"The Reston Bicycle Club was started in 1980 by Dick and Janet Hays and Norm and Barbara Happ. In the early days, we met at the Duck Pond, by the Bowman Distillery, each Sunday morning for leisurely bike rides. At the same time, there was the Reston Masters Swim Team who practiced at the Reston Community Center on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings, and Reston Runners, founded by Joe Fleig. I was not a runner and was not at all familiar with the club. Basically, there were runners, bikers, and swimmers. The bikers did Bike Centuries; the runners did 10K's, 10-milers, and marathons; and the swimmers had swim meets and an annual two-mile open water swim at Chris Greene Lake in Charlottesville, Virginia.
"In 1980, Barbara and I joined the Reston Masters Swim Team. In 1982, a school teacher from Buffalo, NY, named Bill Spinder, came down to practice with our team because he was going to do the Oxford Triathlon in Oxford, MD. This consisted of a 2.4-mile swim in the Tred Avon River, a 20-mile run, and a 50-mile bike race (in that order). Some members of the swim team decided to do the Oxford Triathlon also (Floyd de Andrade, Mike Delean, Neil Medoff, and Shirley Loftus). They also did the Barnegat Light Triathlon in New Jersey as part of their practice. This was a half-mile ocean swim, a 10-mile run (part of it on the beach in the sand), and a 20-mile (?) bike race. This was a ragtag group of triathletes, who were primarily swimmers who took up running and borrowed their kids' bikes.
"In 1983, more members of the swim team, including myself, decided to do the Oxford Triathlon. With more people participating, we began to train together. We biked on Sunday mornings, so the Reston Bike Club started a group that was interested in training vs. leisurely bike rides. This group also included bike club members, like Ed Hass, who were interested in fast rides. We mostly ran on our own, but all ran before the 8:00 a.m. swim practice on Saturdays. As the bike training group grew, more of them became interested in triathlons and started swimming and running. One problem was that there were no triathlons in our local area. On our Sunday rides, we began to talk about Reston as being an ideal place to host a triathlon. We had lakes for open water swimming; we had shaded paths for running, and roads with light traffic (this was 1983). After endless discussions and much thought, I agreed to organize the effort for a triathlon in Reston. I believe that the first organizational meeting was held at my house in September 1983.
"1984 -- I was the director. I am not sure about an assistant, may have been Colleen Conway.
The following paragraph was contributed by Floyd DeAndrade (Swim Director)
"1985 -- I believe the Race Directors were Joe Fleig and me (Joe Fleig states that Norm was the sole director and Joe was on the Committee).
"1986 -- Bruce Titus was the Director (I did it that year). The assistant may have been Lea Gallardo.
"1987-1989 -- Joe Fleig and I were Race Directors. Catherine Nelson and Beth O'Connor were also co-directors for a couple of years.
"When Joe and I bowed out, I believe that Bill and Leticia Combs were directors for a couple of years. They may have accounted for the years before Bunny Bonnes and Abbie Edward.
"The Triathlon was always the Sunday after Labor Day.
"I believe that 1989 was my last year as co-director with Joe. I think I may have helped with the scoring one or two years after that. Ed Hass and I did the scoring using a bar code system and a computer program called Run Score. The first year, the scoring was done on a MAC at Robin Weber's house, and later Rick Uhrig created a spreadsheet with all of the splits -- we had more data than the average space launch.
"In the first year or two, Pizza Hut (Fox Mill) was the sponsor, and we gave donations to Reston Interfaith. After Pizza Hut, Reston Hospital Center became a sponsor.
"Some interesting tidbits:
"In the early years, the carp in the lake were not doing their job, and we had to rent a special machine and mow the hydrilla in the lake.
"One year, JR Davison (unbeknownst to the rest of the committee) arranged for radio station B-106 to be at the high school. They erected a huge inflatable bee on the field inside the track. It was extremely hot that year, and the police became concerned that they would not be able to evacuate people with heat exhaustion, so they decided to land a helicopter on the field. The wind from the helicopter blew over the bee. It was quite a sight."