EVOMO @ XTERRA World Championships - Maui
by Mark T. Racer on November 6th, 2008
just got back from maui to race in the XTERRA World Championships off-road triathlon. 1.5k open ocean swim, 32k mountain bike, and 11.2k trail run. to sum up how it went, i got food poisoning from some great tasting chinese food the 2nd day i was there. which lead to me puking and the troffs and a pounding headache until the day before the race. at that point i didnt know what to expect. then race morning, i felt pretty good, had a great swim, and got onto the bike and after the 1st decend, 1/2 into the bike, i got a flat on my front tire. a thorn over 1″ long. if you make it through the bike course with no flat or anything happening to your tires, YOUR LUCKY. thats basically it. sharp loose lava rock everywhere and thorns everywhere. you cant take your hands off the bars. its def a big travel bike course 5-6″ is a must front and rear. after the flat i was basically done and was going to DNF but then decided not to and just finish the race at a med pace. before the flat i was sitting in top 10 which was my goal and once i pulled over to change the flat i saw bout 6-7 racers in my class jet right by. then on the run i was just going a cruisen pace and last mile before the finish 1 of like 8 logs you had to run under i stood up after ducking and hit my head on a smaller log behind the bigger one. it almost knocked me out. i thought i was bleeding everywhere. at that point i really wanted to be done….so all in all it was BRUTAL!!! team USA got all our podium spots snatched up by internationals. in my class i had 31 and only 10 of us were on team USA. i had to settle for a #21 spot. but the experiance was TOTALLY worth it. next year….
this is coming out of the swim. in xterra you do 2 - 750meter laps, with a 50m beach run inbetween.
out on the bike course. there were about 4 sections that you MIGHT be able to ride if you had nobody in front of you. yes that is a naked sumo wrestler squish bell on my bars. hella people were diggen it.  i actually saw a few people taking pictures with it. which i thought was wierd.Â
out on the last half of the run course. so awesome running on the lava rock. you also had about a 1/2 mile of running in deep sand on the beach too which wasnt as fun….
this is one of my fav pics. it shows exactly how i felt once i crossed that finish line….DONE with that race and the season…. 30 races for me this year…… all top 10 finishes except for 3, 13 of them were podium finishes and 4 were podium wins.
then a costume party that night. i dressed up as one of the XTERRA vp’s. he has a rep for being a huge beer drinker which explains the beer can hat and beer bong. the EVOMO sticker had to be on the front of the cap of course… bring the rukus!! and yes that is a female pro racer hitting that beer bong. she drank all my damm beer!!!
feel free to go to my blog site: www.marktracer.blogspot.com and there is a full photo gallery and i’ll have a full race report posted later. if you have a blog site as well, email me your link and i’ll add you on there….
cheers!
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thats freakin awesome… well the beer part. i love beer.
too bad about the food poisioning… sounds like the race was a challenging one. Then again its the World Championships, so what would you expect, groomed fire roads?