(Somewhat belated) Congrats to Eri

Huge congrats to Eri on completing his first half-ironman last weekend at Timberman in New Hampshire. He met his goal of finishing in 6 hours and did it in true Eri fashion. Here's his report:

"The race was great! It was a beautiful day for a race and amazing location! The views were phenomenal!

Of course I had a shoe related incident! They said that you can go into to the bike transition area at 6:45 am at the latest. Our hotel was a little far, about 40 mins so we got to the park at 6:15ish thinking that we will have plenty of time, but of course we did not anticipate that the parking lot was going to be full! So I had to park at Gunstock (where they provided shuttle service). That meant that I had to give my shoes and socks and everything else to my friend Erik! So I ended up walking barefoot at Gunstock and had to drive my car barefoot too!

But the race itself went well. My swim was pretty good (for me) I think I did 1:45min/100m average, so close to 34 mins. The bike went well too, I did around 17-18 mph average, but I dropped my water bottle at mile 3 and I was really thirsty until the next water station which was around mile 15 I think. I also forgot to bring anything to eat with me! That absolutely killed me at the run.

Right at the start of the run I ate 4 GU packets and 2 protein bars (pretty much anything I can find,) because I was really hungry! And as I ate my second protein bar I started to regret what I had done. Things were fine until mile 2 where I actually had to stop and consider throwing up or not. It was pretty bad, I walked at least 0.3 miles or so, then slowly started to run. Thankfully nothing happened but it def. affected my run. I think I did 9:40 average for the whole run which is pretty slow for me. My lungs were fine, but my muscles mile 11 I started to cramp up a bit.

Overall I finished with 6:00:43 I think. so exactly what I wanted!"

Great job Eri!!

While Eri was kicking butt up there, there were other Mini Ponies cycling all over NH. Frank, Ali, and Toledo Joe climbed the Kanc. Crazy, Big Ben, Oona, and Dr. Ron climbed some monster hills and looped Newfound Lake. And Jerry apparently had to cut his riding a bit short on vacation.