XTerra – Saipan

This weekend, our adventure de jour was a trip to Saipan for the highly touted XTerra off-road triathlon.
I have to say, it did not disappoint in the adventure category!
The one thing I will say this weekend taught me (before I launch into the story in earnest) is that I discovered, I am not a mountain biker. At least, not one to be competitive at these kinds of races!
We began the weekend with the short 120 mile flight over to Saipan on Friday afternoon. We met up with the large Guam contingent (there were 32 athletes from Guam competing … plus family members). Anna decided that she would like to come watch, and support.
Friday night, there was a pre-race dinner for all the athletes, but Anna and I opted out to go back to the SandCastle show. We had already gone New Year’s 2005 when we were last in Saipan, but since Anna had free tickets, it was hard to pass up! 🙂
The show, as usual was excellent. The magic in the show was particularly noteworthy. Since we weren’t allowed to take pictures, I have no visual, but suffice it to say, it was a nice dinner, with a very entertaining magic and dance show.
The next morning, we got up after a full night’s rest. The start time was a late 8:00AM (which meant that it would be plenty warm on the course).
Here I am setting up all my gear.

Some of the other Guam triathletes:

The whole Guam contingent, ready to race!

Here we are in the water. Those of us in the yellow swim caps were doing the “championship” length, while the green means “sport” (or slightly shorter) and the blue is professional. Yes, we had about 10 professional triathletes in our midst. In fact, I actually stayed close to a couple for the first half of the swim … but that was it.

You may be curious, how long is this race? Well, the championship distance was a 1.5K swim, a 30K bike and a 12K run. That converts to about a 1 mile swim, an 18 mile bike and 7.5 mile run. Not too far, right? Well, the terrain we covered made it a little tougher. No worries, though, since I am typing this, AFTER the race, you can tell, I survived. 🙂
The swim course was a 2 lap triangle (each one was 750 meters long). Here is our friend Jude coming out of the water, ready to get started on the bike.

Here I am making my way up the beach.

Another one of our friends, Julian, ready to hop on his bike with a smile.

Coming out of the first transition:

Eric, getting ready to tackle the Saipan mountains:

This is one of the professionals, Jamie Whitmore. She was the 2004 world champion, and has won this race 4 times before. Last year, she came in second. Unfortunately, this year was a repeat, but nonetheless, she’s an amazing athlete who simply flew through this course. This shot Anna took, gives you a good perspective on how people feel throughout. The terrain looks pretty benign, but it was a long, sometimes steep up hill (about 10 miles uphill and 8 miles down). The downhill was almost all technical single track, but more on that later.
Here’s Jamie:

Here’s Keenan, one of the toughest teenagers I know.

Yes, they did have plenty of aid stations that gave us water as we went.

So, once we made it to the top of the mountain (which was just over 1500 feet higher than where we started), we began on the treacherous (for me at least) downhill portion. We had gone through a few technical sections (single track trail, anywhere from a few inches to a few feet wide). Unfortunately for me, I had already fallen a few times by the time I started down the “hard” part. So, I will abbreviate this story a bit and just say that I stopped counting once I had fallen for the 6th time. Eventually, it got so bad, that I simply walked my bike down large portions. That is where it really sunk in that perhaps I am not cut out for the whole mountain biking thing. In all fairness to the sport though, I really haven’t practiced as much as I should. This race was only my second really “technical” ride ever. So, perhaps if I were to go out and do it more often … but I probably won’t be doing that anytime in the near future.
So, while I was walking my bike down, the winner came across the finish line. Here’s a shot of him, Olivier Marceau. Now, this guy is a stud. He won by over 5 minutes and Anna said as he came in, he barely looked winded. Wow.

I, on the other hand, had a long way to go still. So, here I am back in transition (finally), after nearly 3 hours on the bike.

OK, I have no pictures from the run, but it was amazing. Instead of calling it a run though, it is more accurate to call it a scenic hike with running mixed in. At the very beginning of the run, I made a half mile detour (which took my total mileage over 8 miles on the run). Since I knew I was out of ANY contention in the race, I decided to jog/hike the rest of the way. That made the race a lot more enjoyable, as I was able to really enjoy my surroundings. The trail was very rough and at times more difficult than some of our hikes we’ve been on here in Guam! As expected, there was a long uphill section in the beginning and the trail wound it’s way through the jungle. Eventually though, we began to come back down hill by way of some very steep ravines and even through a man made cave. I wish I had a picture to show, but it was very pretty. Anyway, on the way down, I decided it was time to run again, so I picked up the pace and sort of cruised in to the finish. This is another guy I met about a mile from the finish. We started talking and decided to finish the race together.

Perhaps I make it sound like a walk in the park (so to speak), but nevertheless, it was a very challenging race (the toughest triathlon I’ve done, thus far). This one took me about 5 hours, when the last two Olympic distance road triathlons took me 3 hours or less. Those extra 2 hours made a big difference!
These cold, wet towels felt sooo good after the long, hot race.

That ended my XTerra race, and while I don’t need to do this type of race again anytime soon, it was a good experience and I am certainly glad I did it.
Now, to make this post a little longer, I will include some of the sightseeing pictures we took today as we drove around Saipan again.
This little island is called Bird Island.




These are the Bonzai Cliffs. Not only are they striking visually, but there are also some commemorative memorials for the Japanese soldiers of WWII who were killed in Saipan. It was sort of a strange feeling seeing these along side a number of Japanese tourists.



There are also some hardy souls who use the cliffs as a fishing spot as well.


So, that concludes our adventure in Saipan. Even though it was at times painful, it was yet another spectacular weekend.
–Jim