After almost 4 months of training, the much anticipated race of the year had finally come. This was also the debut race of the new team I just have joined - the "Gold's Gym Triathlon Team". I would be riding with Carlo and Chock, my team mates. We met Fri am Oct. 03, 2008 a day prior to the race at my place. Vivian my wife offered to cook breakfast for us before we hit the road at about 7:30am. We packed our stuff, gears & bike into Carlo's van while Vivian prepared breakfast. She also cooked for us 'callos' for our lunch. She and the kids couldn't come since it's the kids' exam week already. The trip to Subic was quite a breeze via the NLEX and the new SCTEX highway. Just took us about 2 hours to reach La Papagayo Resort in Bareto, Subic where we were booked. It's about 2km to the race venue - the White Rock Beach resort. The manager Frank Lacson is an elite triathlete and friend who made sure we were all comfortable. Unfortunately, he had backed out due to back pains. We met with our other team mates Ferdi, Karen and Arni with friend Menchu for lunch at the resort. After lunch we headed to the race venue to register and to do our pre-race swim, bike and run to limber up for the race the next day. We made a quick nap back at the resort and prepared our stuff for check-in.
We went back early evening at the race venue for the race briefing and bike check-in. All the stuff at the transition area for the bike and run legs had to be turned over including our tri bikes. We hit the bed by around 9:30pm and wake up call was at 3:30am. I just had oatmeal and bread for breakfast. We needed to be back at the race venue by 5am for the body markings and to place our hydration and nutirition needs in our bikes. Also to pump air in the tires to the desired pressure and making sure all other suff were in place before we headed to the beach for the swim warm-up. Race would start at exactly 6:45am. The swim was 2K long. It's 330m out and back. We needed to do 3 loops then would make a short run to the bike transition area. I was in the middle pack trying to keep my pace steady. One of the big improvements in my training is the swim part so this I kept in mind that I was doing longer swims than this. I glanced at my watch after the 3rd loop and I was surprised I did just as I planned - do a sub 50min swim leg. My swim split last year was 1:08hr and of course that was with minimal swim hours & training.
The bike leg was a 45km out and back to resort for the total 90km distance. I was somewhat dazed and hardly accelerating to my target pace. It was a bit harder on the way back since it was already headwind in the straight aways. I tried as much as possible to stick to the nutrition plan but found it very uneasy chewing on the bars. My legs were getting a bit stiff towards the end of the bike phase and I was just trying to flush it out with power gels.
I started the run phase with my legs already starting to cramp up. I just kept a steady phase since it was already getter hotter by the minute. Whenever I tried to accelerate my calves just hardened up. So I took it slow and made sure I get hydrated whenever I passed by the water & aid stations which seemed to looked like oasis from afar and luckily the organizers had added more of these stations on the run route.
I finished about 6hr19min which is about middle of pack and was elated to improve my time last year for over an hour. It was my first half ironman distance last year and with very minimal training compared to this year where we started to train since last May. I still have a lot to learn in terms of nutrition and recovery and we would be assessing on this race these concerns to further improve our times in the full ironman next Feb 2009 in Langkawi, Malaysia.
Our team mate Ferdi bagged the top place for the age group 25-29 while Carlo was 3rd place in the same group. Arni was 2nd place in her age group 25-29 female. Chock did a solid time as well ahead of more seasoned triathletes. The team has a lot to look forward to and everyone is already excited on the next races.
Some pics of the race could be found in the ff link: http://www.flickr.com/gp/23336516@N04/3H8Ly7
