OSIM S'pore Tri Race Report

Early Start

Despite my wave start not being due until 11am I rose at 6.30am so I could watch the Elite race. My first job of the day was self-body-numbering – a new experience! The organisers gave out pens with the race kit for DIY numbering. I decided not to wake anyone to do it for me even though Lucas’ had been quite keen to draw smiley faces on his Daddy’s skin! (He’ll have other chances)

Using my left hand, I got a 3 the wrong way round, and even after that I managed to get a 5 the wrong way round too! Well at least I noticed my mistake and corrected it – at the start of my race I was amused to see someone who’d not noticed his wrong-way-round numerals.

I cycled the 9km to the start and was faced with a muddy cyclo-cross style walk through transition. The ground was soaked and coated with thick runny mud which rushed into the front of my cycling shoes like a jet with each step. This was to play havoc with my transition routine of changing shoes, putting socks on whilst seated, trying to keep cleats free from mud etc…

Cyclo-cross anyone?

Elites

I spent the rest of the morning barefoot and watching the Elite’s. Malaysian men Shahrom Abdullah, Wong Ah Thiam, Eugene Chan and Wei Kuo Hau were well behind the lead group after the swim, but in the womens race Kimbeley Yap was first out of the water with a big gap, which she maintained well into the bike ride before falling back to join a chasing group. After that I’m not sure what happened but the guys finished well down from the 1h50m+ winning time and Kimbeley was outside the top 3 - 5th or 6th I believe.

Kim Possible...2nd place still in the water!

Storm

Having resigned myself to running 100m through mud in my cycling shoes in T1 and then trying to put lovely new brilliant white Pearl Izumi socks onto mud-covered feet in T2 (whilst sitting in the mud of course), I went to the start to warm-up and people-watch.

As my 11am start approached, so did dark clouds from the West. With only a few minutes to go the wind whipped up some strong waves and the starts were postponed for 30mins. Many swimmers were “rescued”. Shortly thereafter they even stopped cyclists due to lightning on the course. As the day before’s rain had lasted for hours I held little hope for a start early enough for me to still catch my bus back to KL so I packed up and headed for home. I even took the numbers of my helmet.

To my surprise I could then see the sky brightening up and soon they announced that racing would start again at 12.30, albeit with no swim: just a beach start, 400m run to transition, bike ride then a 5km run. I heard the MC say “2 x 20km” bike laps, which I simply took to mean the expected 40km (2 x 20 = 40!) as the laps are actually 10km.

Lucas serenades his free candy-floss.

Pretty Boys Daryl & Lucas.

Duathlon

My mud-strategy was: run from beach with socks and running shoes on. Shoes will get muddy in T1, but they’d get muddy in T2 anyway so no difference. With socks on, I’ll save time in T2…

GO!...as one of only a few with shoes on I battered my way through several barefoot runners on the sand and headed for T1 after about 1m30s! I've never overtaken so many runners ever! HR 172bpm – easy boy!

Onto the bike…struggled a bit to clip in due to mud, but was soon underway with mud sprayed up to my knees. I settled into a pleasingly-fast 34kph pace and my HR settled to below 165bpm.

A rare snap of me on me bike.

It goes without saying I enjoyed the ride. On my favoured 53x19 all the way except at sharp turns, I managed to average well over 32kph with my HR at 165bpm as planned. I was overtaking continuously and was passed by about 1 for every 10 people I passed.

At the end of my third lap I noticed most people turning off course into T2. I presumed they’d all started in waves before me. But on my 4th lap there were hardly any riders and they were all relay riders who’d started after me – no 35-39 age-groupers to be seen. I began to suspect that the MC (see earlier) had meant to say 2 x 10km, not 2 x 20km, but my mind was set on 40km.

Anyway, my pleasure comes from taking-part and doing my best, and riding 20km is nothing to shout about, so I’m glad I did 4 laps. The actual distance was 38.07km and it took me 1:09:55. At that pace it’d take me 1:13:28 to do a full 40km which would be a new PB by over 3 minutes – WOW! STOP PRESS - as confirmed by other blogs, I was only supposed to do 20km!

Into the run with 1h15m+ on my watch – target finish = 1h 45m. I was not too interested in the short run but plugged away and reached 2.5km in about 14mins. Feeling quite relaxed on the way back, my HR was lower than on the bike, at under 160bpm, which was a pleasant surprise. A final step-up in gear in the last 400m brought me home in 2h43m+ with a 28min run, to get my “Triathlon” medal. A nice medal but not as treasured as others due to the shortened race with no swim.