East Pasco Family YMCA hosts first Spring Sprint Triathlon

The weather made the difference Sunday.

In East Pasco Family YMCA's first year hosting the Spring Sprint Triathlon, the event, held at the Y's facilities, was vastly different from last year's running.

Certainly the temperature was.

"Oh, it was so cold last year," East Pasco branch executive director Jenn Silvers said with a laugh. "You could see steam coming off the pool, which is heated. The athletes would swim, then jump on their bikes and ride 25 mph in that weather. That had to be brutal.

"(Last year) we actually had people not bother showing up because of the temperature."

In 2008, the weather was in the 30s as opposed to the high 60s Sunday. This year, the first time the Y sponsored and hosted the event, had its biggest turnout: 97 participants, with Kevin Grogan of Clermont the overall winner at 54 minutes, 42 seconds.

Silvers adds that this event sort of kicks off the triathlon season, so a lot of athletes use it as a warmup to later events. But with it being a sprint triathlon — the shortest of triathlon events, in which athletes had a 300-yard swim in a pool, an 11-mile bike ride and a 5K run — many athletes use this as their first triathlon.

And once they run in one, they always seem to come back for more.

"Each year its been getting bigger and bigger," Silvers said. "A ton of people use this as their first triathlon, and I love that people do that because we find out later that they are now addicted to doing them.

"And to us, that is just awesome that we got them hooked."