Snowbasin, Utah

On our way to Bend, Oregon, then Portland and Seattle we stayed at Huntsville, an old and small town in Utah near Snowbasin Ski Resort. We wanted to ride and run the race course of the XTERRA USA Championship that will be held on September 25. We were here for 4 days and really enjoyed it here. Its a beautiful valley with the pristine Pineview Reservoir at the bottom, surrounded by green mountains. I'm on a solid 6 week training block so XTERRA USA will be my next race!





I went for a nice open-water swim in Pineview Reservoir. This reservoir is large enough for swimming, boating, jetskiing, windsurfing and other water activities.

The first part of the bike course went through a beautiful canyon called Wheeler Creek Canyon.

This course includes a lot of climbing as you go from the reservoir to the ski resort.

Behind me is the mountain of the Snowbasin ski resort where the bike course leads to and where T2 will be. T1 will be next to Pineview reservoir.

Dad and I went a couple miles off-course and did a bit more climbing than was needed, but we were rewarded for our mistake with this view of the valley.

I'm pretty sure that this part is a section of the race course!

The course had a couple of tricky sections, like this one in the picture and a bridge with stair steps that you have to go down at a sharp curve.

This is the very top of the bike leg and the top of the last long climb.

Without the bike and rider blocking your view, you can see Pineview Reservoir at the bottom of the valley where we started our ride!

I'm running on part of the run course. The run course is a very scenic one, it makes a loop on the side of the mountain and is mainly singletrack with short sections of snowcat roads.

I've been racing for every month of the spring and summer, although I'm not the least bit tired of racing I'm still happy to put in some good training hours to prepare for Snowbasin, and then the XTERRA World Championships in Maui.

My first Half-Ironman

This morning at Boulder, Andy Potts of USA and Julie Dibens won the men and women overall titles at the inaugural Ironman 70.3 Boulder race! In 1.2 miles of swimming, 56 miles of biking and 13.1 miles of running, Andy Potts' overall time was 3:46:50, leading 2nd place Tyler Butterfield by over 2 minutes. Potts got 9th in the 2009 Ironman World Championship and won the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in 2007 too.

Andy Potts, kicking it up in the run.

Great Britain's Julie Dibens' (she also trains in Boulder part of the year) overall time was 4:19:49. This was enough to be in front of the 2nd place lady by almost 3 minutes. Julie is also an XTERRA pro, she has won the last 3 XTERRA World Championships in Maui in a row!

She is planning on going to Kona for her first Ironman World Championship this October.

We had to get up before the crack of dawn. 3 a.m. to be precise, to be able to drive to the race site and prepare before the 6:30 am race start.

A beautiful sunrise over the Boulder Reservoir just starting!

I'm in the green shirt, getting my transition area set up before heading out to the swim.

I'm spraying on a wetsuit lubricant called Suit Juice, to help my wetsuit to slip on and off easily.

Before the swim start, 4 skydivers jumped out of a plane and parachuted with flags and streamers behind them while a man sang the national anthem.

With 1,750 racers, the beach of the Boulder Reservoir was full!

The swim was started in waves about 5 minutes apart. The pro men and women were in the first wave, 50+ year old ladies age group in the 2nd, womens' 45-49 age group in the 3rd, and then the 4th wave was for the mens' 50-55 age group and men and womens' 18-24 age group.

Our wave getting ready for the swim!

The water temperature was around 75 degrees F, which is still wetsuit-legal until 78 degrees F. I wore my wetsuit even though it's a little warm just because its faster with the buoyancy of the wetsuit. Almost all of the age groupers wore their wetsuits. The pros aren't allowed to wear wetsuits when the water is over 68 degrees F.

The swim went well for me, a lot of zig-zagging though, because I had to pass a lot of people in the 2 groups that started ahead of me.

The start of a 56 mile bike ride.

Just to give you an idea of how many people were in this race, here's one of the long lines of bikers!

Finished my 1st lap with 28 more miles to go.

Done with the bike ride! In shorter distance races such as Olympic distance triathlons which consist of only 25 miles of biking, I'm usually able to push hard on the bike and then hold on during the run. But in this race, it was more than twice the distance of the bike and run of an olympic distance race, so I held back a little on the bike. I just didn't know what to expect because I had never run 13.1 miles before. As it turned out, my pacing was perfect for me and I was able to do my run well.

T2, ditching the bike and helmet and putting on my running shoes.

At this point I was thinking "This isn't too bad, only 13 miles and 900 feet to go..."

My sister got a new race suit for me and we had Deaf Athlete embroidered on the back. Much better than crude permanent marker scribbling!

This is the end of my 1st lap of two 6 and over a half mile laps. The first 10 miles weren't too mentally challenging, until after 10 and a half miles, then I had to put some willpower into the last 2.5 miles! No wonder why they say that a full Ironman is something like 10 percent physical and 90 percent mental!

The clock is recording time since the first wave start, I started 18 minutes later. It felt so good to be done!

I'm sitting in the shade and happy to finish my first half ironman in 4:54:59, accomplishing my goal of under 5 hours. I'm not sure that I want to do a full ironman anytime soon!

My ice bath after a tough day of racing.

I placed 4th in my 18-24 age group of 31 men!

This was one of the hardest races that I have done so far other than the XTERRA World Championship just because of the length of the race. Thanks to my coaches, Amber Monforte and Conrad Stoltz, I was able to go into this race well prepared and I was able to enjoy it! I'm happy to have this experience under my belt and now I know what to expect when I go into more 70.3 racing next year.

Boulder-Longmont, CO

We have been in the Boulder and Longmont area for about 2 weeks now preparing for my first Half-Ironman triathlon called the Boulder 70.3 coming up this Sunday! This race will be my longest and biggest race so far. It will include 1.2 miles of swimming, 56 miles of biking, and 13.1 miles of running which adds up to a total of 70.3 miles, hence the name. And over 1,600 people have signed up including Andy Potts who got 9th place in the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii in 2009 and 2x Ironman World Champion Tim DeBoom. I have been enjoying our stay here near Boulder, it is a big cycling and triathlon community, with the benefits of living and training at altitude (5,430 feet) while living in a city with shops that have everything you need. We have not been able to do a lot of trail exploring because its a bit of a challenge to drive around in a 37 foot long RV since the good trails and our campsite are 20 miles apart. Because the Boulder 70.3 is a road triathlon, I have been doing most of my training here on pavement and so far it has been excellent with lots of choices of roads with plenty of shoulder space or bike lanes.


My dad and me before embarking on my longest bike ride yet, 97 miles. Then I swam 2 and a half miles afterwards, almost full Ironman distances!

I'm swimming in the Longmont Recreational Center pool, its a nice facility!

My dad and I went on a ride up Lefthand Canyon road to hammer out a hill workout. Then on the way back down, we stopped at this creek to take a picture.

Riding back down Lefthand Canyon.

This is our campsite at the state park in Longmont, about 20 miles from Boulder and about 15 miles away from the race venue at the Boulder Reservoir.

This pond is right next to our RV and its called....you guessed it, Pelican Pond.

This is our "ice bath" after a hard track run session on grass. Many people believe that ice baths help speed recovery after hard workouts by constricting the blood vessels and flushing out waste products such as lactic acid from the micro tears in the muscle fibers caused by the workout. Then it is thought to reduce swelling, soreness and pain, so you may go out and work out hard again the next day. But so far, scientific research on this has been inconclusive, same with using hot water to help recovery, or alternating both cold and hot water. I haven't tried the cold and hot water method before, but I have used a hot tub after a long run, and sat in a creek after a race and it seems to me that recovery is the same with both. But in cold water my legs don't feel as boneless as after a soak in a hot tub.

We were lucky to have these trails near to our RV! The trails loop throughout the state park and all connected make up about 5 miles of nice running trails.

We went to check out the Boulder County Fair. The county fair started yesterday and will go for about 5 days. It is the oldest county fair in Colorado and is running for its 141st year in a row. The big windmill ride you see in the picture can hold 4 people on freewheeling hubs on each end and it spins at 63 mph and has a pull of about 2 G's.

Here's one of the animals at the fair! Uh...good or bad hair day?

The fair is not as big as state fairs but it still has plenty of attractions, food booths, rides, horse shows, goat shows, pig (fattened up by being fed beer and cake mix) shows, and other performing acts.

As a little treat for all of our hard work, we indulged in a funnel cake. The apple cinnamon flavor was yummy. Now, all we would need is beer and we'd be as fat as those pigs!
I'll be posting after the race this Sunday. I'm feeling good, ready to jump into the unknown and no matter what, I'll do my best!