My 4th year at Xterra Japan at Marunuma, and it is one of the highlights of my calendar year. It is a very technical and challenging bike course, but the overall feel and position of the race at Kankoso is quite spectacular. Like most years this years race had its very trying moments. It is a 1.2km Swim, 25km MTB and 10km run (although run is a bit of a stretch in some places).
Swim 20:13 7th.
The water was like a mirror at 12:10pm when the gun went, and a I was able to get to the front of the pack reasonably quickly, the pro's were not allowed to wear wetsuits due to the temperature of the water so that brought us into closer contention. I generally fair pretty well in xterra swims, and this year I did pretty well too. The first 500m is always tough as you have to try really hard to control your breathing due to the altitude. In a previous race, I had a really tough time and nearly had a panic attack, but this time I recognised the signs and I was able to exhale my way through it. Exited amongst the pro's and hooned it onto the bike.
Bike 2:00:27 16th
My MTB'ing has never been my strongest of disciplines although I love it the most. This year with my new bike the stealth bomber there was really no excuses. After coming out so high up on the swim it was inevitable I would loose ground on the bike, but unlike in previous years where I seem to be going backwards for a long while before I find riders of equal speed, this year I managed to stay a head of a lot of riders. This worked to my detriment, when on the first technical section I went over the front, left foot out of the pedal, right foot still in, with the steepness of the hill decline there was no way I could not go over, hands first, elbows second, still attached to the bike, hip third (ouch), knee fourth (shit that hurt), land on my back skidding on my rucksack, hoping to god I stop before I slide off the 30 foot bank that I am now perilously half way over, I managed to grind to a halt, and look back and see my bike wrapped around a tree, but nothing broken. A swift finger check, all 10 still their, result! Body and blood check nothing broken and nothing gushing, result, my knee gouged but that will hurt later, I grab the bike and on I limp for the next 10mins until the adrenalin rush passes and my heart returns to normal. This course has 1 V large hill, and I get onto that and find a good rhythm, at about 3/4's of the way up, I here the 1st clap of thunder, 1 mississippi, 2 mississippi boom!...damn thats close! Then the rain comes, and comes and comes, where once there was dry trails now there are torrents of water. I enter the downhill section praying the tree's have kept the most of the rain off, but it is so heavy there is no chance, I strip of my glasses as I cant see anything. I hold my line for as long as I can and as fast as I can but in sections it is ridiculous even trying to jump and walk down some sections I can hardly stand up, how can anyone ride this? I come into transition 2, knowing that my trainers will be soaked!!
Run 59:51 22nd
I see about 15~20 bikes racked in T2, oh yeah I must be doing ok so I thought. I downed 1/2 a redbull, and very quickly decided that socks were irrelevant with this amount of rain, and legged it out onto the run. The rain had knocked the temperature down to a balmy 20C' ish, and the rock strewn shoreline I was now navigating was as slippery as an ice rink...yeah this was my chance! I had been bitterly disappointed with my run last weekend in Suzu and was desperate to prove to myself that I could run well, and that it was the heat that had killed me, not my fitness. I felt strong for the first 2km's, too strong as I got to the first steep uphill I had a few cramps, I backed off a bit and necked a Gu shot...hoping those salts would find there way to my cramping thighs, it quickly did and I was back to full speed in no time. I got to the wall, a 40 foot section, that is a scramble on a dry day, but with the rain today was a water slide, there are 2 nylon ropes, that have the ability to cut your hands to shred's, however as I got there and there was no one in front of me I used them. Even at this point I could see that this section had the ability to be a death trap, if anyone slipped 40 foot up, there is hardly anything to hang onto until you hit the bottom, I wasn't going to be underneath that person making a mental note to take a wide line on loop 2. I got to the top and legged it to the 2nd section, feeling strong, this was my day, vindication for last weekend. Loop 2 as expected was even slippier especially at the wall section, people and bodies everywhere, I used the trees and bushes for purchase to get a clear shot up the side, and worked my way to the 2nd mountain section, coming down the final river and onto the road for home, I looked across the lake to the other side the sun was just breaking through the parting clouds above the dam, what a great memory.
I finished up 10th overall coming in 3rd in for my age group which got me a spot on the podium. A great end to a great race.
This weekend I ventured over to the west side of Japan, and up to the Noto peninsular to participate in the Suzu triathlon, slightly more than an half ironman event at 2.5km swim, 100km bike and 24km run. After picking up the hire car in Kanazawa (Great art gallery in Kanazawa if anyone is venturing close to it) we arrived in Suzu to 35C heat, it was absolutely scorching with hardly a cloud in the sky....yikes Sunday would be tough.
After following the advice of my new coach, which involved eating 1000 calories of chocolate the day before as part of carbo loading and also 1.5 litres of full fat coke ( something to do with the phosphate in the coke, pro's secret apparently). I felt rested, prepared and with full energy stores ready to give this race a bit of a go.
Swim 39:52 25th.
The water was dead calm and it was an L shaped out and back course. It was already about 30C at 6:30 am, and the water was 29C apparently. It would be a fast and very hot course as I stood there in my 5mm wetsuit ( anywhere else in the world and this would have been a wetsuit illegal swim, but Japan has its own rules) The downside (apart from the heat, more on that later) was that for some reason i had ended up in the very last wave, in fact i was the very last number of the entire long course race. I had checked the list of racer's it wasn't alphabetical, or in order of age, or for that matter because i was western, there was one other foreigner and he wasn't 1 number before me, i dont how this had happened other than bad luck, but i couldnt change it, so i had to deal with it, another little test for the day. Generally i am out of the water in the top 5% in Japan, more like top 15% when racing in America, so I was a little concerned with how many back markers i would have to deal with? luckily There was 5 mins between each wave, so the by the time my wave was up, I had a good bit of space to get into my stroke before I would have to be weaving in and out and keeping clear of any random breastroke kicks to the face. Thankfully the visibility was great so I used that to my advantage and started to weave my way through the field. In the end I think the back markers actually helped me swim faster as I would accelerate into a gap, and that kept my stroke rate relatively quick. I was hoping to come in under 40mins so was happy to just come under at 39:52, seeing as I haven't swam 2.5km in a long time, that was pretty good, I felt charged as I legged it to the bike.
Bike 3:29:23 17th
By the time I got to my bike it was approximately 7:55am and it must have been 33C already, for the first time ever in a race, I was actually scared how burnt I was going to get, so I stopped for an extra 20 seconds to don my thermo - nuclear suntan lotion, it is so thick that there is no hope it would rub in so off I went with white arms, shoulders and ears, maybe it would soak in in the next 100km? It was a 2 loop course, with 1 large hill so I had been told to me by my mate Keren, I was confident that I had located this hill as the course was on the road to our hotel and that had been a pretty wicked hill, but at least I had seen the beast and had ridden harder in the past, so no drama's or so I thought. The first 15km followed the coast line, lined with sleepy little cottages over looking the ocean, it was all very nice, at kilometre 15, I hit the hill, powered through it and settled back into what was a relatively swift pace averaging about 35kmh. At about kilometre 35, the road took a sudden U-turn with what looked like a small hill, turned into a bigger hill and then a much steeper hill, I then realised what I had climbed before wasn't the hill...this was the bad boy and on it went and went! After seeing my Av km/h drop like a stone and having to even get out of the saddle to get over the top of what must have been a 10% gradient, off we went down the other side to the end of loop 1. I was a little concened after being wrong about the hill, that I may have gone off a bit too quickly but I was feeling good ( was it the coke and chocolate?) passing lots of backmarkers and the apparent wind was keeping me cool, as the temp was now 36C so I kept the intensity up into the 2nd lap. I was hydrating at every possible opportunity and thank god I had my front aero bottle on my bars (thanks for that tip aswell Keren) as they were not handing out bottles, just cups, but they had ice in them which was a bonus. By the time I got round to the "real" big hill again i had decided to actually stop and fill up a bottle as I was going to need all of it on this hill. By the time I got to the top, people were delirious, wandering all over the road, showing clear signs of fatigue and dehydration, should I offer some of my water...probably but I needed it to! ( it would be my time to suffer later). I was passing riders all with numbers below 100 now, all these guys had gone off 15 mins a head of me, so I knew I must be getting to the front of the course with a favourable time delay. I came into T2 a marginally slower then lap 1, but I felt good, and was ready for the run.
Run 2:31:12 167th.
Surprisingly hardly any of the suntan lotion had soaked in from over 3 hours ago, anyway I thought it best to re-apply another 20 seconds v's possible skin cancer, a no brainer and on it got slapped. After draining a warm red bull on my way out of T2, I did actually stop to pour it into a cup if ice to help. I now felt the real intensity of the heat, after averaging 30kmh and the apparent wind keeping me company to now what was at best a slow jog there was simply no respite from the heat, there was no shade just a mirage of heat on and up the road. Those that know me well, know I really struggle when it gets this hot, and this was without doubt the hottest race I had ever been in. It was a run/ walk combo from aid station to aid station. By the 4th aid station I had resorted to actually sticking my head and chest into the large water and sponge buckets, much to the amusement of the local aid station staff....who was this crazy Gaijin with white arms sticking his head in our buckets....I didn't care anything to try and keep cool, even a degree less than boiling would have sufficed. As I could feel my low 6 hour time slipping away from me, the feeling was quickly replaced by how the hell I was going to survive this? this wasn't a run but now a survival course for me. I managed to pick it up and run from aid station to aid station stopping at each one for the dunking routine, drinking and eating what they had which was only orange and banana's. I got to the turn around point 12km in 1:15...god this was going to be a real slog for home. As I stumbled my way home some of the earlier racers I had passed re-took me, was I know paying for going out too hard? Could they cope with the heat better than me? everyone looked like they were red-lining in the heat. At about the 18 kilometre mark I had to stop and lent on a wall which you could have fried an egg on and thought christ "can I can do 6 more km's...." I hadn't stared down the barrel of this gun since Ironman Japan when I had dnf'd and got ferried off in the back of an ambulance. The only choice was to get it finished and get into the shade which I hadn't seen for nearly 2 hours now, I managed to run and walk my way to the finish and actually finished off a decent last 1km the thought of shade was all it took. My run time ended up being horrible, with a certain amount of disappointment that I hadn't got a low 6 hour time, but at least I managed to avoid the medical tent.
Overall an average race was very happy with the swim and the bike, but the run was a disaster, heat or training or nutrition? Something to ponder.
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