MiniPonies out in force at Webster Lake Triathlon

NETT was well represented both in quantiy and quality at the Webster Tri this weekend, with three relay teams and an open competitor taking the race by storm.

In the relays, the big showdown between Dream Team II (Nicholas, Doctor Ron and Little Skittles) and Frank, Adrienee and Crazy Dave was uniquely handicapped at the last minute. Little Skittles had to pull out with an injury, so Tina subbed in. Crazy Dave did his own version of handicapping the race by showing up to the starting line...out of sorts as many of you can attest to.

But at the end of the day, it was a win-win-win for NETT. Frank and Nicholas were both phenomenal in the water (I'm not sure who made it to the beach first, but when you factored in the run across the parking lot to T1 it was basically a dead heat). Dream Team II was slowed slightly when an overzealous race official decided to lecture Dr. Ron on the finer points of triathlon and being such a big proponent of education, Dr. Ron listened and took notes before heading out on the bike.

But that wasn't the rookie mistake that cost him. It was his decision to pass, and taunt, Adrienne early in the bike leg. That woke the beast and AC just stomped the pedals and shot off like a rocket before coming into the closely scrutinized transition area yet again (I'm pretty sure the race officials at Webster were trained by the KGB because they were watching everyone's moves). All kidding aside, Ron's performance on the bike in his FIRST EVER race of any kind was huge. According to one report, he was about one minute off Adrienne's time, which is phenomenal. This guy's going to be a secret weapon in some relays coming up!

Meanwhile, at T2, still in a haze of sorts, it took Crazy Dave three attempts to properly attach the chip to his leg while a race official literally stood over him and watched. With Frank and AC having done the heavy lifting, there was only one relay team to run down which they did easily to capture the relay team title.

Dream Team II, however, produced the most impressive run leg of the day on its way to fourth overall and with Tina and "company" churning out something like a 22-minute run leg (results are a bit messed up). Now while we want to give her praise for this performance, we DO NOT want to encourage such behavior in the future. A 30 or 40 minute stroll would have sufficed there speedypants Wang, so next time we WILL pull you off the course for non-compliance to the very strict rules in the NETT Future Stars development program. (We've already contracted some of those ex-KGB guys that FIRM has!)

Not to be outdone, the third NETT relay team of Eminem, Eminem and Daniel produced some pretty staggering results of its own. For example, what would you give to shave, say, three minutes off your swim time and a couple more off your bike in a year? Well that's pretty much what Karyn did yesterday before Daniel uncorked the third-fastest run leg in the relay competition. Consider they had two people and Dream Team II had four on their (I'll let you do the math!) I'd say they can all be proud.

Despite the whirl of chaos and paparrazi surrounding the relay competition, our sole individual competitor, Eri, was his usual calm and collected self on his way to a 6th place finish in his age group. While we all know he's a very strong swimmer, I'd point out that comparatively his run split was ranked higher than his swim in this race...good sign for this guy's development.

And perhaps the most fun part of this father's day event, is the family affair that is has become for NETT. Last year it was a swarm of De Zutters out there. This year the families were also very well represented in many ways. Great great to see and, I think, a great illustration of what NETT is all about.