up to being that he was "in the zone" and was so focused on the race that he had blocked out all of the noise! I'm glad that he wasn't concerned!
Trent had a great race and set a new personal best in an olympic distance course. I wasn't sure how the races at Nationals would go because Trent's focus is now on longer distance races (half Ironman). We woke up Sunday morning and repeated Saturday morning, except I saw Trent come out of the swim! He had never done two races back to back like this, but it didn't appear to be difficult for him. He raced an excellent race and qualified for the world race next year (we probably won't go because the focus will be on half Ironman races).
Overall it was a great weekend! Trent had two great races and we had a fun time enjoying Milwaulkee as you can see from my previous post here. Excellent success at Nationals racing against the best in the country has propelled him to finish out the rest of the season with three more races this month!
The video of Trent finishing taken by our friend, Jillian!
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