As is my usual way I am going to do a bit of a first impressions post tonight and then in the coming week I will put together a proper race report. In fact I have a whole bunch of free time tomorrow, so perhaps I will even get to it then. No promises though.
So how was my day? I haven't seen any official results, but I know I came 7th in the MPRO, I am just not sure what time I did. It was not a quick day though. The race was won in 4 hours and I think I did something around 4 hours 23, so slow times all around
My day was a bit of a mix. If you had asked me after the bike I would have said it was a disastrous day. However, the run recovered it a bit and so in the end I think I am fairly satisfied with the outcome. I am certainly happy with 7th, given it is my first race in 9 months.
One of the big take aways I have from the day is that I am a bit rusty at this racing thing. I have been training well heading into this event and so I didn't feel rusty, but come race day I just made some silly mistakes. Plus I feel like I was missing an edge on the intensity side, perhaps a bit out of practice when it comes to actual race intensity.
The main silly mistake I made is one that I have done before, which was to run out of transition with my swim skin still on my bottom half. I quickly made the call to nip back and drop it off (I was only just out of transition) but that decision meant I spent the entire ride alone rather than having somebody to ride with. Would the result have been different if I hadn't made that call, who knows, but it was certainly frustrating at the time, particularly because I then went on to have a far from stellar bike leg.
I am not really sure what happened with the bike. I just felt like I had no go in the legs. I was nowhere near my target power, although my average heart rate wasn't far from where it should have been, so perhaps it was just the climate sapping a few watts from the legs. I am not sure, I definitely struggled though. I will be interested to see some of the splits from other people, but my gut feel is that the bike isn't as quick as people thought it might have been.
The unstellar bike leg followed on from a fairly average feeling swim. Actually, it wasn't that the swim felt bad, it is just that I was way off the pace. I have been working very hard on the swim so it was annoying to still be so far off the back. Particularly because in training the swimming has been feeling good. Oh well, more work to be done there I guess.
Those two legs combined is why, as I said above, if you had asked me after the bike how the day was going I would have said badly. In fact on the bike I had several bouts of being pretty down on myself, wondering what on earth I was doing being out there when I was so far behind. The usual negative self talk that can creep in when things aren't going to plan.
Still, for me today was a great example of why you need to just keep going, you never know what is going to happen. I headed out on the run not expecting miracles, but determined to finish. From the word go I ignored pace and just stuck to my target heart rate. The heart rate climbed pretty quick, but I worked hard to make sure it didn't go higher. I also started the run carrying a litre of water. I mentioned in my blog yesterday that I had real concerns about the amount of water out on the course with only 6 aid stations. I didn't want to fall in a hydration hole so I carried my own bottles and worked my way through them between aid stations. Whether it was the conservative pacing in the first 10km, or the hydration strategy, or perhaps the fact that I had had a low intensity ride, whatever the reason the run came together fairly nicely for me, allowing me to pick up a couple of spots. For me it is an encouraging sign as to how far my run has come that it was the highlight of my race today. I don't think I have ever had a race before where my run was the best leg and the one in which I gained places.
So all up a day I am happy with. Certainly not all bits of the day, but the final outcome for sure.
This race has been an interesting one. Far from perfect, but the organisers will be the first to admit that. They said last night that they are keen to run this race for the next three to five years and so they are keen to improve, which I suspect they will. They certainly view it as a work in progress. There are a couple of simple things they could do which would improve the race immensely, like having more aid stations and perhaps better road closures, but those things are relatively simple fixes I would think. If they can work on those things and some of the other suggestions people have then I think this race has the potential to be a great addition to the calendar. Like all races up here it is a brutal and tough event, but then that is one of the reasons you come up and race in Malaysia. If you want easy, then this is not the country for you.
Anyway, I think that is me done for now. As I said I will start working on a proper race report tomorrow and will hopefully get it up early next week. For now though I hear some food calling, then a bunch of sitting very still.
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