Taiwan 70.3 Race Report

One of the reasons I chose Taiwan to race was because it is a new race I thought it may attract a weaker field which could work in my favour.  Turns out my sneaky plan was foiled as a few decent girls decided to show up (Michelle Wu - Japan 70.3 winner, Belinda Granger, multiple Ironman and 70.3 winner, Maki Nishiuchi - can't remember her results but she's good...) and so on.

They haven't posted any results up yet and my watch battery died so I have no times for anything yet but the general consensus is that it wasn't a very fast course.

SWIM
The swim was a mass beach start, the Pros got a couple of meters head start. Beach starts are not my friend - I should really practice them because I never know whether I should run or dolphin dive (usually ends badly) or what to do. Anyway it wasn't too bad but I was pretty quickly engulfed in the the AG men coming up from behind.
As much as I was a fan of wearing a wetsuit it really was a bit warm and I was cooking by about 10mins. I had a few groups to swim with for most of the way but encountered quite a few annoying breaststokers on the second lap which broke us up a bit.
There was quite a swell the further out we got and I swallowed quite a lot of water.
Not quite sure of my time but think it may have been around 35-36mins which is probably my worst ever. I really don't know what is up with my swimming, I blame Haydn and the Teps for abandoning me, I've been extra sucky since then.

BIKE
Bike started off well until around the 15km when I rode over a huge hole in the road (refer other blog about shocking state of the roads) and heard a bad noise and RooRoo kind of stopped on me. I stopped to investigate assuming it was a puncture but turned out to be my fronty aero bottle which runs pretty snug with the front wheel had dropped down a fraction with the jolt and was now resting on my front wheel. I had some issues with it leading up to IMWI and had patched up a little hole which had been covered with tape, this had pulled the tape off and water was now leaking out. Awesome. I hitched it up so it was clear again and carried on and just used the bottle on my frame. Caught a couple of the girls ahead of me and got passed by a few men but mostly rode on my own.
The wind was pretty bad. Like Kona strength. Seriously.
Mostly side/tail or side/head and very gusty, had a few scary moments and had to pick my times to take my hands off the handlebars.  The second lap was worse with a pretty full on headwind for a decent part of it.
Bike time was around 2hrs43 according to TapTap, will have to check the other girls times to see how it compares but it seems pretty slow to me. I think the guys were riding in the 2.20's so maybe that's not too bad.

RUN
My favourite part. Didn't feel like my favourite running out of transition and up a long hill.  In fact the first 3km were pretty much uphill. After that it was mostly flat with a nice downhill section.
We didn't escape the wind on the run, it was there too making forward progression a bit hard at times. I even lost my hat at one stage.
Took about 5km to start feeling good, then I felt awesome for about 6-7km then I felt average again. It was pretty hot - like high 20's, but I kept cool getting water and sponges from the aid stations so the heat wasn't really an issue.
I have no idea what my run time was - at times it felt like I was going for under 90mins, other times it was more like 120mins. I think the fastest girls time was only 1hr28 and the men were around 1hr23, so I expect I was around 1hr35 but who knows.

So overall ended up in 8th place which is my best placing at an international event, so maybe not too bad for a muppet like me, but will wait to see the times compared with the others before I make any vast, sweeping statements.

Post-race feast - lucky the breakfast buffet was still open when I finished. Nom nom

Followed by dessert

View while I was enjoying my meal

The performance of the day must go to Jamie Whyte for winning the sprint for 2nd from 4 x IMFrance winner Marcel Zamora and also to Kieran Doe for coming 4th.

Next up will be the Karapiro Half Ironman on November 13th.