MS Xterra Maui 2012 – Roads to Maui

Well there are many ways how to get to Maui and my destiny gave me the hard one. Long story short – My plan was to fly to Canada for some good training before Worlds at the beginning of October and than head to Maui.

 I bought air tickets and one day before flight friend of mine is asking me – „Hey mate, have you got your visa for Canada?“ and me „No, I don´t need a visa for Canada!“ Well I did need visa for Canada so I had to rebook my airticket and wait almost 3 weeks.

OK, here we go again, 3 days until my flight to Canada, last running race and boom – I twisted my ankle, and very badly si I received a plaster from the doctors. I wasn´t happy with that present so I cut it off and rebooked my ticket again.

OK, no worries mate, here we go again, in the car to the airport and text message on my phone is saying: „We are sorry for any inconvience but your flight was cancelled“. I didn´t trust that but when I came to the airport the line of raging customers told me that it is true.

Flight cancelled and rebooked for next day so I am waiting again. Anyway,  next day walking with the sticks I made it to Canada. But I was the only one who made it, my bike stayed in London. Perfect. The next night at 3 am some freak is ringing door bell and delivering my bike.

The bike box is damaged and my bike is damaged too and the don´t f…. care. I put my bike for repaireand after 2 days I was ready to go to Maui, early flight from Vancouver trhough Calgary and LA. I made it from Vancouver to Calgary but that was it.

USA Immigration officer didn´t like me much and took me for second inspection that took 1,5 hour so I missed the flight. And who cared? No one. I rebooked my flight for next day and finally I made it Maui. From there the paradise begun. I was mostly resting and swimming as my ankle wasn ´t ready for training yet.

Night before the race, pumped up for the action, warning sirens are on and Tsunami evacuation begun. Whoops, so we packed all our stuff and went up the hill where we stayed until 3am.

Tsunami didn´t come so 9 am we hit the water, very choppy, up and down and lots of fun. I couldn´t catch a rhytm but swimming was good and hard. Two loops with beach run between the loops. When going out of water I cought a wave but didn´t jump off early enough so I end up like beached whale with send literally everywhere  Coming out of the water an the 17th place. On the bike I set up a steady pace and tried to go hard but also stay fresh for the run. 30kms of sandy narrow steep up and down single tracks weren´t easy to ride at all but it was fun with bit of sun.

 I was riding my maximum but it wasn´t enough as usually and I was slowly moving down to the race field. Three bike crashes were ok and expected. I was very happy when the bike was over, but als wasn´t sure at all if I will be able to run with my ankle.

 I usually don´t do that but I took pain killers and hit the run. Running hard uphills and flat sections and running very carefully downhill and technical section. I could run and that made me very happy. I puhsed as hard as I could and it made me very happy too.

So at the end I was happy with 31st place in Pro category. It was a good race and best result at Xterra Worlds for me so far. Next year I will be back aiming higher for sure.