Dextro ITU Triathlon in DC

So it was pointed out to me that my blogging regularity has dropped off. Shame on me! No excuse except that it's just too nice to spend much time sitting in my study crafting blog entries. Maybe one day I should try actually keeping a journal and that way I can just transfer interesting thoughts here.

Anyway, latest and greatest is that we spent Sunday downtown watching the only North American stop on the ITU Triathlon World Cup circuit. Originally we were slated to serve as a homestay for one of the foreign athletes and his coach, which had us pretty jazzed. It also meant that we decided not to register to race ourselves, since we'd be focused on being a good host family. Sadly, a few days before he was due to arrive, I got an email saying that he'd injured himself in a training ride and would not be coming to race. Bummer!

Sunday morning Billy and his girlfriend Allison drove out from Annapolis and the four of us hopped on bikes and headed downtown. We missed the start of the men's race and so headed straight for the finish line along Pennsylvania Ave. The bike and run were both multiple loops so we were in a great spot to see the triathletes race by again and again.

Billy, Allison and Stuart

Unbelievable to watch the peloton of draft-legal racing!

Here's Americans Andy Potts and Hunter Kemper headed out on one of the run loops. They were flying!

Andy was solidly in 4th place, so able to give some thumbs-up and ham it up for the crowd as he neared the finish line.

All in all, it was a ton of fun. Billy was jazzed for his second triathlon this coming weekend, and Allison now wants to try one. Once the men's race finished, we biked down to West Potomac Park to watch the start of the women's race. All of downtown DC was shut down, so it was awesome to be tooling along Constitution Avenue on our bikes. If only they shut the Mall down to traffic every weekend!

The current was brutal, the pro women looked so incredibly slow. Of course they weren't, but it was telling that all the spectators were commenting on how hard they were working on the up-river half of the two loop swim.

Afterwards we slowly biked home, but of course had to stop to make friends with even more wildlife! Here's Allison posing with her new pet turtle!