Halfway through the five-mile paddling leg of the Josh Billings RunAground triathlon in Lenox, Mass., last Sunday, Phil Warner and I put on a surge in his tandem kayak and squeezed past two racing canoes.

“Don’t let up!” I shouted from the stern — as if Phil, a take-no-prisoners competitor, needed any encouragement.

He steered the 22-foot-long vessel in a beeline toward a buoy, cutting within a whisker of the turn and held our place inches ahead of the two canoes.

Just as we rounded the course marker, I heard an explosion of obscenities from one of the canoeists.

“Hey,” I called ahead to Phil, not disrupting our cadence by turning around to see what prompted the outburst, “I think something bad happened behind us.”

Sure enough, from all the cursing I deduced that one foe had veered off on the wrong side of the course marker and would have to lose time by circling back around it to avoid disqualification. The other canoe evidently got tangled up in the mess.

I felt a little like the Dennis Weaver character in the 1971 thriller “Duel,” who, after being chased in his car by a homicidal truck driver, made a desperate maneuver and watched in triumphant relief as the 18-wheeler plunged off a cliff.

After all, we were in a race — not just any contest, but one of the nation’s most celebrated and venerable competitions, involving hundreds of bicyclists, paddlers and runners.

The RunAground is named for Josh Billings, the pen name of humorist Henry Wheeler Shaw, who was born in nearby Lanesboro, Mass., in 1818.

One of his sayings, “To finish is to win,” became the motto of the RunAground, and while the race does attract serious competitors, it also brings in many weekend warriors who simply are out to have fun.

Of course, Phil’s idea of a good time is to push yourself to the breaking point. He even slept in his car the night before the race in order to position his kayak right next to the launch site at the Stockbridge Bowl at 4:30 a.m., nearly seven hours before we hit the water. Later arrivals had to carry their vessels up to 100 yards during the transition from biking to paddling.

Our team’s cyclist, Tony Guarino, got us off to a monster start by pedaling the opening 27-mile leg through the Berkshires' rolling hills in a blazing 1 hour, 6 minutes and 36 seconds, flying along in a pack of more than a dozen riders tucked in well behind the lead biker.

Phil was stationed at the bike finish, wearing fluorescent pink gloves so Tony could spot him in the crowd and fling a wristband that each team had to carry.

Meanwhile, I had been gabbing with a rival paddler 200 yards away next to our kayak at the boat launch. Suddenly: There’s Phil, sprinting and shouting my name.

“Let’s go!”

Phil and I were pumped by Tony’s performance and managed to pick off a handful of boats, including the wayward canoeists. As we flailed away toward the finish of our paddle, Phil dipped his left arm into the water to soak the wristband before tossing it to our runner, my son, Tom.

“Gives it some heft,” Phil, who always looks for an edge, explained.

With precision timing and a bit of luck, the wet terrycloth band skipped neatly over the water and landed right at Tom’s feet. He grabbed it and took off like a shot for the 6.2-mile final leg.

After beaching the kayak, Phil and I lugged it to his car and then dashed toward the finish line at the resplendent grounds of Tanglewood Music Center.

“Here he comes!” Phil exclaimed.

Egged on by enthusiastic cheers from a boisterous crowd, Tom dashed across the line and then sprawled, exhausted, on the grass.

Final results for our team: First place in the tandem kayak team division, and fifth overall in a field of 375 teams.

We weren’t the only competitors from southeastern Connecticut to bring home some hardware.

Team Pfizer, consisting of bicyclist Zane Wenzel, canoeists Dennis Girard and Bob Smith, and runner Don Tyskiewicz, repeated as champs of the corporate division, finishing in 22nd place overall.

In the weeks leading up to Sunday’s race, Tom and I had joined Dennis and Bob for a few training workouts. It was great that all of us had something to show for our efforts.

We have a way to go, though, to catch up to perennial champs, Allen Heights Veterinary of Pittsfield, who once again smoked the competition in a cumulative time of 2:17:35, more than 12 minutes ahead of the second-place team and 17 minutes better than our 2:34:15 finish.

Evidently, those guys realize you have to do more than just finish to win.