Dash Point Trail Race 03/31/2012
Saturday, March 31 ...... a cold 40 degrees and rainy day (to us wimps just coming from Maui). . Dad and I decided to run a Half Marathon trail race at Dash Point. This was a training race only, to prepare for XTERRA West Champs in Las Vegas on April 14th. 
Just before starting
We were a little late getting to the State Park so we barely had any time to warm up. Two laps around the parking lot was about it before we had to head to the start line of the sold out race! I'm guessing there were over 100 racers in our Half Marathon. 
When I read the race description on their website, it said that the trail system was non-technical, soft, and well maintained. I didn't think it would be too tough, just a fun little race. But that wasn't the case....after only a quarter of a mile we hit those steep stairs! And there were three of them! And they were slick due to the rain. In the half-marathon we had to do two laps of a 10K loop, and there was a full marathon race going on that started just before us Half-ers (they had to do 4 laps) and then a 10 K would start shortly after we left (1 lap). So along the trail there was a lot of people to pass and oncoming traffic to dodge! The first lap wasn't so bad, Dad and I ran together for about 100 yards, then he rocketed off to the front through the stairs, but then he had to slow down a bit for a breather. I passed him and was in 3rd place with two guys right behind me and I was feeling good. This trail was a lot of fun, lots of sharp turns, roots, and slick mud and water puddles (non-technical? Right...). Almost to the end of the first lap, I took a wrong turn so I ended up being behind those two guys which wasn't big a deal because I was starting to flag a little bit. Maybe I pushed that first lap a bit too hard! So I just stuck to the heels of the guy right in front of me as we got to the halfway point in the half-marathon then had to turn around and do the lap all over again. 
One lap down, one more to go.
Dad zooming by! He made up some time on me on the second lap.
The second lap was way muddier this time around from the full marathoners going on their second lap and all of us Half-ers and 10 K people doing our first! I was slipping and sliding all over so I had to grab trees to swing myself into the turns. It certainly wasn't a flat course, it had lots of small hills and they were slippery so we were sliding on the uphill as well as the down! I was almost considering climbing up those on both my feet and hands. I was able to pass the guy in front of me shortly into our second lap so that put me into 4th place, and I was able to hold it for the rest of the race. I finished in about 1 hour and 53 minutes, 5 and a half minutes behind the winner. 1st place was a female speed demon whom finished in 1:48. This course was really a slow course because she ran a half marathon just last weekend (which she won too) and did it in 1:17! Maybe I should ask her for some running tips! Dad came in after about 2 hours and 1 minute, in 6th place. Looks like it was a good training run! 
Covered in mud! I was shivering at this point, and I still had to jump in a creek and wash it off. I'm going to need my Alaskan blood to start working for me again if I'm going to keep doing this stuff. 1 Comment Here's a DIY sort of blog post just in case you ever have one of those days where nothing is working right..... My dad and I were riding our bikes in gusty wind and driving rain conditions and less than an hour into our 3.5 hour bike ride, I suddenly felt my rear tire going soft. "Flat tire, no problem, I can fix it" were my thoughts as I rolled off the road shoulder. After taking the rear wheel off of the bike, removing the flat tube and checking the inside of the tires for any sharp objects that may have caused the flat, then installing the spare tube into the wheel I got ready to fill 'er up with CO2, but realized that the only CO2 canister I brought was already used! So I asked Dad if he had another CO2 and he handed it to me. I proceeded to fill the tire with the air and it stayed full so I started to put the wheel back on the bike, but then we noticed bubbling at a spot in the wheel between the rim and the tire, which could only mean that the tire is leaking. Sure enough, the tire goes soft, then flat. "Well, now we're messed up because that was my only CO2 too.." Dad says. I took the tube out again and looked it over, I thought it was a new tube but it actually was a patched tube and of course the patch wasn't doing its job. Dad does have another spare tube, but we couldn't use it because neither of us had any more CO2, a mini hand pump, or powerful lungs and there were no other bikers because of the weather. The person we could call for a ride is busy at this time, and the nearest bike shop is miles away, too far to walk or to ride on the rim because I can't afford to buy another wheel! So we looked around for any kind of solution, our eyes passed over rocks, mud, leaves, moss...roots. An idea starts to form in our minds as we both looked at the mangrove type of tree roots and there are a few that are the right length and diameter to use as a makeshift tube. Hmm....  When we found the right length but couldn't cut it because neither of us had a knife, I just sawed it off with my bike's big chainring then put it inside the tire. Hey it fit! It took some grunt work and a broken tire lever to wrestle the root into the tire and close the tire over the root. We filled in any gaps with moss, leaves, or grass then the wheel was ready! I put it back on the bike and gingerly started pedaling. There was some thumping due to a small gap between the ends of the root inside the tire, but the moss and leaves were still keeping me from riding directly on the rim. This set up sure wasn't comfortable, and rolling resistance was off the charts, but it will get you home or to the nearest bike shop to buy a new tube and finish your workout. Hope this helps you on the next day when you find yourself in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire. Good luck! What's been up 01/15/2012
Here's my first blog post of 2012! I'll catch you up on what I've been up to since my last blog post in November... I've been on my off-season since Trilanai and just started back into training on January 3rd. During my off-season, I went swimming, biking, and running occasionally.......... but I went full-on with my sister in Insanity and then Asylum for 2 months. For those who do not know what Insanity and Asylum are: It's a workout system (and DVD series) created by a track runner, dance choreographer, and personal trainer called Shaun T. They incorporate about everything you can think of, cardio and anaerobic workouts, plyometrics, intervals, jump rope drills and movements that came from dancing, football, track, and the military. Believe me, it was a great way to stay in shape for the off-season and get a mental break from swimming, biking, and running. And I'm coming out of this off-season with more total body strength than before. I can tell by how running the hills around our house is easier... and I'm talking about 10 to 15% grade hills! Plus the intervals have made me more comfortable in high heart rates, I no longer feel like I'm dying at 165-170 bpms while I'm running.   Plyometric push-ups, it's as hard as it sounds.   Before starting the 60-day program. "After" photo. I went for the classic "bored stare" before and big smile after photo! There were crazy amounts of intensity in this program that I did not anticipate, so I was glad that I was already in shape from the end of my triathlon season to be able to get through the workouts. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to do the "warm up" without stopping! The name of the workout doesn't disappoint. Now I've been doing my "real" swimming, biking, and running workouts for 2 weeks and it feels great to be back in some structured training! I also have a new coach, Jason Jablonski from SET Coaching, who is an ex-pro XTERRA racer and a very talented biker and triathlete. Jason is going to help me improve my cycling and mountain biking as my cycling coach and advisor through the 2012 season.  Jason and I before going on the Makawao Forest trail. So this is pretty much how things has been rolling lately: swimming, biking, running, going to the beach, working at the horse stable, and coaching. We have just fixed up my room to make more space for the 5 bikes that we have in the house!  Pretty cool huh? Here's a few more photos of where I like to train.  The view from Kula where I do my long runs.  Makawao Forest, the best trail on the island..  Upcountry pool, my favorite pool in the U.S. The view of the West Maui mountains and the north and south shoreline is a great distraction from interval swimming.  Pali trail, the most fun trail to run on. Lots of rocks and climbing.  Looking south towards Makena, this is the best place to go for an open water swim. I swam with humpback whales here last spring, and just this morning 10 dolphins joined 5 of us swimmers for a while! Swimming with dolphins and whales has always been on my "To Do" list so I was really happy to get both experiences, now I can die happy. Hopefully not too soon though, knock on wood! So that's it for now, my legs are feeling achy and tired so I need to get this laptop off of my legs and get my recovery on! I'll be blogging again. My next race is XTERRA West Champs in Las Vegas on April 15. Hope you all are having a great 2012 so far, be safe and keep it real! 2012 12/31/2011
 Wishing you an awesome 2012 full of surprise, joy, adventure, peace, kindness and love! Trilanai Triathlon - End of Season 11/08/2011
On October 29th, the Saturday after the XTERRA Worlds race, my family, John Klish, and I went on the ferry to the island of Lana'i for the 3rd TriLanai Off-Road Triathlon! It was a beautiful ride on the ferry as always, as we left Lahaina at 7 in the morning, we were able to watch the sun rising behind Haleakala. This was my 3rd TriLanai triathlon, and I almost didn't make it because I had been sick with a bug that has been going around the island for 3 days and I still felt at only 60% of my best. I figured that I would just come and watch Cathy, Dad, AJ and John race and see how I feel at the start and decide if I wanted to race or not.  Mom, my sister, and her daughter Setra When we landed on Lanai, we went to bodymarking right away and met up with Cathy Coon, a teammate of Dad and my brother in law, AJ's. Cathy was the swimmer, Dad was the biker, and AJ was the runner.          Before the start of the race, I decided to just give it a try. I knew that I could stop if I felt that I was pushing myself too far. On the first lap of the swim, I felt really tired, it was hard to breathe! The swim was two laps of what we call a half mile swim, but it is always longer than a half mile, with a 1/4 mile deep sand beach run in between. On the second lap, I felt a little better and could put the gas pedal down a bit more. I came out of the water first on the second lap because I was going to put as big of a gap as I could between me and DEAFlete founder and teammate John, since we all knew that his bike was his strongest suit! John still had a great swim though, and came out of the water in 6th place, about 3 and a half minutes after me. Meanwhile, on the bike, it took me a while to get into the rhythm, and that blistering hot 3 mile climb on pavement at the start didn't help too much. The view of the ocean from up there is spectacular though! When the road leveled out and turned into a dirt road through pineapple fields, I was looking for John because I expected to be seeing him around this point. But instead of John, I was followed by a local on a funny looking old motorcycle. So I decided to just get aero and go as fast as I could without blowing up. The bike course was 14 and a half miles long, and mostly on dirt roads with a bit of a hairy downhill with loose rocks and lava which made it more interesting. Again, the views of the ocean and the top of Lana'i are very beautiful. I think I was trying to distract myself from the effort! A lot of people had deer run across the road in front of them, but unfortunately I didn't see any! Maybe that's a good thing...because of that incredibly popular video of a mountain biker being hit by a big buck in South Africa.     When I got off the bike I still had not seen John, so I wondered if he has had a mechanical on the bike or got lost, or got mauled by a deer! He was also getting over the cold and was not feeling his best. Anyhow, I had to execute the run just right because that bike ride did make me tired. I started out on the run at just a little over a jog and that was honestly as fast as I could go at that point! The run course was 4 miles long with 4 long rolling hills in it, so pacing was crucial. I decided to go for a negative-split (running the second half faster than the first half). When I climbed the last hill, got to the turnaround aid station and started running back downhill, John was at the bottom of that hill and he was flying! At that point I knew that I had to make sure that my run WAS a negative-split! So I pushed the uphills harder and the downhills even harder. And it was hot! Thank you to the aid stations for the water and the lady with the water hose for cooling all of us off!       It was an awesome experience to come to TriLanai again, it was a good way to end the season! I ended up getting the win for the 3rd year in a row. I have never done a race feeling like this, so I'm just happy to have finished! Congratulations to John for getting 2nd just a short 1 minute and 23 seconds later! Congratulations to Mom and Dad for getting the Athlete Supporter of the Year award and a dinner cruise at Lana'i! Thank you to Chris Lovvorn for putting on another great race, and to the great volunteers for coming to be a part of the event and making it happen! This is a really fun race to take part in since all the proceeds go to charities! So, this is the end of the 2011 season of crazy traveling, training, and racing and as I go into my off-season break and get ready for the 2012 season I want to thank some amazing people and supporters...  Thank you to Alyssa Journey and Orca for all of your tremendous help with the wetsuits, tri-suits, and cycling shorts! You are the best!  Thank you Frank Day and PowerCranks for sending me a pair of PowerCranks. I've been using them since November 2010 and my cycling has improved by over 12 minutes at XTERRA USA and World Champs!! And my running has improved significiantly too. You never see them at races so they don't get a lot of recognition, but my opinion is that they are one of the best training tools!  Thank you to Ross McMahon and LOOK for sending me a pair of LOOK MTB pedals. They have held up like real troopers through all of my training! Thank you to Elaina Chang, Dan and Shirley Seavey, Conrad Stoltz, Dyton Gilliland, Evelyn Chang, Eloise Chinn, Tarah and AJ Statham, Nancy, Mark, and Claire Townsend, and Luke Stambaugh for all of your help in many ways! Also, thank you to the athletes that I coach, for teaching me many things and allowing me to help you to reach your goals!  Finally, thank you to my parents, for being the greatest people in my life! You two have been a very big part in who I am right now, and this adventure that we have been on for the last couple years definitely would not have happened without you. I am so thankful to you two for believing in me and not only letting me chase my dreams, but also supporting me and encouraging me! I love you Mama and Dad. 2011 XTERRA World Championship 10/26/2011
This past Sunday was the XTERRA World Championship race! There were 650 athletes, including 75 pros, making this one of the largest fields that XTERRA has seen in it's 16 years! For the last 15 years the Worlds race was held on South Maui in the town of Makena where the course was very dry, dusty, and strewn with lava rocks. This year they moved the course to Kapalua on the northwest part of Maui. The swim was a bit rougher and the course went through jungles and pineapple fields which were without lava rocks but didn't by any means have a shortage of climbing! P.S. You may need to refresh the page if the picture captions are not in their proper places.    Fellow Alaskans who are phenomenal racers came to Maui to play! In the picture in the left is Andy Duenow in the middle and Jason Lamoreaux. In the picture on the right is Tim Lebling who did great last year and then did great again this year! Other Alaskans who also were here was Jens Beck and Will Ross, who is racing as a pro.   Alyssa Journey and I in our new Orca Speedsuits. With Melissa Norland, John Klish, and Mathieu Alyssa is who I work with through Orca as my sponsor, Signoretty pre-race start. and has been helping me since January. Thank you for all of your help Alyssa and Orca!   When Kahuna Dave's cannon went off, it was all arms and legs going everywhere in the swim! For me and a lot of other people, this swim was the most aggressive swim we've been in. I got kicked in the face pretty hard, got swum over, and I swam over a couple other people too....everyone was boxed in by other swimmers! The current was pretty strong here too, we were being taken off course, so nobody was swimming a straight line to the first and last buoys. Because the current kept pushing us to the left, we swam in a left curve to the buoy, then a right curve coming back to the beach. Mathieu got his arm stuck in the buoy line and had to quickly get it out while other people were swimming over him. John got pushed 3 feet underwater by other people at the first buoy because it was so crowded! Luckily, I just went a little to the outside of the buoys so I didn't get jammed up. I had to take the swim conservatively and just get into my rhythm as soon as possible, so I could save energy for the hard bike course and even harder run course!    The swim was 2 laps of 750 meters in somewhat rough water with a 100 meter beach run in between laps. 2008 Olympic Triathlon gold medalist Jan Frodeno blitzed the swim pretty easily and came out out of the water in first place.   Defending world champ Conrad Stoltz going on to the 2nd Me running on to my 2nd lap. lap of the swim   Lance Armstrong stormed the swim and came I don't know what's up with that out of the water in 3rd place. crazy look on my face!   Out of T2 with a 18.4 mile bike course Ron Hill from Idaho did the whole race in with 4,000 feet of climbing coming up! 5 hours and 53 minutes. He is 73 years old. Congratulations Ron! The new bike course did not have the unpredictable or dangerous factor of the lava rocks that were the main part of the old bike course. Although, there was even more climbing with some high speed downhills through the pineapple fields, plus some sweet, twisty singletrack! This course was NOT easy though, it had steeper hills and 600 more feet of climbing than XTERRA USA Championship race. I loved that it was this challenging! On one of the long downhills, I was behind a couple of riders and a dirt bike with the TV crew on it and the road was already powdery so the dust was so thick that I couldn't see my own front wheel while going over 25 mph. At some point, I was suddenly bumping all over and I saw that I was going over grass clumps so I knew that I had drifted off the road because all I could see was this wall of orange dust all around me! Fortunately, I didn't crash! After the swim Lance Armstrong took the lead, until Michi Weiss who used to be a pro mountain biker from Austria attacked him on an uphill climb some miles into the course. Lance still rode strongly though, and came off the bike in 2nd place behind Weiss despite a nasty crash that cracked his helmet at the end of the bike course. Conrad Stoltz had some catching up to do on the bike after coming out of the water in 13th place, but he couldn't push as strongly as he normally would because he was having trouble with his lungs when he tried to push hard. Conrad came off the bike in 3rd place but chose to stop after 3 miles on the run because he felt like he was running on one lung. Dan Hugo, who is a very well known and liked 25 year old pro got passed by Conrad when he crashed at the end of the bike course, but still had a strong run and passed Lance to get 2nd place overall, only 33 seconds behind Michi! Lance had a hard time re-grouping after his crash (he couldn't remember his own name for a moment), plus he said he pushed too hard on the swim so he didn't have much left for the run and ended up in 23rd place, 11 minutes behind 1st place.   Lance Armstrong going out on the run. The Caveman, Conrad Stoltz a couple minutes behind.   American Josiah Middaugh with 2009 XTERRA John Klish posted a 1:27 bike (31st overall World Champ Eneko Llanos hot on his heels. split) then went out on the run.   Mathieu Signoretty hammered the bike and came off My bike time was 1:35 which gave me only a few minutes behind 2010 Women's XTERRA &nbs |