Xterra off road triathlon

Two weekends ago I broke training for Kona long enough to do the Mountain man Xterra triathlon out at Kualoa ranch. I got it in my head that this might be the only time in my life that it was convienient to do the Ironman and Xterra championships back to back. So I dusted off the old mountain bike and gave it a shot. Qualifying at the race here on Oahu is much easier than on the mainland because of the large number of slots they give away here and the small field size. I attribute the small turnout to 2 reasons. One, triathletes (we have a ton here) don't mountain bike. There's just not many places to ride. Two, the few hard core mountain bikers here don't swim. Whatever the case I placed second in my age group behind my training partner Mark, and 11th overall. All those great New Mexico and Arizona MTB skills came in handy and I got my ticket punched for the Maui Xterra championships which is a few weeks after Kona this year. The valley that we raced in has bus and ATV tours but is normally closed to the general public.It is used to film movies and TV such as Jurrasic park and "Lost" They have signs up in different area's to denote were certain scenes were shot. Hence the "Lost" sign I'm running by in the photo. Sort of struck a chord with me when I ran by it though as I had just been passed by two people.

Finishing up

Have a few things in the works to write about but realized I still hadn't finished up with the Alaska trip.

The whole trip was perfect. We stayed very busy the whole week and saw a lot more then I thought we would get to. Thanks to all the coffee shacks in Anchorage and the obscene amount of daylight they have in the summer we never seemed to run out of time.

While visiting Mom's friend Janice, we visited Martin Busser's place in Palmer. Listening to his stories about the Iditarod Sled dog race made an Ironman seem like a Sunday stroll. This guy is a total hard core athlete but so is so humble and self deprecating you can't help but to like him. Janice also took us up to Hatcher pass in Wasilla were Mom saw her first moose.

We met Jesse at the airport on Saturday as he was arriving home from Combat Rescue indoc training. It was good seeing him again and his stories about their training was great motivation for my IM training. Monday we drove to Seward and got a close up look at a glacier. Tuesday we went fishing in Prince William sound. Mom showed a couple Halibut and a huge Ling Cod who was boss and then helped cut it up and package it for the plane ride back to PA. So here's all the pictures to tell the rest of the story.