Taiwan 70.3 - last race of the season!

Well this past weekend was my 3rd and final 70.3 distance race of 2012 and 4th overall race of the year.  This race taking place in Kenting, Taiwan basically at the far southern tip of Taiwan.  I knew heading to the race that it wasn't going to be a great one for a few reasons.  First and foremost since the early August race in the Philippines I had really not trained much other than continuing to get a good number of bike rides in.  Secondly I had tons of visitors, colleagues, customers in the 3 weeks prior to the race which further limited training and probably had me eating and drinking too much.  Lastly the weekend before the race I was down for the count sick.  Probably had to do with all the entertaining the past few weeks in fact.

In any event about 35 folks from Shanghai attended this race and all flew on the same flight.  20 of us had rented a bus to take us and our bikes to the hotel about 2 hours away.  Well it became a 3 hour drive as our driver was nice and slow.  Upon arrival Thursday night the group at my hotel decided to go find dinner.  There was about 12 of us in my group plus maybe 8-10 others we saw also heading for dinner.  The hotel said walk down the street 5-10 min and you will find lots.  Well we walked 30 minutes and found nothing!!!!  So we came back and literally 20 of us ate take away from 7-11.  So a not so nutritious start to the weekend.

As a side note the next day we found a restaurant called Bossa Nova.  It was a little beach front restaurant that served a variety of Asian and Western dishes.  I fell in love with the bacon pasta!  We ate at this place lunch, then dinner, then dinner the night after finishing the race.  Great little place all in all.

OK so race recap quickly.  Swim (1.9k) I had a TERRIBLE swim.   Not sure of the reasoning but a mass start of 1,600 bodies made it a hectic start, I had a wetsuit on for the first time in a while, no chance to warm up, etc.  All in all I didn't feel good, had to slow my heart rate down early on by hanging on a buoy which I had previously NEVER done in a race.  Bike (90k).  This went much better.  My biking has dramatically improved this season as I've gotten out on a regular basis.  All in all my bike was completed in less than 3 hours so I'm happy.  Run (21k).  I expected problems here going into the race, I just didn't know when to expect them.  One problem everyone had was there was no mileage/km notices until the 14k mark.  That made it tough on folks.  I think my first 8-10k was good.  After that I lost the "motor" in my legs and they turned to jelly.  This was expected with my lack of intense training so no problem.

All in all the race time was a bit better than others this year.  But I know with a bit of training I could have reduced the time drastically.  Well there is always next year!  My season is over now and I'm going to enjoy a social life and some different exercises, like Cross Fit which has opened up here in Shanghai.  And while doing all that, I'll be planning on what races I want to do in 2013.