happy racer

(pic: post-event smiles!)

so, the duathlon came and went.

i was completely psyched about it because it was more or less a “surprise” event since i had forgotten about the event, horror of horrors, and also because it was my first multisport event and i had heard so many many horror stories about the perils of the biking leg when ppl would presumably ride you down and over you, leaving your crushed lifeless form in the wake of burned rubber. ha.

on race day itself, it was disappointing that the bike leg got cut by almost half at the last minute. in the end, it became a run 10km, bike 22km, run 5km duathlon. i would have liked to have done the original 40km bike leg . after all, that’s the point of signing up for the full thing. but still, despite the last minute route change, i did enjoy the race! it was a great day, cloudy but with no rain. my favourite part was definitely the two transitions. i got such a kick out of running into the area, putting on my biking gear and then getting the bike out to the mounting point and then back again in reverse for the second transition. to facilitate my re-fuelling along the bike leg, i managed to stick a pack of power gel and some powerbar jelly beans onto my bike frame with tape. so as i was pedalling along, i was happily munching on powerbar jelly beans. powerbar jelly beans are fantastic!!! they’re nice and chewy, so you get some satisfaction out of munching away. And usually these energy things don’t taste very good, but the jelly beans were just like candy. duh. anyway, i bought mine from athlete’s circle at boon tat street. i think running lab sells them as well. i shall pack them by the truckload for the next climb. =D

surprisingly, i came in 6th for my 20-29 age group. looking at last year’s timings, i was aiming for below 20th, so 6th was pretty cool. but a large part of that satisfaction was taken away for the fact that the bike leg wasn’t complete, so i don’t really feel like i accomplished it fully. i would have felt better if the whole course was complete but i came in at a lousier position. i think it’s a sort of obsessive compulsive tendency with me. kinda like how i’ll feel totally crappy and lousy if i can’t hit a particular timing or distance that i originally planned for a training session.

not surprisingly, this being singapore, there were quite a bit of negative feelings displayed about the event, ranging from people banging tables at the officials, walking off halfway after the bike leg, to open complaints against the organizers and even some moaning about the muddy transition area such that racers had to carry their bikes and run, instead of push them out. but frankly, all i really cared about after the race was finding the nearest burger king to cure my whopper craving.

it’s not that i didn’t care about the sudden change. if anything, i think i’m obsessed about completing distances i plan to do, within the timings that i set for myself. but i guess it’s largely also because of all the mountaineering experience that i’ve more or less gotten used to dealing with last minute changes in plans or tricky environments that are beyond my control. after all, when the weather screws up on a climb, you’re pretty much stuck and you can’t exactly fall to your knees and cry. or when you wake up one morning in your tent with a side-splitting headache, neither can you raise a fist and curse the gods or something. you just take it all in your stride and look out for a another chance. see? jane’s mantra for a focused, yet accomodating way of life: be hard on yourself but easy to the rest of the world.

and of course, there’s always the osim triathlon to look forward to. i’m hoping that i’ll be able to do the race route in good time, given my lack of time to clock enough swim, bike and bricking time. i also hope i don’t get poisoned by the east coast waters during the swim leg. i’m totally excited. since i already biked and swam some to cross train as part of SWET training, it seemed like a no-brainer to just enter the triathlon, just to see how i’ll do.

last week after training on sat morning, peh gee accompanied me to east coast to swim and we met another friend, michelle, there as well. i basically had to get past my mental block of swimming in water so murky that you can’t see squat. not to mention having to palm floating wooden planks and plastic bags away.

happy training. =)