Triathlete

Jenny has been training all summer for this triathlon, and today was the day! She was pretty nervous.. as in only slept three hours last night and had the uncontrollable shakes this morning before the race type of nervous. Honestly, I am really proud of her. She made a truly decent showing at the race. She came in 23 out of over 100 or so racers. Jenny is nothing if she isn't consistent in effort. If she decides to do something, she generally gives everything she has to do it right, like for example, when she decides to hound me to the point of death to get my haircut, or the entire time she was in college and never got a "B." She has always been like this. If I dislike something, like say.... trying to build the front steps.... sometimes I put it off or sometimes drop the thing entirely. If Jen decides she is going to do it, she works hard... and does it. I wasn't surprised by her effort. She practiced consistently throughout the summer. She actually physically changed because of it... huge ripped shoulders!!! Well, maybe not huge, but definitely defined. She hated biking in the beginning of the summer. I actually teased her because she would constantly ride the break..."Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" here comes Jenny. At the race today, I think it was her strongest leg. She was somewhere in the front half of the middle at the end of swimming, but by the end of the biking leg, she was right there near the front, despite knocking over everyone else's bike while trying to get on her's and taking the time to set them all up right again before leaving.

Its inspiring really. To see her start something she's never done before, train... hard, and then find success. One of the reasons I went to college is because of watching her work hard for her success. It something that I take with me to my class... "It has very little to do with how smart you are, and really everything to do with how much you want to do well and what you are willing to sacrifice for that goal." Jen is smart, no doubt, but it is her will that really pushes her over the top and leads to the success she finds. The picture to the right is her finishing at a respectable 1:16:35. Jenny has shown me in a deep and really life altering way that the decision to do a thing the right way is a powerful thing, but the real place where the change is made is in the grinding determination to see a thing through. She should be very proud, I know that I am.

db