a great weekend to get out of boston- was literally melting (actually, literally) in the shop, and the heat just had everyone a little punchier than usual. lucky for me, i had an excuse to get out to upstate to new york to see this year’s lake placid ironman triathlon.

here’s a picture of pete out there on the course killing it on his royal h STEEL tri bike. you could count the steel bikes on one hand.

you needed to keep the shots wide to catch the riders speeding by, but here’s what that shot would look like if i was twenty feet closer, capturing a bizarre gesture as well.

here’s the steed post race. what the camera isn’t picking up is the fine film of vaseline, sweat, and goo covering the frame. these races aren’t pretty. but these guys are pushing themselves to the limits of what the human body can do, so we can cut some slack in this regard. the triathlon scene might be a hard one to break into, but the fact remains that steel is mostly iron and only slightly carbon, so it kind of is the appropriate bike for an iron man. follow?

but a bike is only a tool, and it takes an amazingly fit athlete to finish an ironman, let alone in less than ten and a half hours (!!!). pete’s a good friend of mine, and it’s been amazing to watch how much training and discipline went into this event. for someone who cannot swim in any propulsive fashion, and hasn’t run in earnest for more than a city block in the last ten years, it’s particularly impressive. i also haven’t finished any 112 mile bike races in recent memory either. so make that particularly, particularly impressive. hats off to pete- tremendous weekend!