RICH CRUSE/TEAM UNLIMITED
An athlete navigates the beachfront terrain in the run portion of the XTERRA off-road triathlon World Championship on Maui.
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Injured athlete a top finisher in Maui’s XTERRA triathlon
Triathlete Amy Bennett celebrated her 30th birthday earlier this month in typical Amy Bennett style: a 30-mile run and a party. The festivities will continue into April, when she and a group of friends will travel to the Big Island for the Lavaman Triathlon. The night before, they will camp out -- where else? -- at mile 78, the year she was born.
'XTERRA'
Off-road triathlon World Championship on Maui
» On TV: 8 p.m. tomorrow on KGMB/CBS; national championship race airs at 7 p.m.
» Viewing party: 7 to 9 p.m. at The Shack Hawaii Kai, 377 Keahole St.
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Given Bennett's passion for life and her impressive athletic ability, her feat at the XTERRA off-road triathlon World Championship on Maui last October did not surprise people who know her. But it certainly got the attention of producers at TEAM Unlimited, who focused on Bennett throughout the one-hour nationally televised event that airs tomorrow.
It all started on Oct. 13, when Bennett completed her first Kona Ironman Triathlon World Championship in 11 hours and 55 minutes. During a photo shoot on her mountain bike the following week, a mishap with her watch and the brake lever snapped her wrist and caused a fall.
"I knew my wrist kind of hurt," said Bennett, who works full time as a ship superintendent for BAE Hawaii Shipyards and teaches five cross-training classes per week as the leader of Camp Bennett. So she rode her bike down the hill in search of a bag of ice. But a subsequent trip to the emergency room revealed that she had broken all the bones in her wrist, including the slow-to-heal scaphoid. She left the hospital with her entire arm in a cast.
Not wanting to miss any of the fun, Bennett traveled to Maui the next week to watch XTERRA and cheer for friends, but did not bring her bike. "I wasn't expecting to race," she said. "The doctors advised me not to."
But then she saw her name on the short list of international athletes attempting what's called "The Double," which includes Ironman and XTERRA -- two grueling races a week or two apart. Both demand rigorous qualifying standards. Completing the two in the same year had been a long-term goal for Bennett. But there was more.
RICH CRUSE/TEAM UNLIMITED
Honolulu triathlete Amy Bennett emerges from the first leg of the triathlon: the 1-mile ocean swim. In between swimming and running, athletes endure a 20-mile trail ride through the rugged terrain of Haleakala.
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"When I saw my name on there, I thought, 'I've got to represent the USA!'" she recalled. "It got personal at that point. It was like a call to duty."
Race directors told her she could participate if she didn't get near anybody else with her cast (which has a waterproof Gore-Tex liner) during the swim. At the last moment, she called friends and asked them to bring her mountain bike to Maui.
While cycling, she could shift gears only with one hand, making it far more difficult to climb and descend Haleakala. "I just thought I'd go as long as I could and jump off the bike and push it up the hill," she said. "It was a very different strategy. I realized I would be out there for twice as long. My nutrition had to change. My attitude had to change."
The rewards changed, too. She participated alongside different people, and found more joy in cheering for others than in pushing herself to a top performance. "People who saw me said they were inspired. They kept telling me, 'I just needed to shut up and stop complaining.'" And she found herself happy that she could be out there at all.
Her time for the 1-mile swim, 20-mile trail ride and 7-mile run through some of the most rugged terrain on Maui was 5 hours and 28 minutes. She finished second among four women and first among Americans who successfully completed "The Double," which combines an athlete's times from Ironman and XTERRA.
RICH CRUSE/TEAM UNLIMITED
An injured Amy Bennett is still all smiles come race time.
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The one-hour show offers plenty of sequences of the cheerful Bennett swimming with a bright pink cast or trying to buckle her helmet with one hand, but beyond that the videography is nothing less than stunning. Filled with aerial, underwater and close-up action shots, it brings the painful event to life.
For many, mechanical problems, such as flat tires, broken chains and bent rims, on the punishing course can alter the outcome of the race, as can major crashes on the crushed lava rocks. But Bennett managed to stay in one piece.
"It was just a good reminder to me in the end that it's not about winning or losing, it's what it does for you," she said. During long training sessions, "you start developing yourself as a person, and this is just one more step in that development."
You don't have to be a great athlete, insisted Bennett, who is still in that cast five months later. "It's just about getting out there."