It was a beautiful morning...

on Treasure Island for the annual Olympic distance Louie Triathlon.

Louie Bonpua was a dynamic man with lots of energy and charisma. He had CML (chronic myelogenous leukemia) which eventually took his life but not before he accomplished some amazing things and touched many lives. Louie was a member of Ironteam and completed Ironman Canada in 2001. He lost his battle to cancer the day after he carried the Olympic torch in January 2002. If you are interested in Louie's story see the article at http://www.cmlsupport.com/cmlshrimplouie0202.htm We conduct this triathlon in honor of Louie and all of our honorees. It also serves as a training race for our Ironteam participants.

The race begins with a 1500 meter swim in 50 degree water - sound like fun?? It can be. I went out with the new swimmers and got to swim with Stephanie from the south bay team for 2 loops of the course. She was cruising along very well by that time so I hung out with Romeo for a while. After Romeo finished his swim I joined up with Roman from the south bay team and finished up the swim with him. It was an unusual swim for me because I did alot of egg beater and sculling so that I could watch and talk. Thank God for Chris and his generous offer to give me his gloves! The nice part about doing the swim this way was that I did not have to put my face in that cold water very much. (The picture is the first group of swimmers getting ready, I'm in there somewhere, and coach Ted.)

The team went on to bike 25 miles followed by a 10k run. I did the complete distances on Saturday so that I could be coach support for the actual event on Sunday. It was fun to see everyone finish and be there to help out. We had lots of honorees in attendance as well, braving the wind and rain to support the team.

Skip was unable to participate since he has been fighting an illness most of the week. He was snuggled in a warm bed while we were chilling our bones in the bay!