Alexander repeats , Rani "Runs It" at Mountan Man 2008!

(results here pictures here)
Alexander Eiler dominated the field and course on his bike cruising to the win at the 2008 Jamba Juice XTERRA Mountain Man Triathlon at Kualoa Ranch. Alex won last year's event, was the top Age Grouper at the XTERRA World Championship. Since arriving on island 14 months ago, he has solidified his place as one of the premier athletes on Oahu.

Alex is a former world cup mountain biker and learned to ride on the decidedly non-flat roads and trails in his home country of Austria, where apparently they have a hill (or two). When Mr. Eiler isn't blowing the field away at races, he's Dr. Eiler, microbiological researcher at the University of Hawaii. So not only is he considerably faster than me, he's probably forgotten more info than I'll ever know.

Chad Seymour led the field out of the water, clocking a 5:21 effort on the "not quite 750M" swim, with strong contenders William Wong and Tai Blechta hot on his heels. Defending champ Eiler came out of the water in 19th place, but quickly started to make up ground on his two wheeled weapon. This same strategy nearly got him a big win last month- Alex was faster than Oahu multisport's reigning 800-Lb Gorilla, Tim Marr, on both the bike and the run in July's Tinman, nearly making up the minutes he lost in the water and finishing second.

On the rugged 10 mile course through Kualoa Ranch, Alex quickly made up the gap to the leaders and grew it to over two minutes before entering T2 and starting on the 3.88 mile trail run.

The field was unable to gain any ground on the leader, and Eiler put another 40 seconds on everyone to finish in 1 hour, 11 minutes. Four minutes later, Tai Blechta out-sprinted Chad Seymour at the finish to take second place.

at left: Blechta keeps pace with Seymour with half a mile to go

In the Women's race, Kimberly Ridgeway's strong bike split wasn't enough to hold off the big island's rapidly running Rani Tanimoto, who pounded out four sub 7:30 miles on the dusty hills of Kuoloa. Rani caught and passed Kimberly with about a half mile to go, and kept her foot on the gas to finish 45 seconds in front, total time of 1 hour, 47 minutes.

Below- Rani overtakes Kimberly

Jennifer Van Delden, left, flashed a smile en route to a strong third place finish.

161 racers finished the 750(ish) meter swim in the shallow waters of northeast Oahu, tackled a rugged 10 mile bike through the scenic Kualoa valley, and endured the 3.88 mile trail run.

58 slots were awarded for entry in the 2008 XTERRA World Championships on Maui- congrats to all qualifiers!

Results Here