another weekend, another triathlon

happy monday folks! and you know what monday means... monday means that it's time for the weekend report! saturday's ride was an easy spin for most of G2 owing to sunday's Huntington's Triathlon in miami. I caught up with the group on their southbound leg just a bit north of spanish river. and, as usual, because of my, as usual, tardiness, I received a mild comeuppance. the easy spin portion of the ride lasted until somewhere just south of hillsboro ave. when someone decided the time was right to wind things up. not sure who it was, but I, for one, am getting tired of our easy rides being spoiled by riders who seem to only have two speeds...

wait a minute...

I think that was me. well, sorry about the disruption of the easy spin. I'll be better next time... I promise.


Huntington's Triathlon

helen, helena, and christine looking good after stomping the competition

sunday came very early for several of us. G2 entered two relay teams: christine manna, helen mckenzie, and helena redshaw comprised the women's team while willy, swimming sensation john acton, and 5'10" of deadweight filled out the men's relay. kevin peranio competed as an individual and vi-an showed up for a good deal of moral support and embarrassing photographic documentation. I'm not sure how athletes on TV manage to continue to look good even when they look bad, but that is sadly not the case with all of us...

john and christine hit the water for their respective teams. john is a very, very good swimmer (and runner, and...) and regularly competes in more extreme events around the country and internationally. we were lucky and grateful to have his volunteer support sunday. despite very warm water temps, both john and christine posted very good times (all individual time available here just follow the link to the "relay teams long course" results). helena and willy took over from there and completed the bike portion. willy managed to better his last 40K average speed. it felt as though there was a bit less wind than our earlier olympic distance back in the spring, but the bridge is always a challenge. helena rode strongly despite not having aero bars. this may not seem like much, but over a course like this one - in both character and distance - aero bars can make a significant difference.

the run portion was left to helen mckenzie and myself. because of john and willy's efforts, I was given a very good head start over the next relay... unfortunately, a combination of my own overdoing and under preparation caused me blow the run - losing almost 4 minutes to my last 10K time. making matters worse was that those 4 minutes would have been the difference between first and second place. my apologies to my teammates. it should be noted, however, that I would have needed every bit of those 4 minutes a the guy chasing me down was running 5:30 miles... uh, yeah. helen, on the other hand, ran strongly and gave the women's team an outstanding finish time. while there were no other women's teams registered, their time put them into 4th place overall with the men's team 2nd overall out of 14 relay teams.

kevin peranio, once again being our resident true triathlete, competed in all events and significantly bettered his times from last year. kevin is doing exceptionally well and we're glad to have him (yo) representing. this race's field, while a little smaller than the publix one we competed in earlier in the year, was far more competitive. in both the relays and the individual races there were some very, very fast people. hats off to all G2s and volunteer G2s who made the weekend fun and competed well! a special thanks to vi-an le for coming out to cheer everyone on and to take the pictures.

I'm hiring an aesthetician and some professional handlers to make sure my next appearances are more... pleasing.

the whole bunch of us