Here is just a quick re cap for those of you that were interested in how my race went at Challenge Taiwan full distance. Swim - It was a non wetsuit swim for us as water temps were 24-25C (age group could still wear suits, mainly for safety reasons in Asia) I treated it like a 70.3 swim to hang onto Dylan McNiece who is on exceptional swimmers in our sport (Has led the Hawaii IM out of water) - time 48min.
Bike - smooth roads and a rolling hilly course along the coast, actually a very nice bike course Dylan and I wanted to keep pace high as #1 we raced last weekend or 6 days ago actually (Challenge Melb half...not ideal but part of a "package" with Challenge) and knew fatigue would set in later no matter what #2 we wanted to hold off the "king of asian racing" Freddie Cronenberg. It rained a little during bike so although there was cloud cover the humidity was quite high, still air temps around 30C... not good coming from Melbourne.
Bike times:
Through 90km - 2.08
180k - 4.20 (wind picked up on second lap)
Run - Dylan and I ran together for 20km at a steady clip (on track for a 2.55-57 marathon) that we thought was comfortable and manageable in the 'warm, humid' Taiwan conditions.... not record setting but it didn't need to be. However, and I think mainly just due to fatigue (2 races 6 days + travel) I cramped up in left adductors..This has happened a few times before. From there it was trying to manage cramps home so made for a little longer back end of marathon and quite a few stops to stretch it out... humidity didn't help either with incased sweat rates. Anyway Freddie caught me at 32km and I slipped to 3rd where I stayed. Time - blew out to 3.12 (not ideal but best of a bad scenario)
Lesson from race!
- Back to back races in hard/painful!! or a Half and a Full in 6 days in 2 different countries.
- The swim is in a man made lake or more like a 1.3km long swimming pool.... water is filled by a fresh spring so clean, see the bottom all the way as 2.5m deep. Amazing.
- Course was fantastic swim bike and run were all quite nice interesting and never boring.
- People here are crazy and lover the sport. Over the weekend there are 4k+ athletes racing as there is a Full, Half (Saturday) Olympic and Kids race (300 kids) Sunday,
- I did see some people riding in Crocs with pedals on $10k bikes
- I did see some people running in rubber thongs with socks.
- The aid station that I thought had coke on it ended up being Ice Tea!
- I may now have eaten my weight in Dumplings.....
Thanks for all the well wishes, It was a blast. Luke