THE FRONT ROW WITH BRUCE BOURQUIN: Feb. 14, 2014

At 76 years old, Hayden resident Ron Hill finished a triathlon in 7 hours, 12 minutes and 11 seconds while swimming, cycling and running in the XTERRA World Championship on Oct. 28 in Maui, Hawaii, an offroad triathlon that Hill considers much more difficult than your average triathlon.

Granted, Hill was the only competitor in his men's 75-79 age group and he won a world title. He began the competition with a healthy 1,500-meter swim, rode 26.2 miles and ran a 10K.

But considering where he was at health-wise the year before in 2012, it was remarkable Hill was able to compete at all.

ON OCT. 28, 2012, Hill was competing at the age of 75 in the XTERRA World Championship triathlon in Maui and fell hard on his bottom, breaking his pelvis. He was a patient on a medevac flight to Honolulu.

What happened next was four months worth of rest and rehab, before Hill was able to train again.

"I was at mile 18 on the bike," Hill said. "I was in the lead and essentially winning the race (in my age group) and I was having a very sore neck, so I moved my head back and forth, trying to exercise my neck muscles. When I did that, the bike swerved and I swung over and clipped a real small tree, but I just hit the edge of my shoulder and it flipped me off the bike. I was going downhill, so as I flipped off the bike, by the time I hit the ground, I had already dropped another 10 feet and I dropped maybe 15 to 20 feet (overall). I landed on my right butt cheek, driving the femur bone right into the pelvis. The femur did not break, but the pelvis socket split and it had about five cracks on it."

Hill needed surgery that was performed by Dr. Patrick Murray to help fix and heal his pelvis at Queens Medical Center in Honolulu.

"A broken pelvis, people just don't recover from it, it's a death sentence," Hill said. "Because it never heals right and they're are completely immobilized because they can't walk on it, they can't use it.

They sit in a chair and they get atrophy and after six months, they're dead. That's the common prognosis. I did not have a real appreciation for the injury and how it affects people my age or anybody.

"You lose everything and you've got to come back," he added. "My right leg was completely dead after surgery. It took four months before I could walk. The doctors thought I would never compete again. Now that I've done it, they said 'That's absolutely amazing.' The doctors here said, 'You're in rarefied air. I've never seen anything like this and I don't expect to see anything like it again.' Many people, when they heard about it, they said, 'That's the end of him.' When I came back, they were shocked I was back."

NOT ONLY did Hill survive, he thrived.

"They said I could start walking in April (of 2013)," Hill said. "In two weeks after that, I went to the pool and started swimming. It required almost no legwork and you can stick a buoy between your legs and swim with your arms. It was great, it was nice to be able to get in the water and swim. In another two or three weeks, my legs were getting stronger and I started riding. I was riding one-legged for a while, but it started to get stronger rather quickly and it was just amazing, it was coming back very fast. I was surprised it came back that fast. In April, I started running. We (my wife Bobbi and I) went down to Las Vegas to volunteer at the XTERRA West Championship. I wanted to let people know I was healing up well and I wanted to help them out because they were really helpful to us."

Part of the triathlete community came together in Honolulu to visit the Hills and help out however they could.

Hill got stronger as time went on.

"I would walk our dog at rest stops," Hill said. "As I got back to our truck, I thought, well, now's a good time to start running and I did a light, easy jog for 25 yards and every rest stop, I would do that and about a month later, I did a 50-yard run. A month after that, I went out for a 15-minute run and everything worked well. There was no pain in the hip and I started dialing up the distance and amount of training I put in. By July, I was swimming, biking and running again. So I entered the race on Vashon Island (near Seattle) - nine months after the injury - and completed the race, did a pretty good job, finished it in 3 1/2 hours and the year before I did it in three hours. I could tell I was way down in power. The whole year, I was down in power, everything took me longer. In Kauai, the year before I crashed (in 2011), I did it in 5 1/2 hours."

FOR HILL'S accomplishments in 2013 and for coming back strong from a serious injury, Hill won the XTERRA Warrior Award on Nov. 1. He sounded a little emotional when talking about receiving the award.

"I didn't know that was coming," Hill said. "That was a total shock. They give it to an athlete that has done something special. They recognize someone who healed from such a serious injury and coming back and racing, within a year, and being back in Hawaii and receiving that was pretty spectacular. The whole thing was a miracle."

Hill's first triathlon was the Coeur d'Alene Triathlon.

"It's an Olympic distance triathlon," Hill said. "It's about the same as most XTERRA triathlons. My best full-distance XTERRA triathlon was like, 4 hours and 30 or 40 minutes. In Ogden, Utah, which is the nationals or in Hawaii, I finished those in six to seven hours. Those are much more difficult. You have to climb 4,000 feet, turn around and run 1,000 feet."

In 1979, Hill moved to Hayden and bought an AAMCO transmission shop, which he owned for 20 years until 1999. In the 1960s and 1970s, Hill was an electronic engineer and worked in southern California in the space business. He retired in 2000.

BY THE way, Hill is not done running in triathlons, not by a long shot. On March 30, he plans to compete in Costa Rica. He's been sick with the flu and has missed about two months of training, but soon he'll go back to his usual grind, training six to 10 hours a day, six days per week.

"I'm hoping my competitor will be there," Hill said of 76-year-old Nathaniel Grew, who lives in Costa Rica. "He's been my competition when I first started racing. He crashed earlier in Vermont and broke his shoulder (in 2012). He couldn't recover in time to race in XTERRA in Hawaii in 2013."

It looks like Hill has already competed against possible death - and won.

Bruce Bourquin is a sports writer at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2013, or via email at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @bourq25