Our usual Thanksgiving weekend is spent on the Big Island of Hawaii, competing in the Ultraman world championship. It's a 3 day race that circumnavigates the entire island. Day 1 is a 10k (6.2 mile) swim followed by a 90 mile bike ending around 4000ft above sea level in Volcano national park. Day 2 is a 171 mile bike and day 3 is a double marathon (52 miles) where you basically run the 2nd half of the Hawaii Ironman bike course!
Sadly, this year it was cancelled for the second year in a row. Coupled with multiple other race cancellations and some bad luck, I've not raced a triathlon since 2019! As much as I want to race, the priority is the safety and well-being of the people of Hawaii. They rely heavily on tourism and have been hit really badly by COVID.
The best I can do is share some photos from previous races. Here are some from 2017, the last time we got to ride the "red road" before the 2018 eruption covered parts of the road in lava. You can see the varying conditions that we had to deal with, we overcame much and prevailed with a successful race overall. One of the things I love about the Ultraman race is the reliance on my race crew led by
@ihersey (
@szcary60 and Michael Bush) and of course the crew for the other 362 days of the year led by
@mambolinatimes !
Hopefully we get to race in 2022!