The participants started at 7 a.m., with 750-meter swim in Paupau Beach, and after a few minutes of chicken dance, took the saddle and biked their way 11 miles to Tangke Trail where they trekked the woods on slippery, rocky and treacherous 2.5 miles trail.
Eli Torgeson who finished the entire race in one hour and 59.41 minutes won the first place.
Tyce Mister settled for second place after finishing the triathlon in one hour and 69.44 minutes.
In Women, Mieko Carey topped the race with one hour and 78.28 minutes. Trailing her was Mamiko Berger who finished the race in 2 hours and 55.58 minutes.
NMITF President Russ Quinn said the event started out supposedly as warm up race for the annual X-Terra event last March. But since the warm race which they planned to hold in February did not push through until the X-Terra came the next month, they decided to hold it this time as make-up event and at the same time giving the new members that chance to apply what they learned during the mountain bike clinic two weekends ago.
A lot of those who participated yesterday are first timers and had just learned mountain bikings from the bike clinic, Quinn said.
Quinn added that it could also be an early preparation for the next X-Terra in March 2009, and
they are looking at holding another bike clinic again, probably by January.
He recalled that the number of participants in the last year’s X-Terra was not a big as the previous year.
With the on going NMITF activities however, Quinn noted that there is now a growing interest in mountain biking among members of the community so they are now confident that next year’s X-Terra will have a bigger turn out.
The other participants of yesterday’s Off Road X-Terra were Mike Johnson, Russ Quinn, Kanae Quinn, Manny Sitchon, Cezar Fortauza, Antonee Aguilar, Joshua Berger, John Jones, Tamio Nishikido, Rex Cosack, Kevin Carey, Steve Nutting, Heather Kennedy, Kimiko Hasegawa and Jim Arenovski.
