Photos by JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times

Shirley Sellars gives her grandson Mark Sellars, 20, a hug after he completed the Smith Mountain Lake Traithlon. Mark Sellars competed in the race with his father Bill Sellars, 48 and his uncle David Sellars, 32.

Dan Peairs (cq), 30, of Blacksburg, was the first competitor to cross the finish line during the Smith Mountain Lake traithlon with a time of 1:01.20.

The second wave of runners make their way into the water during the Smith Mountain Lake Traithlon. Participants must swim 750m during first portion of the competition.

WHITE HOUSE -- Twelve of them showed. They were fairly easy to spot.

"Man, this Bill guy must be pretty popular," people kept saying, and the family would laugh.

Yes. Bill's pretty popular -- at least one day a year.

Bill Sellars arrived here Saturday with no illusions about winning the Smith Mountain Lake Triathlon. But if support equated speed, he would have lapped the field of 450-plus several times.

"GO, BILL, GO!" the white T-shirts screamed in bold, black letters. And those shirts were everywhere -- greeting Sellars as he exited the lake from a 750-meter swim, encouraging him as he climbed on his bike to begin a 20-kilometer ride, and finally, showing him the way to the finish line of the 5K run, which the 48-year-old from Roanoke crossed in a respectable 1 hour, 44 minutes and 14 seconds.

"The main thing is just to complete it," Sellars said when it was over, summing up the mentality of many here.

But for the Sellars family, there was more to it than that. For three years now, the Smith Mountain Lake Triathlon has served as something of a family reunion that begins with a race, ends with a cookout and features plenty of fun in between. The Sellars clan has grown so large -- little Luke just entered the world a year ago and was one of five children under age 7 in the group -- that such opportunities are fleeting. They hadn't all been together like this since Christmas.

They had the shirts made in 2006, when Bill entered his first triathlon. Last year, they added "GO, DAVID, GO!" to the backs in honor of Bill's younger brother joining the competition. This year they scribbled "Go, Mark, Go!" onto the fronts to show support for Bill's 20-year-old son, a Hidden Valley graduate who entered for the first time Saturday.

"It's kind of hard to turn and acknowledge them," Mark said after finishing in 1:38:46. "But you see it."

Often, the greater challenge was the family seeing them.

"Yeah, David!" Mary-Evelyn Sellars shouted late in the morning, aiming a camera at a biker zipping past. "Oh, wait. That's not him. Sorry."

She thumbed her digital camera and found the image, confirming it was not her husband.

"We're going to be deleting that," she said, smiling. "We don't know you."

But that didn't stop this family or the rest of the spectators from shouting encouragement to everyone who passed. When it was over, as the top finishers collected awards, the family found a shady picnic spot to cook out and spend a few more hours catching up.

Soon David, Mary-Evelyn and the three kids would head back to Hardy; mother Shirley, father Bill Sr. and sister Angela would go back to Moneta; sister Susan would return to Lynchburg; sister-in-law Joan would bolt for Mooresville, N.C.; and Mark would fly back to Florida for summer classes at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Daughter Carrie will be off to Longwood University again at the end of the summer.

And Bill? After lunch, he would head back to the Star City, where he works a neonatal respiratory therapist for Carilion. He's been doing it 25 years and likes his job. Odds are he's fairly popular there, too.

But let's be honest: They don't wear T-shirts in the ICU.

Race notes

Dan Peairs of Blacksburg was the overall winner with a time of 1:01:20. He passed defending champion Rick Fesler of Camp Hill, Pa., with less than a mile remaining and won by 9 seconds. "I heard him behind me and thought, 'Oh, I'm done,' " said Fesler, who finished second in the National Duathlon Festival in Richmond last week. ... Samantha Bird of Arlington, Va., finished first among women for the second straight year in 1:10:36. The top local woman was Laura Hamm of Blacksburg (1:14:27).