AUBURN - Just minutes after 1 p.m. Sunday afternoon, the cannon fired as the last canoe team crossed the finish line, marking the end of the Great Race XXX.

When the smoke cleared and the numbers were tallied, it was the Perennial Contenders taking top honors in the long traditional course and Team Parker winning the short course.

For the Perennial Contenders, the name continues to hold true. The team, consisting of Fred Joslyn of Albany, Glenn Swan of Freeville, Al Shaver of Meridale and Mike Packard of Otego, won for the second straight year. Swan has been a part of the winning squad the past six years.

The Perennial Contenders were given more of a challenge this time around, as there winning time of 1:48.01 was just over three minutes faster than second-place Spinach (Scott Weeks, Ryan Morris, Matt Belknap and Andrew Melnychenko). They won by more than nine minutes in 2006.

The race for third was extremely tight, with The David Sennett Project (1:54:41), Wild Stallions (1:54:49) and Fast Enuf (1:54:58) rounding out the top five.

Team Parker, of Skaneateles, won the short course with a team time of 1:06:32, a few minutes ahead of second-place Burning Ice (Chase Baraczek, Robert Baraczek and Mark Baraczek). Their time was also nearly two minutes better than their 2006 time of 1:08:13 which earned them a second-place finish.

The team comprised of Michael Parker of Skaneateles along with his sons Matthew, 17, Spencer, 14, and Austin, 16, are no strangers to the race.

Last year the team made their first appearance, coming in second overall in the short course and finishing first in the family division.

“We did pretty well,” Michael said. “So here we are again this year.”

The team faced some solid competition, as nearly 700 teams turned out for this year's race.

But heading into the race the team was confident they would have a strong performance.

Michael is a tri-athlete, and his sons in many ways have followed in his footsteps.

“The boys play soccer and run cross country,” Michael said. “As a family we believe in year-round fitness and being active.”

A belief that has become a way of life.

“For us it is just a lifestyle,” Matthew said. “For us it would be pretty boring without it.”

This motto served as an inspiration for the family to put together a team and enter the race.

“We're all into family fitness,” Michael said. “And this is a wonderful local event and a great venue for it and it is really well run, so we thought it would be a great idea to do this together as a family.”

A fact that certainly worked in the team's favor.

“In a lot of ways this is normal for us,” Michael said. “This is the way we live our lives, we workout together and the fact that we live together and know each other, we know what to expect from each other and I think that really helped.”

Each member of the team felt confident in their abilities in each individual's part of the race.

Austin and Matthew handled the paddling, while Spencer took the running duties and Michael handled the cycling.

“I think we did pretty good,” Matthew said. “I think we each did a good job with what we had to do in the race.”

The team also took home the Bob Ringwood Memorial Award.

Ringwood passed away shortly before the very first race 30 years ago. The award is in recognition of the first family to complete the race.

“This is great,” Michael said. “It is a really nice award to receive.”

This combined with their overall finish left the team with a true sense of accomplishment.

“It is great,” Matthew said. “We had a pretty good start. We came in to this shooting for first place and I think in the end everything came out pretty well for us.”

Notes: L84ad8 finished fourth (2:10:43) in the Male 40-49 division. The team, consisting of Gerry McOmber, Brian Hahn, Rick Cowburn and Gary Place, was competing without longtime teammate Bob Murdock, who was killed on July 26.