This past weekend, the Cal Triathlon Team sent some members down to Santa Cruz for the Sentinel, an olympic distance triathlon. The team is super hardcore. To make it to Santa Cruz on time required waking up at 3:30am. Not only did the competing athletes meet this challenge, but several team members NOT competing in the race chose to wake up early just to come down and cheer the rest of us on. It's an awesome team.


Unfortunately, participating in the race precludes taking pictures of the race itself, so I've only got pre- and post-race pictures to show. At 6:00am, the transition area opened, and nearly 1000 athletes swarmed in to set up.


That's David, a young gun who won the 19 and under age group! What's more, he's from Iowa! Yeah, he went to Valley High School, and Indian Hills for junior high. We had some good talks about the scary math lessons Mr. Newendorp taught, and how Mr. White still loves Mayberry and the Greenbay Packers. Small world, huh?


Left to right: Andy, Maggie, and David. Those two on the right BOTH won their respective age groups, the very competitive 19-and-unders. It was Maggie's first olympic-distance. Studs, all three.


Someone once asked Greg LeMond what he thought about while biking for six hours a day, to which he immediately replied "Dairy Queen. Good God, I dream about Dairy Queen." The Cal team shares that sentiment, so we all trucked down to Fenton's, a local ice cream institution.


Andy is confused about what an "action shot" is, while Kelly just doesn't want to play.


Mimi and Maggie get into it. Maggie's flashing Vanilla Ice's trademark hand gesture, for those of you unfamiliar with it.


Justin and Diane play along too. It's no surprise that Justin's "action shot" involves running -- the kid took third place overall in the race. First and second were also from Cal. Sweet, huh? But not as sweet as the ice cream we'd all soon be eating.


Speaking of eating, Dwight, Kelsey, and Christi waste no time telling me what they think an "action shot" is when the food arrives.


The ice cream dishes were ... enormous. This one is the "petite" size.


I opted for the cookies-and-cream pie.


Colors! Again, these are all "petite" dishes.


Justin goes big in the tri, and follows suit at the ice cream parlor. Look at the SIZE of this thing. It's called the "Banana Cream Challenge," and weighs over three pounds. Good luck, buddy.


I guess Justin just doesn't know when to quit. He ate the whoooooooole thing.

Time for another race!