By Karen McNew
WSLS10 Anchor
Published: May 5, 2008

The Smith Mountain Lake Triathlon was a neat experience.  After getting to sleep after work Friday night around 1:00am I woke up at 6:15am to get ready to drive 40 minutes to the Smith Mountain Lake State Park for the triathlon.

I had never done the event so I didn’t know what to expect… I was in a long line of cars riding into the park around 7:45am… I followed the cars in front of me to a huge gravel parking lot… I didn’t realize the “packet pick-up” area where the race would begin was already overflowing.. I would end up walking about a half a mile to get to that area from where I had parked… along the way I met a very nice couple from Pulaski.. Rusty who is a minister was also on a relay team and seemed to know as much or as little as I did about where we needed to go… he was the swimmer of his group… as we walked and talked there were a lot of other people making the same “trek"… all of the sudden this very tall young man turned around looked at me… walked over with his hand outstretched and said, “Hi, I’m Mike.” He was the swimmer for our relay group but I had yet to meet him… So we all continued to the packet pick-up...got our t-shirts and signed a waiver to proceed…

There were hundreds of people there… as we waited in line I saw several people using permanent black markers to carefully write the participants number in large black print on the fronts of both legs just above the knee and on each bi-cep… that’s where I would be next… Brandon’s SML Dream Team members were #454…

Once we picked up our packets we had some time to chat a little bit as we waited for the 9:00am start time… Mike was ready to swim… Cindy and I watched him walk to get ready for his heat to start and then we made our way to the bike area… I watched as the very first swimmers (people who were doing the whole thing by themselves) were running toward their second chapter of the event… many with pinkish skin from the cold water.. a quick change and they were running by about to hop on their bikes…

Cindy and I waited for Mike with the other relay teams..we were all in the same section...then...I saw Mike in the distance running toward us..he took his velcro timer off his ankle...Cindy put it on hers and took off… the velcro band has a chip on it that registers with the devices you have to run by to start each event...the chips have a number which is the participant or team.. a computer keeps track of the timing with this system…

I stood and talked to the other relay runners who were waiting for their cyclist to get back… it was fun and exciting to watch people as they would come in and make their changes… Once I saw Cindy’s bright blue helmet I felt butterflies in my stomach… it was almost my turn… I was ready… got the band off her ankle put it on mine and took off…

As I ran by this one woman she said - “You look fresh as a flower!” I replied.. I am.. because I am only doing the running portion.. she had already swam 750m and biked 20K… the course was clearly marked… and I was pushing hard.. What happened to it’s just for fun?  I don’t know.. something just kicked in…

The really cool thing about the triathlon experience was hearing people cheer others on as they were competing.. other runners were cheering me on… I had been cheering on the athletes who came in from the bike ride to put their running shoes on for the last part…

In the end Brandon was so excited and happy to see his team do well.  Cindy had named the team in honor of him because she said he would love to be able to do all of the parts of the race but because of Cerebral Palsy he can’t.

We finished 11th out of 29 relay teams and I ran the 5K in 24:08!  It was a good day.