Macau...unfinished business

So this past weekend was spent in Macau.  Honestly I was there for some unfinished business.  Promises made a few years ago that needed to be completed.  However before I go into that on a future post, let me say a few things about Macau itself.

Formerly under Portugal control it was turned over to China in 1999 and is now one of the Special Administration Region controlled by China.  This means it has it's own government, it's own currency and is generally very different from China.  Now if you ask a Chinese person this they would say otherwise.  They would say that Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau are all part of China.  And yes they are, but in a different way.

What I have enjoyed on my visits to Macau is the old vs new.  You have old Portugese influenced architecture next to the new grand casino's.  Old money vs new money.  As a break from living in China it is wonderful!

This is me in front of some of the new.  The Macau Tower stands about 61 stories tall and about 233m high.  It's quite impressive and scary in it's own way...more on Macau and the tower next time.

Philippines 70.3 - Run

So after a good swim and good bike, it's off on the 21k run (aka the 1/2 marathon!).

On to the course I went with an extra water bottle in hand to hydrate.  I noticed very quickly that my legs were simply not responding.  I didn't think I went that hard on the bike portion so I figured it would just take them 15 minutes or so to loosen up and get in stride...

Same as the bike, the crowds were everywhere.  But this time instead of whizzing by going at a high rate of speed I was just jogging past giving kids high fives and hearing them roar in appreciation!  There were literally entire schools of kids in their uniforms lining the roads and cheering.

About 25 minutes in my legs were still not adapting and it was time to refuel.  During a long endurance race you will burn thousands upon thousands of calories, which means you need to hydrate yes, but also consume calories.  This is done either with gu like substances, banana's, or even protein type bars as well as taking salt tabs and electrolyte tabs.  Well after the 25 min, it was my scheduled time to take some pills (electrolyte's and such).  Well let's just say they didn't go down and for the first time while doing a race I moved to the side of the road and back up they came!  Guess those never got into my system.

I seem to be moving decently here, definitely not indicative of the norm on this race!

The run course itself was very flat which was nice.  It was occasionally tree lined giving some protection from the sun, but often was out through neighborhoods or near the water and completely exposed.

Like the bike this too was a two loop course meaning you ran by everyone a couple of times and knew where the biggest support was.

All in all my run felt like 1/2 run and 1/2 walk.  My legs never got into it and consequently my final time was about 40minutes past my goal of 6hours. 

Would I do this race again?  Heck yeah!  Great course, great support and lots of fun, I've just got to learn how to get my legs turning over!!!

Philippines 70.3 - Bike

So after a good swim for me it was on to the bike portion.  90k or 56miles. 

Quickly I realized one more problem, that being my bike computer wasn't working.  While not the end of the world I use it to determine the distance traveled, speed and my cadence.  It certainly helps when pacing oneself over this distance.  Oh well nothing I can do at this point.

The race was a two loop course over relatively flat terrain.  The one exception being this bridge you see in the first picture below.  Up and over that bridge was tough as it seemed straight up on a long steady climb.

 After the bridge it was out and back 2x, each time relatively straight allowing for decent speeds.  We went through a super long tunnel, where literally I had to pull my sunglasses down as it got so dark in their with them on you couldn't see anything.

Most of the roads were in good shape but there were areas heavily beat up thanks to container/cargo shipping that happens daily.  The good news was this course was completely closed to cars the day of the race, making for a safe environment.

I read in one post race recap that the bike was compared to the course at Kona, Hawaii where the Ironman world championships are held.  Specifically in the sense that it was extremely hot out on the bike and also because of some heavy winds causing speeds to be much higher coming back in than they were going out. 

The best part of this entire course by far was the outstanding crowd support.  It was reported the next day that there were over 25,000 people lining the streets cheering everyone from the pro's to the worst performing athletes!  There were sections of the bike that had crowds lined 2-3 deep cheering like crazy.  A small wave or a smile of acknowledgment from the competitors just fired everyone up even louder.

All in all I had a good bike portion and was well on my way to hitting the time goal that I set for this race...

Philippines 70.3 - Swim

Race morning comes EARLY with a 3:00AM wake up call, 3:30 breakfast and 4:00 departure from the hotel!  Continuing with my streak of bad luck, the organizers didn't have enough shuttles to take the athletes to the race start, so they got a local van to take about 15 of us all while sitting on the floor as this was more of a cargo van!  I'm thinking at this time with all the bad luck I've had, I was bound to have a great race!

After checking my gear and getting all set up, it was time to head down towards the swim start...

One challenge that the organizers hadn't totally thought through was that the tide was out causing very shallow waters at the beginning and to make matters worse there was a lot of coral everywhere! 

The swim start itself was a water start meaning that we had been swimming or treading water for 10-15 min before the start, then the gun goes off and everyone starts in a flurry!  It was simply a beautiful swim.  The water was crystal clear, making the swim almost like a snorkeling day.  You could see all sorts of colorful fish which kept your mind off the exertion to some extent.

Course wise this was 1.9k (1.2miles) in one large clockwise loop.  The water was a bit rough thanks to a typhoon that came through a few days before so there was an occasional bigger type wave but all in all it was fine. 

Coming into shore I was feeling pretty good about my time but hadn't seen my watch since the start so I didn't really know.   The last 100m or so I swam breaststroke simply trying to avoid cutting up my hands on the coral.  Upon getting out I looked at my watch to see a time of 37min and change, so I was quite pleased with my start...

Philippines 70.3 - part 1

Last week I was off to the Philippines for my race.  My flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong got delayed on the ground for a couple of hours (pretty much the usual for me), making the connection super tight to Cebu.  As we were getting off the plane I had about 25 minutes to make my connection.  The flight attendant was sure they would hold it as there were a few of us going there and that was the last flight of the night.  Well as soon as I got off the jet bridge there were gate agents waiting holding signs for Cebu...and my boarding pass...for the next day's flight!  Damn this isn't starting well.

Thankfully Cathay Pacific put me up in a nearby hotel and made things as easy as possible.  The flight the next morning around 8:30 went as planned...until I got off the plane, went through customs and realized I had left my iPad on the plane!  Crap this is continuing to not go well.  After alerting the staff they checked the plane but no luck on the iPad.  I tried to file a "lost" claim but they didn't seem to have one. 

On to the hotel I go and it's about 12:30 now.  Upon getting to the hotel and checking in, I find out the last shuttle to race check leaves at 2PM.  (FYI the race is the following day).  So I quickly build my bike, grab some stuff and head over to the check in.  From here the rest of the day seemed to go relatively well.

Time for the race briefing, explaining the rules, time line for the day, laying out the course, etc...

It's ALMOST race time, Philippine style!

So last night I did my last swim before racing on Sunday in the Philippines.  All in all my training has been good leading up to this one, with the exception of my swim, where I just haven't put in the time.  So I needed to get this one in.

However it nearly didn't happen...For this swim I went back to my old apartment complex to swim where I haven't been for months.  As I was about to get in the pool from one end, I completely slipped!  I landed hard on my wrist and came within inches of smacking my head on the pool and knocking myself senseless.  There were a couple of other foreigners near by and they were shocked I didn't get hurt.  Lucky!

In fact the swim itself was far and away my best swim of the year.  It was strong, felt fast and leaves me feeling good about that part of the race.

Here is a little more coverage on the race...
http://ironman.com/events/ironman70.3/philippines70.3/philippines-70.3-preview?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ironman%2Ftopstories+%28Ironman.com+Top+Stories%29#axzz22M0BAFd9

Now if we can just avoid the typhoon that is in the area....