Wee & DLT Whirled Pea's Biathlon

Yesterday morning, a group of hearty peas showed up a world away from the east coast to compete in a Peaman event in remembrance of those affected by the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01.  Even though we are so far removed from where the attacks took place, everyone here still remembers that day, where they were and what they were doing.  Peaman gave a nice tribute in his starting remarks for the event, and everyone headed out on the 3/4 mile swim and 3.9 mile run.

Splashing and goofing around before the start.

The water was a little choppy, which made for a rough swim. I think I managed to make this my worst swim ever, as I was one of the last ones out of the water.  I'm not really proud of this, but if there would have been any way to quit the swim, I would have done it.  Unfortunately, there was really no way to get back to shore other than swimming! So I stuck it out and came in around 31 minutes.  And then I started debating whether I actually wanted to go out on the run.  I was mentally wiped out.  But after taking my leisurely time in transition, I decided that I might as well go out on the run, since it's actually the part of the event I'm good at. 

Most of the rest of the action happened before I even headed out of the water. The run-only group, including lots of peawees, lined up at the start line:

And Becky Prater, Jenny Payne, and Linda Goeth headed out on the run.

 Some peawees finished the race, including Katie Payne:

 Others started out on for their turn as part of a relay, including Lee-Ann Heely:

Danny Becker was apparently very happy with his swim:

As is typically the case, I started feeling better once I got out on the run course and was able to catch quite a few people.  The first person I had in my sights was Nori Becker.  We used to swim a similar pace, but she killed me out of the water - she is definitely getting faster.  It took about a mile into the run, but I caught up with her.

Then close to the turnaround, I saw her husband Danny coming back the other way.  He encouraged me to catch him, so I decided to pick up the pace and see if I could do it.  I caught up to him about a mile from the finish.  I was going at a pretty good clip, so I thought I would just cruise past him.  But he wasn't having any of that and picked up the pace to keep with me.  He had his Timex GPS watch on and was keeping an eye on it.  He kept yelling out our pace - 7:01/mile, 6:58/mile, 6:48/mile! I think he was a little surprised at how fast we were going.  Unfortunately I couldn't really respond to him, because I needed all the oxygen I could get to keep up that pace. With the pier in sight, we both picked up the pace even more. He took the unpaved route to the pier while I stayed on the road.  After a full-on sprint, I managed to squeak past him at the finish line. It took me a good several minutes to recover, but when I did, I saw that my run split was 29:20.  I never could have kept that up without Danny, so thanks to him! I'm hoping he enjoyed the run just as much!

Full results from the race are available here.  Tai Scarbrough came in first with a time of 44:20, followed by Stu Fitch and Rune Dahl.  Serena Chamberlain was first for the ladies in 55:03. Kainopono Eckhart and Duke Becker battled it out for the peawee title, with Kainopono coming in 6 seconds ahead of Duke in 12:45.

Up next is the run/bike/run event next Sunday hosted by Queen K Tri Club out at Kua Bay and a couple of run events on the Hilo side next weekend - I'll post more details on those when I post the results from the Hilo Bay 5k/10k this past weekend.