Triathlon Photo of me in the Mankato Free Press

I'm from a small town. More on that in a minute.

Last Sunday was the North Mankato Triathlon, and I heard on Monday that there was a photo of me in the "Mankato Free Press" newspaper. Soon, my second cousin sent me this pic:

And looking back at my sister's photos from my race report, I saw that she got a photo of the newspaper photographer just after he took his photo of me and was checking it out on his camera:

See him in the background?

I then wanted to see the photo above the photo of me in the paper, because it looked like the start of my wave. My aunt sent me a photo of that:

Start of the first wave. That's me on the right.


Close up. I always start my races with an awkward "crotch first" jaunt into the water.

Race buddy Jen raced with Pharmie and I on Sunday, and she kept teasing me about my temporary "elite" status at the race. A few days before the race, she joked that she'd have to wear something real nice to be seen with an elite. And after the photo of me in the paper turned up, she tweeted me this:

I brought up the "small town" thing at the beginning of this post because it just took a few hours to have had literally 6 people contact me from "back home" to ask if they should keep the paper for me: my 2nd cousin, my aunt, my sister, someone from my sister's church, my brother-in-law (grabbing the paper from his work), and finally a phone call from my Grandma saying she had a copy for me and that I "looked real fast." I talked to Grandma 2 days later, and she said she took the paper to "coffee with the old ladies at Dairy Queen" and she showed it off. Awesome.

Click here for my North Mankato Triathlon race report if you missed it.