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.

June 2010 cycling in Southern Taiwan

Been meaning to post on this topic, well, since July began.  Time to knock it out.  

First off, June was when I returned to cycling after essentially a year of no riding.  Part of the catalyst for this return was my desire to run the Ironman 70.3 Taiwan Half-Ironman triathlon in Kenting this October.  Cycling is a big piece of any triathlon, so to successfully prepare for it I need to be riding!

I also wanted to use cycling as a way to see parts of Taiwan that I so far I have missed.  Up to now, that's been pretty much any place outside Kaohsiung and Taipei.  Most of Taiwan!

My first few rides weren't really long enough to see much new ground - Kaohsiung is a large metropolitan area and it takes a while to even get out of town.  The other part is that I had to figure out where to go, which roads or routes were more cycling-friendly than others (there aren't a lot that are very good in this regard inside of Kaohsiung, which is why I am glad that I have been able to get out of town on a few recent rides).

I started off with a little bit of hill action out near NSYSU campus and then heading south along the West Harbor bike path to the Dream Mall.  This initial ride on June 5 was less than 20 miles, but I was feeling it since I had been off the bike for so long.

See the full gallery on posterous

The following week I wanted to see if I could find a way out of the city to the north, and also see if I could find Metropolitan Park, which my family had visited previously but I had yet to visit. (They liked it a lot and mentioned to me that it might be big enough to do some cycling in it.) I didn't manage to find the park (but would later in the month on another ride) and I discovered that the sprawl just goes on and on up that way...pretty much like east of the city (which I would also discover later).  This ride was also less than 20 miles, and I didn't stop to take any photos.

On June 17, I decided perhaps south would be better than to the north.  Heading south I finally found a crease in the city's defenses and managed to leave not only the city but also Kaohsiung County, crossing the Gaoping River into Pingtung County.  I didn't stay long, but here are a couple photos from Sinyuan Township and that day's route:

See the full gallery on posterous

Later that same week, I logged in my longest ride of the month, heading north and this time successfully locating and reconnoitering Metropolitan Park.  It's certainly a big park, probably twice the size of Kaohsiung's Central Park, but I don't think it is all that great for any sustained cycling - more room is required. (I do think that it would be a good place to do some long runs - the eastern portion is pretty flat with abundant shade, while the western half has some elevation changes (climbing) that would break up the monotony.  Might be something I will use the park for later on.)  The area just to the north of the park was interesting, though - essentially open streets with little traffic and pretty much no houses or businesses (looks like the area is waiting for development as the city expands, but now a good place to ride with little traffic).  I happened upon the very modern and pretty campus of National University of Kaohsiung (looks a lot different than NSYSU!), then pushed on north to see how far I could get before I had to turn back due to time constraints.  At some point I'd like to take a crack at riding to Tainan and back along this general path, but I think it would be best to do this by riding the MRT out as far north as possible (to avoid all the city traffic and stop-and-go riding that it requires) and then biking on from there.  Problem is on weekdays you can't take a non-collapsible bike on the MRT until after 10AM, so it would have to be on a weekend (no such time restriction on the KMRT then).  Developing...

See the full gallery on posterous

So north was OK, south was good, what about east?  Easily the least-desirable - too many big trucks sharing the road, too much traffic, too much exhaust, although I did manage to find one interesting lead, out on the west bank of the Gaoping River, an actual separate bike path.  I didn't have enough time to follow it very far, but I wonder if I kept heading south on it if it would connect with Highway 17 that I took to cross the Gaoping River at Linyuan Township earlier in the month? (the June 17 ride)  I might ride back out to the east to check it out sometime, although it would be some pretty cruddy riding until I got back out to the river area.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

My final ride of the month was on June 24, and this time I went west again, to Cijin Island.  I got some great pics at the south end of the island where the big ships come in and folks like to fish from the breakwaters.  Unfortunately, those pretty clouds up above were pregnant with water and before I made it home they opened up on me.  It's not bad, though, to ride half a dozen times over a few weeks and only get rained on once.  Plus, it was a warm rain - felt nice!

See the full gallery on posterous

For the month, it was nearly 12 hours of riding, good for about 157 miles - relatively small numbers that I hope to best in the coming months as I train for the October Half-Ironman!  All in all, it was great to get back out on the bike, and I am finding that once I begin to know which way to head to find decent, or, God help me, even good places to ride in Southern Taiwan, I am really enjoying the cycling more and more!

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A ride with Cascade in mind

I've decided that this week is going to be a "big bike week" for me. (Weather-permitting, of course.)  To start off the week, in honor of my good friend Mark S. tackling a ridiculously challenging mountain bike race in Oregon featuring 50% singletrack and 18,000 feet of climbing over a 100-mile off-road course, I decided to do some hills.  Unfortunately for me, there aren't many around here, so I had to go with what it available in Kaohsiung.  That pretty much means the small mountains near the National Sun Yat-sen University (國立中山大學) campus at Sizihwan (西子灣).  Shoushan (壽山) is where the city's zoo is at, and Chaishan (柴山) is home to numerous Formosan Macaques (I only saw one today, though).  

Compared to the 100 miles of distance and 18,000 feet my friend just did out in Oregon, it's pretty modest, but since I mostly stick to the flats, it was a good workout for me nonetheless.

Here are a few pics I took of Kaohsiung harbor from near the entrance to Martyr's Shrine (忠烈祠) on Shoushan:

Here are a few from the coastline on Chaishan:

More rides to come later this week!

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