Asia Pacific Championship - 1/2 Ironman - Laguna Phuket, Thailand

Well as I mentioned before I was "training" for another 1/2 Ironman (1.2m swim, 56m bike and 13.1m run) in Phuket, Thailand.  The good news is that I did the race, the bad news was I didn't train hard enough.  In the weeks leading up to the inaugural race there were media reports describing it as what could be the most challenging course in the world for 1/2 Ironman...oh great!

Day before the race the bike is ready to go and so am I sort of....

I should point out that the day of the race, Dec 5th was the King's birthday.  The King of Thailand was 83 that day and the longest governing monarch in the world.  He has been in power more than 60 years!  All these notes on the right were signed by me and other athletes to hopefully give us a bit of luck...

Here is the swim start.  A very unusual course because you swam about 2/3 of the 1.2mile swim in the ocean.  From there you got out and ran across the sand dunes for about 150m and then dove into a fresh water lagoon to do the final 1/3 of the swim.  It was my first time racing in ocean and while I loved the saltwater for the buoyancy I can't say it tasted great.  Plus the thought of looking around for sharks got my heart pumping.  The biggest challenge was the lagoon actually.  In that the lagoon tasted like motor oil!  They had been ferrying athletes via pontoon boats all morning and the oil runoff was brutal!

But I did finish the swim.  1/3 (at least segment wise) done with the race!  Now let the fun begin...

The bike was 56m or 90km.  It was characterized not by hills but by mountains!  Two that were exceedingly difficult.  However many stretches of road were amazingly scenic through the countryside of Thailand, small villages, etc.  There were lots of spectators out, including many little school kids making lots of noise and cheering us on.

The first major mountain stretch came at kilometer 45 of so.  We basically came around a corner and looked smack dab straight up!  Most people attempted the climb thinking we could see the top.  I'm not sure how far I made it before doing as most others did and walking my bike up.  Now for those of you who understand heart rates this will put it in perspective.  WALKING up the mountain my HR was between 167-175 which is very high!  Back to the course.  When we thought we were to the top, we weren't, it was just another switchback.  So tried to ride again, dropped my bike chain causing my legs to flail and me to simply fall over and off the bike.  No pain as I wasn't moving but it was rather funny.

Finally at the top one thinks the fun is about to begin right?  Get to cruise down super fast?  Nope.  These were areas marked as "yellow flag" areas.  This meant according to the rules - no passing, hands must be on your brakes, you must sit up on the bike, etc, oh and you can't go more than 12mph!  Why?  Because the descent was so steep and so full of curves that someone would have died on the course.  Honestly it was all I could do to pull the brakes hard enough to stay below 15mph! 

The 2nd major mountain and far and away the hardest was at kilometer 80 out of 90.  By that point my legs were completely jelly.  I biked as much of it as I could but of course I dismounted and walked my ass up that too at some point.  I would venture to guess that 90-95% of folks walked these mountains.

Finally the bike was over and it was time for the run...or in my case the very slow jog.  My legs were burning and had nothing in them.  The run thankfully was very flat and through the Laguna Phuket resort area.  So we ran on all sorts of terrain from golf courses, to asphalt, through an Elephant park, etc.  It was two loops and I did my better on the 2nd loop than the first as my legs slowly started to recover. 

I guess I will need more training to do this race or others while living in Shanghai.  But all in all I am thrilled I did the race, met some great people and surprisingly had a lot of fun.