Suzu Triathlon Race Report

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.

Pre race.