Papa Pea's Birthday Biathlon and Salute to the 70s!

Yesterday morning saw several great events taking place in Kona - the State Cycling Championship, Bubba Gumps's Run Forrest Run Keiki Fun Runs, and Papa Pea's Birthday Biathlon and Salute to the 70s. Unfortunately the events overlapped, though. Since we aren't cycling on the Big Island yet and we're just slightly too old for the keiki runs, we headed out to the Peaman event. Jason was official photographer for the day, having already completed his 10 miler that morning.
Although we thought the turnout at the race would be small because of the other events going on, the turnout was great, with a lot of people that we didn't recognize. This month's event was a 3/4 mile swim and a 3.1 mile run. Typical Peaman swims are 1/2 miles, so this was a little bit longer. I've been swimming 3/4 miles fairly regularly, but "racing" it was an entirely different thing. I use the term "racing" loosely, since I am still SLOW and towards the back of the swim pack. But this time I was swimming with packs of people the whole way out to the turnaround, getting elbowed, getting run over, and running over people. Although it didn't cause me to panic this time around, it was still a little unsettling. It makes me rethink this "get faster at swimming" goal!

Speaking of people who are really fast at swimming, Karlyn Pipes-Neilsen (below) was the first swimmer out of the water (a little predictable, since she holds many masters swimming records).


Luis De La Torre was next, with the rest of the swimmers streaming in behind. I think I was only about 12 minutes behind Karlyn (which means she was finishing right about when I was turning around)! I told Jason to expect me out of the water sometime between 30-35 minutes, so I was pleasantly surprised when I came in under 28 minutes.

Then it was on to the run. Today definitely felt like a hot Kona summer day, even at 8:30 a.m. But one nice thing was the run course went right past the Bubba Gump's run. So I got to see a little bit of the keiki race and on the way back got a nice boost of encouragement from the Beckers and Currys! And since it was a Salute to the 70's, Doug Henbest and Jay Plasman got to show a little skin and roller skate the course. Below is a picture of them cheering on Rani Tanimoto to the finish.

Looks like some good competition!

Michael Woodbury

Gerd Weber

My run time came in just under 24 minutes, for a total time of 52:49. Definitely not setting any speed records, but I'm still seeing improvement. Full results for the races are here.

After the race was over, we celebrated Papa Pea's birthday and congratulated all the fathers on Father's Day. We also had a special guest appearance by Frank Shorter! He's in town already in preparation for the Kona Marathon races and came out to the race with Jon Kunitake.

Frank gave a nice speech about the importance of local community events like Peaman races. Afterwards, Jason and I were talking about how lucky we are to have come to a community with so many local, free events, something that's really hard to come by in Chicago! Those events really do help create a community - one that we are happy to be a part of. Thanks as always to those who make it possible!

Don't forget - Frank Shorter will also be at Big Island Running Company on Thursday, June 24 at 3 p.m. on to sign autographs, answer questions and talk running. We'll have some giveaways, free smoothie samples from Tropical Frozen Yogurt, a pretzel and Italian Ice special from Kiliki'i Italian Ice and more!

Then we hope to see everyone out participating, volunteering or cheering on participants in the Kona Marathon races on Sunday! Good luck to all the runners!