busy season in kiwi-land...

While the northern hemisphere bunker down for a chilly Christmas, and maybe even some snow, the southern hemisphere are grabbing the sunscreen and hitting the summer racing season hard.

bluseventy have already clocked up some miles, attending the weekly State Beach Series and Summer Swim Series Tuesdays and Thursday nights respectively in Auckland, and attending events every weekend.

Here's a wrap of last weekends events we proudly sponsor.

STATE OCEAN SWIM - RUSSELL TO PAHIA

It was a white (or is that blue?) wash in the men's race with blueseventy's top male swimmers taking out all the podium spots in the annual Russell to Pahia league of the NZ Ocean Swim Series. It was a close finish in the mens race, with only 8sec between winner Kane Radford and second placed Bryn Murphy. Steve Kent crossed just over a minute later to finish 3rd. In the women's race it was a much more open race with Charlotte Webby leading Melissa Ingram out of the water but 1min 48sec. blueseventy's Brenda Russell rounded out the podium in third, 16 sec later.

The race was well attended with 646 athletes competing in various distances from the 200m Ocean Kids race to the elite 3.3km open race.

Men:

1 Kane Radford 00:37:33

2 Bryn Murphy 00:37:41

3 Steve Kent 00:38:47

Women:

1 Charlotte Webby 00:40:27

2 Melissa Ingram 00:42:15

3 Brenda Russell 00:42:31

Nice pic (courtesy of David Tate) of Jason giving a, er, very personal fitting of a reaction wetsuit at the Ocean Swim Series.

TAUPO HALF IRONMAN

We've supported the Taupo Half Ironman for a few years now and it was great to see the event grow by 45% from last year to around 1200 participants, including 800 individuals.

Held in the beautiful Lake Taupo, home of Ironman NZ, it started off with a 2km swim in the crystal clear lake water before a 90km mostly flat bike through the dairy flats, and a 21.1km run along the scenic water front.

Terenzo Bozzone took the honours on the line after a decent battle with new comer Matt Burgess, who put in an impressive performance in what was only his second race over the distance. Keegan Williams, back from spending his winter racing for Team TBB in Europe, took out 3rd place. The women's race was won by blueseventy's Belinda Harper in a time of 4:47:50, with Hannah Lawrence second, and Hilary Wicks in third.

Men

1 Terenzo Bozzone 4:06:40

2 Matt Burgess 4:06:56

3 Keegan Williams 4:13:29

Women

1 Belinda Harper 4:47:50

2 Hannah Lawrence 4:48:37

3 Hilary Wicks 4:55:23