XTERRA World Championship. Makena, Maui

Ah, it's a beautiful morning on October 24, 2010. The day of the XTERRA World Championship race! After a leisurely warm up on the bike it was time to go set my gear up in the transition area.

After setting up my transition, getting body marked, chatting with family and friends and before heading down to the beach for the start I met Michael Stone. Michael, in the sunglasses is a blind man who regularly wins his challenged division across the US... he is quite an inspiration!

A quick picture with my mom as we neared the start area.

Then, another picture with my coaches, Conrad Stoltz and Amber Monforte. Amber just did the Ironman World Championship triathlon two weeks ago on Kona, Hawaii. Then after this race she will be heading back to Kona for the Ultraman World Championship triathlon that will be held in November.

Over 550 athletes from all over the world have converged here at Makena, Maui to experience one of XTERRA's toughest off-road triathlons.

The cannon goes off and we're all madly scrambling for the first buoy to avoid being clogged up behind fast sprinters who start to run out of gas early into the swim. I even had to grab a couple of swimmers' shoulders and pull past them because they stood in front of me at the start and did not start out very fast.

The swim was two laps of a 750 meter loop in the beautiful waters off Maluaka beach. It was pretty cool to see the scuba divers with the underwater scooters taking video footage of the swimmers from underwater. The swim went great for me, I was out in 21 minutes and 49 seconds. I was able to draft off a few fast swimmers most of the time to save energy, because on the bike and run, I will definately need it!

Our friend Fred Farris who also came from Alaska and works his own job of shoeing horses has been training all summer to come here to Maui and participate in XTERRA's most famous race!

Conrad Stoltz who was 7th out of the water, came back on his bike in 1 hour and 23 minutes in 1st place and more than 6 minutes ahead of 2nd place!

With more than 6 minutes lead off the bike, Conrad had nothing to lose and cruised on the run. Later Conrad will credit his carbon S-Works 29er mountain bike for giving him the speed he needed on the course. But of course, it still takes a lot of training, skills and strength to ride this course as fast as he did. The bike course traverses up the slope of Haleakala with a total elevation gain of over 3,000 feet. The terrain is all jeep roads with some dust, rocks, lava, lava, and more lava. This course is infamous for eating up tires and breaking cranks, brakes, wheel rims, seatposts, and people!

For me, the course was a lot less scary than last year when I raced here for my first time. Last year this race was only the second XTERRA that I had raced in. I had a little mechanical issue with my gears today because my middle chainring was worn out and it was replaced with a slightly bent chainring. The chain wouldn't stay in the middle gear, it kept skipping so I decided to either keep the chain in the smallest ring or the biggest ring. It seemed to work pretty well! After 6 months of training and riding on different terrains and learning from Conrad, I was able to take a few minutes off my bike time from last year even though today the course was looser and more rocky than last year.

I'm off on the run and high-fived my mom and a couple other people...sorry I don't remember who because my mind was entirely on the task of running 6.8 miles as fast as I can!

My friend Hannah Rae is 14 years old and the youngest competitor today. She had a good swim and bike, now its time for her to cook on her best event, the run.

Fred is back, he survived mother nature's tough course and looks happy about it!

On the run, everyone has to endure the infamous 3 mile uphill stretch of road called the "death march" without any shade in the 90+ degrees F, then a long and harsh downhill run on rocky and loose lava that leaves your legs thrashed, but there's still the 3/4 mile run on the soft and deep sand of Big Beach, a trample through the "spooky forest" with logs to jump over and duck under, then another beach but this time it's soft black sand, with a rough lava shore (pictured above) that you have to run on before entering the finish chute!

The Caveman breaks the tape for the 4th time!

Amber digging deep! Today she was the first amateur woman to cross the finish line and also won the womens' amateur Doubles Award which is given to amateur men and women with the fastest combined Ironman and XTERRA times.

Another happy face from Alaska! Tim Lebling took off 40 minutes of his last year's overall time.

Fred finished just a little over his goal of 4 hours, and already is looking forward to coming back next year! This time he says his strategy will be to swim faster, bike faster, and run faster!

Conrad made history by being the first person to win XTERRA Worlds 4 times in the 15 years this race has been running. He dedicated this race to his dad in South Africa who is fighting cancer right now and he will be flying back there to spend time with his parents.

I finished with a total time of 3:18:19, and took 25 minutes off my time from last year! I took 4th place out of 12 guys in the 15-19 age group.

Also congratulations to Shonny Vanlandingham who won today in only her 3rd try at the XTERRA World Championship!

Hannah Rae won the 15-19 year old girls' division in her first try here. And props to Michael Keith, also from South Africa who won the boys' 15-19 race on a fractured foot!

XTERRA was very generous and awarded me the XTERRA Warrior Award of 2010 complete with a trophy, a Suunto watch and 2 Hawaiian Airline tickets. I am very honored and this means more to me than any place I could have gotten today! I had to go up on stage and give a little acceptance speech and my mom interpreted what I was signing. Here is a link to a nice video XTERRA made to go with the award and it describes what the Warrior award means. www.xterra.tv Watch the video under "2010 XTERRA Warrior"

Overall, the experience of XTERRA Worlds was surreal. I am very happy to be able to race at my ability today after having a cold all week. I feel like I have overcome challenges and enjoying this time with family and friends has been fun!

This coming Saturday, I have another little race called the TriLanai Off-road Triathlon. It's a 1/2 mile swim, 16 mile mountain bike, and 4 mile run triathlon on the beautiful little island of Lana'i. I will blog about that too.

After TriLanai its time for a little break! I will be staying active, play tennis, surf, run a little, bike a little, swim a little, but it will all be in fun.

I'll be writing again after Saturday.

Maui Livin'

Aloha from Maui! With the XTERRA World Championships being less than two weeks away, training has wound down only a little bit. Quality is more important than quantity at this point. I've been paying close attention to my swimming, biking and running forms and making small adjustments to become more efficient.

I have been enjoying our stay here since day one! Hawaii is truly one of my favorite places in the United States. All of our soaking up of the sunshine and swimming in the ocean is refreshing to our souls as well as our bodies!

This picture was taken just before a training ride on the trails of Makawao Forest. In the center is Fred, our friend who came from Alaska to participate in the XTERRA also.

Practicing one of my "Conrad Stoltz" moves....

On one of our training rides, we started at over 5,000 feet up the slope of Haleakala and climbed to 8,000 feet and below us it's a cloudy day! In the distance you can see the Big Island, which is where the Hawaii Ironman World Championship is to take place the next day.

On October 9, 2010, all of us took a day off and watched the Ironman World Championship on the big screen TV hooked to the laptop via HDMI. The live webcam stream was good. Chris Lieto is pictured above, who got 11th place. My coach, Amber also raced there and finished in 10 hours and 50 minutes. And this was only "practice" for her Ultraman World Championship race also taking place on the Big Island in November!

Ah, the warm ocean! This beach is on the northern shore of Maui which is always very choppy but there's a coral reef blocking the big waves and creating a tide pool which makes it nice for little kids like my niece Setra to play in. It's a great natural swimming pool too, but if you're feeling wild you can always walk 50 meters down the beach to where the reef ends and swim in the choppy water and strong currents!

I'm doing one of my running speed workouts on my favorite soccer field with a great view of the ocean and lower slopes of the island below the town of Makawao where we are staying.

Earlier we went to the Maui County fair. (I know, seems like we go to fairs all the time) It was a good time, I went on a few rides! My first ride was the Inverter. I'm on the 2nd seat from the left. It's like the 1001 Nachts ride, except this time you're spinning upside down at its apex which is 8 stories above the ground. This ride is crazy because you feel comfortable when you see the shoulder restraints so you think that you won't be moving around or anything. But then when you're hanging upside down all of a sudden you're off your seat and you realize that those restraints are the only things holding you....

Another ride that I went in was the Scrambler with my aunt Elyssa, who also came over to Maui to visit for a week.

For all of you fans of the "Lost" TV show, this looks familiar doesn't it? You can just imagine Hurley driving through in the blue Dharma Initative VW bus.

This will probably be the only blog that I will be able to write until after the XTERRA race unless I come across some interesting material. Then after XTERRA, I will work on a website with my bio, race info and resumes, blog, the works etc. Till then, I will be training and preparing for the race. Physically, mentally, emotionally and of course spiritually I'm doing great. I'm so grateful for the great opportunity to be here on Maui, and I'm looking forward to the race. Thats when I can play, have fun, and see all of the benefits of a long (but adventurous) season of training and racing unfold!