Race Report: 2011 Kaohsiung Romantic Love River Triathlon

The calm before the storm: race venue, T-16 hours

Look, I didn't name the race, OK? It's a silly translation from the Chinese - nothing about "romantic" in there, except that the river really is called the Love River.

There, now that that's out of the way, let's talk about the race!

The good: The course was flat and fast. The river was slow-moving and free from waves and currents. The swim start was conducted in three waves, making it a less "punchy" situation in the water than when a mass start of all competitors is used. The weather was highly cooperative (read: the sun didn't come out and the day was essentially cool, with an overcast sky). There were many enthusiastic supporters cheering on the competitors. There was essentially no wind on the bike course. (BIG contrast to my last triathlon!)

Watch out for "logs"

"Other"*: The Love River is an urban river. Yes, that means that there is at least some degree of sewage drainage that reaches it. It smells a little bit like a sewer. It was hard to get past that during the first part of the swim today. Thankfully, I didn't see any "logs" floating by as I was swimming. There was a marked lack of restroom facilities both at the transition area (a middle school, which had a few restrooms that were quickly overwhelmed by the volume of participants and support personnel) and on the course (no facilities dedicated to the race - not a single port-a-john). Race materials were entirely in Chinese. There seemed to be little to no enforcement of drafting rules on the bike - there were pace lines and pelotons all over the course.

Random: This is the first triathlon I have ever seen where flotation devices were not only authorized, but seemingly encouraged! Seemed like about every other person was "swimming" with some type of "floaty". Weird.

"Floaty" at center

Let's discuss my times for a moment. I am not sure when or if official finish times will be published, so I can only go off how my wrist-mounted GPS unit describes my performance and the time on the official race clock when I crossed the finish line. I finished at about 3 hours 5 minutes on the clock, but if you subtract the five minutes that elapsed prior to my start (five minutes between waves; I was in the second wave), then you've got pretty much 3 hours flat. This exceeded all my expectations for the race! I figured I would be lucky to finish in 3 1/2 hours. (It had been a while since I had run this length of race, known as an "Olympic distance" race: 1500m swim, 40 km bike, 10 km run; so I couldn't really remember what my last finish time in this sort of race was. I just looked it up - I've got to get a bit faster to catch up to where I was in 2008!) I didn't wear a timing device of any kind on the swim, so I am not sure how that turned out, but based on the overall finish time (approx. 3 hours) and the times I did record on the bike and run, we can interpolate the approximate swim time. More on that in a minute.

Heading for the finish line

My bike time was 1:12:28, good for an average of about 20 mph (this is probably my biggest triumph of the race; I have been doing close to no cycling recently), and my run added another 55 minutes and 30 seconds. That's a grand total of about 2 hours and 8 minutes. That leaves 52 minutes for the swim and 2 transitions. Supposing each transition took 5 minutes, that would mean I did the swim in about 42 minutes. Remember, this is just an estimate. Hopefully at some point I will be able to get my hands on the actual official finish times, split times, etc.

Looks like 3:05:12 to me

I was hampered by thigh cramps on the run. At about the same place each lap (it was a 5-lap run course) I had to stop and do some static stretching and a bit of slow walking to work out cramps in my right (and later my left) quadriceps which slowed my overall run pace average considerably. Since it was only a 10 km race course, I tried to pour on a little speed, but it kind of backfired on my with the cramping. I am not going to be trying to go fast on the run in Singapore in a couple weeks (see below).

One interesting aspect of this race that made it really unique was the participation of a great number of Taiwan's military personnel. The Republic of China (ROC) Marine Corps is actually headquartered in the greater Kaohsiung area and there is also a major ROC Navy base here, too, and there were no shortage of personnel from both services participating in the race.

Me n' my boy

As for the future, I won't have much time at all before it is time to race again - exactly two weeks from today I will participate in my 5th Half Ironman race in Singapore, where the course might be flat, it might be calm (not windy), but it won't be cool. (Daytime highs there this week have been around 90 degrees, whereas it only got to about 80 degrees here today.) The Singapore race is notorious for being hot, in fact it is advertised as being quite similar to the Ironman World Championship course in Kona, Hawaii, in terms of the climate and environment. Since I've raced on the Kona course twice (just the Half Ironman, not the full shebang), I know that it gets really hot out there. The temperature and climate in Singapore will be a challenge for me.

I need to keep up the training, because before you know it, it will be time to head to Beijing in May for the big one - 2011 Ironman China. I had a scare in this race last night - I saw something online that said wetsuits were compulsory for the swim (turns out they changed that at the last minute, which is good for me, because I don't have one). I am going to need to pick one up soon, though, because I am sure the reservoir we will be swimming in near Beijing is not going to be warm! (I recall a triathlon I did in May some years back near Kansas City - the water was absolutely frigid! I think Kansas City's latitude is a little bit south of Beijing's...)

"W I N N E R !"

Happy racing!

GJS

*A Marine aviator I once worked with told me that these are the two categories that they use during their after-action debriefs - "good" and "other" - in an effort to make the not-so-good less, umm, charged, shall we say. I kinda like that formula, and will use it forever myself.