It's a three-day race covering 320 miles on the big island of Hawaii, including a 10-kilometer ocean swim, more than 260 miles by bike and a double marathon run.

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At 42 years old, I competed in the Ultraman World Championships, a grueling three-day uber-endurance triathlon circumnavigating the Big Island of Hawaii that involves 6.2 miles of swimming, 260 miles of cycling and culminates with a 52.4-mile double marathon run.

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With the holidays approaching, Mr. Armstrong retreated to Kailua-Kona on Hawaii's Big Island, with his partner, Anna Hansen, and his young children and friends a place considered the spiritual home of the triathlon.

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The tsunami that wrecked northern Japanese fishing villages and small cities also travelled across the Pacific and hit the Hawaiian islands, causing tens of millions of dollars worth of damage to boats, docks, beach homes and led to the closing of the famous Kona Village Resort, a picturesque minimalist string of high-end bungalows on the Kona coast of the Big Island of Hawaii.

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Thanks to its commitment to renewable energy, Hawaii is now also becoming something of a test bed for renewable energy technologies, from the study of various geothermal and algae-based biofuel technologies happening at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority on the Big Island to smart grid experiments the state is conducting along with representatives from Japan and China.

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