2016 Challenge Vietnam

Here we go, buckle up, time for my Challenge Vietnam Race Report.

Challenge Vietnam was a new half ironman distance event for 2016, held up in sunny, sunny Nha Trang which is in Southern(ish) Vietnam. I decided to head up there because the race fitted well in my schedule and because I have always wanted to go to Vietnam. Good enough reasons in my book.

I must admit that before the race I had never heard of Nha Trang, but it turns out that it is a bit of a beach going hotspot. Beautiful beaches, backed by dramatic green hills and islands offshore make for a spectacular spot. No wonder it is popular with tourists. Being a tourist hotspot means it can be a little chaotic, but mostly in a bustling, busy way, it is almost endearing. When I first got there it reminded me a lot of some parts of Phuket. Traffic along the main beachfront road can get a bit out of hand at times, making training rides an interesting experience, but it is nothing that you can’t handle with some care and judicious application of the brakes. People are friendly, food is tasty and cheap and if you need them basic supplies are easy to find in the many convenience stores. As a race location it has a lot going for it.

So that is the town, what about the race. The race course is one that makes full use of the beautiful location. The swim is in the warm ocean, the ride is one of the prettiest I have done in a long time and the run follows the beaches north and back again, with ocean on one side and bustling down on the other.

The swim course looks like this:

The swim is a two lap course with a short beach run in between (always fun). Every day I saw the course it was flat as a tack in the morning. Nha Trang gets a lovely sea breeze around lunch most days which brings a bit of chop with it, but I never saw it there in the morning. On our day the swim was a bit long (probably a couple of hundred metres long) due to buoy drift, but that can happen anywhere. Being a 950(ish)m loop means that the sighting buoys are close together, and in 2016 they were all joined by a lane rope. The visible buoys combined with the flat water all adds up to a perfectly acceptable course to navigate. I have swum on clearer courses, but this one was just fine. One thing I would say about the lane rope though is that at the back of the course the current etc tended to push the lane rope out to sea, which meant that the shortest course between buoys was sometimes over the top of the rope. Not ideal, but not insurmountable.

Photo Credit: PhiLinh PhiLan

What else to say about the swim. Temperature was officially measured as being lovely. Actually I am not sure what the water temperature was, I would guess 26 or 27. Warm, but not so warm that I ever felt hot. Wetsuit swim this is not (or ever likely to be). In 2016 the swim was a ‘run down the beach and fall over as you hit the water’ sort of beach start for the entire field. Speaking of which, every bit of beach I visited had a quick drop off, as in ‘take one step in the water and dive’ sort of drop off. Obviously I would check yourself because that is pretty changeable. But if that quick drop off is the norm prepare for hilarity when you watch others start because it makes for a high ratio of face plants as people run into the water.

Beyond all that the swim is a fairly straight forward, but a very pleasant example of the breed.

Out of the swim T1 is a short one up the beach and then up some stairs and then straight into the transition area. Nice and short.

The transition area itself (and race HQ) is all in 2/4 Square which is one of the bigger public areas of the Nha Trang beach front. This means that there is never any shortage of a crowd, with a lot of interested looking bystanders wondering what the hell these crazy people are doing. Makes for a good atmosphere at transition and finish line though.

So, out of transition and onto the bike. For 2016 the bike leg looked like this:

And in the flesh looked like this 

And this. 

The course we used was actually a fairly late change due to road closure permissions etc. I got the impression this approval process was probably a bit of a headache for the organisers, as minor changes were still being made to the course right up until race day. The basic course didn’t change though in the final stages and looked like the above map, which is a good thing, because it was a great course.

The bike course headed out of town down the main road along the beach along a lane closed to traffic. The officials and the police did a good job of keeping this lane free of traffic for the bike, so the trip out of town was fairly straight forward. The issue of traffic on the course would become a problem later on in the day.

The fun really starts on the bike once you hit the 10km mark. At 10km you head up a long gradual hill and then you don’t really leave the hills for the next 70km. The course heads over these rolling hills and sweeping bends for the next 9km where you hit a fishing village. At the fishing village you turn around and ride back over all the hills to the 10km mark. At the 10km mark you turn again and do it all over again, 3 more times. After you get back to the 10km mark for the 4^th time you keep going straight rather than turning around and head back through town to transition. The trip back through town needs a bit more care than the trip out as there is more traffic at this point and, therefore, more unexpected vehicles on the course. I think the organisers again did a great job of keeping this section free of cars and scooters, but as the athlete is definitely pays to keep your eyes open on this stretch.

On paper it sounds like it should be a boring course, made up of 4 loops of 18km, but it really isn’t. The fun road, combined with the challenge of the hills and the amazing scenery means you are never really bored. In fact, whilst this course was forced on the organisers by necessity, I kind of hope it becomes the norm. Despite some issues I will get to later, I really enjoyed this leg, it was my favourite of the day for sure.

A couple of other things worth mentioning about the bike course. This course is not flat. As I mentioned you spend 70km riding up and down hills. Not mountains, but enough that I measured the elevation gain over the course as being 750m. Enough to pinch. The course as I measured it was remarkably accurate, 90.1km, I think that is the closest to 90km that I have ever seen a course get. Despite getting a puncture (more on that later) the road surface is actually really nice for the most part. There is the odd pothole you need to watch for, but the 18km hills loop in particular is very nice. For 2016 there was 2 aid stations on the bike course. One was at the 10km mark and the other was in the fishing village. This means that the two stations were both on the 18km loop that you do four times. This makes for 8 aid stations on the bike leg which is heaps and heaps.

Speaking of the fishing village. This is much smaller than Nha Trang and was being controlled by policemen, but even still, it is an area that needed a bit of care. You were just that little bit more likely to have a rogue moped pull out or a dog run across the street. I nearly got taken out by a guy crossing the street with an oar. Eyes open on this bit.

That is the bike done, after a quick trip through T2 is was onto the run. The run looks like this:

In comparison to the ride, the run is almost a little dull, so there isn’t a lot to say about it.  The run is on the same road as the ride, following the same course but you turn around at the 10km mark before you hit any of the big hills (luckily). For most of the run you are either in sight of, or near the beach, so it is pretty for most of it. The aid stations were every 2km and worked very nicely. The volunteers really knew their stuff and the aid stations had most of what, water, electrolyte, sponges at some etc. The only thing they didn’t have was coke, but they added it in to some aid stations once people requested it at the briefing. Since you turn around before the hills the course is quite flat (38m of elevation gained). Also it is close to accurate, I got it as 20.7km.

For the beginning of the run and the last bit you are running through central Nha Trang which made for some good crowd support. It also made for one of the more frustrating crowd interactions of the day. Whilst the traffic was quite well controlled for the ride and the run out of town. By the time I was running back into town the traffic was getting a little out of control. Traffic rules in Nha Trang seem to be viewed as a bit optional sometimes, particularly if you are on a moped. As a result, the lane closed for the run leg quickly started filling up with mopeds and the odd car towards mid-morning. This meant that it wasn’t unsual to find yourself running towards a wall on oncoming mopeds that were all looking at your strangely as they parted like the Red Sea and went around you. A little disconcerting to say the least and not the most fun. It is about my one criticism of the race but really I am not sure there is much the organisers can do about it, I think they probably did all they could. Hopefully it can be improved for next year, but I suspect it may not.

The last thing worth mentioning about the course for Challenge Vietnam is the weather. By some amazing stroke of luck we got a beautiful cool day for our race, but that was the only cool day I had in Nha Trang. Most of my time there it was hot, hot, hot. As I have mentioned Nha Trang gets a lovely sea breeze in the afternoon, but in the morning it is often quite still. Combined with the sun it makes for hot conditions. On top of that, much of the course is quite open so there isn’t a bunch of shade. We were all expecting the race to be an absolute scorcher and so were very surprised when it wasn’t. If I go back next year (which I would like to) I will be expecting it to be hot though, that seemed very much the norm. Still, the organisers got the aid stations right, so if the hot conditions turn up, and you race accordingly, the race should be manageable in the heat. It would just be a very different day out to the one we had.

Also worth mentioning that the other thing Nha Trang has is rain. We got at least a little rain on 4 of the 6 days I was there. The day after the race it rained all day. We got tiny bits of rain on race day too. So rain is a definite possibility.

So that is Nha Trang and a bit about the race course. How did my particular day I hear those still awake ask?

It went sort of alright. Certainly not to plan, and it certainly wasn’t the result I was after, but I enjoyed the day and got some positives out it so I can’t complain too loudly.

My day started fine. I slept well the night before, got down to transition in plenty of time and set things up with time to spare. I had a slight scare when I unscrewed my valve extender out of my tube and deflated my tyre, but I was able to screw it back in without take the tyre off, so it turned out okay.

Once things were good to go it was down to the beach for the usual nervous wait before the gun went off and we were away.

From the start the swim felt like it was going okay. I found some toes (Levi Maxwell) and slotted into a good rhythm. A group of four consisting of Carlos Quinchara Forero, Alex Polizzi, Mitch Robins and Luke Bell headed off out the front but I was happy plugging away where I was. For this race I was determined to stay positive in the swim. Up at Challenge Iskandar Puteri I got very negative as I watched people swim away and I wanted to maintain a different mindset for this race. Part way through the first lap Levi started to get a bit of a gap on me, but I still felt like I was in touch.

Photo Credit: AsiaTri.com

Heading into the second lap I was settling into my rhythm nicely and I felt like I was reducing the gap to Levi when he stopped for a bit (still not sure why) and I went past. A little bit after that somebody came screaming past and I figured it must have been a superfast age grouper on his first lap, but it turned out to be Luke Bell who had something go wrong (not sure what) and was now in the process of catching up. Chasing him was enough to get me back to the beach. Coming out of the water I was 5^th. My time for the swim was 30min 24 seconds which is massively slow, but the quickest swim of the day was only 28min 18, which lends strength to the theory that the course was long (for sure).

Photo Credit: AsiaTri.com

I came out of transition with Levi and a little behind Luke Bell. My main goal for this race was to have a good bike leg. I had some power targets in mind and so I set out on the bike with those fixed firmly in my mind. Levi took off like a bat out of hell and I decided to let him go and stick to my own plan. He ended up with the fastest bike of the day and so I don’t know if I could have stuck with him, but one of my big take aways from the day is that perhaps I should have tried more (more on that later). With Levi long gone I was on my lonesome and so I settled in and got on with my work.

After 7km I hit a massive pothole and lost my rear bottle. It only had water and some salts in it though so I adapted the race plan and figured I would pick up a course bottle and tap into my emergency salts supply (yes I have one of those) sooner than planned.

Really from that point the bike continued as I had hoped. I got out to the finish village the first time unscathed. I had got through the hills comfortably enough, I was behind but not out of touch, and all was right in the world. I was marvelling at how cool it was too, but at that stage I was still expecting it to heat up.

On my return to the 10km turn around point (27km in) I had my first mishap when a police man signalled for me to turn around. Okay I thought, strange spot, but around I go. As I turned once of the course officials ran out and said, no no, the turnaround is down there. Okay I thought, around I go again, doing a little 360 degree turn on the spot. Very annoying at the time as I effectively served a stop/go penalty for no reason. I also couldn’t help but wonder who else the policeman had misdirected. As it turns out that frustration was to soon fade into the background, but at the time I was really annoyed about it.

Photo Credit: AsiaTri.com

Heading back out to the fish village for the second time is where my day became unstuck. Just after I had passed through the village and as I was approaching the far turn around I hit something and heard a very rapid, psssst sound. Flat tyre time.

I have never had a flat during a race before, so I guess it was probably just a matter of time. Still, it took me a second to get my head into gear. My first thought was, do I continue? I knew I would lose a time to the flat and so I briefly thought about whether it was worth going on. I had come a long way for the race though and I knew if nothing else it would be a good training day, so I figured I might as well finish. With that decision made I got on with changing the tyre.

Photo Credit: PhiLinh PhiLan

What happened after I made the decision to continue is something that I have had a lot of time to think about since. Really, in hindsight, at that point I made the decision to finish rather than actually race. I now wish perhaps I had approached it differently. I muddled through the tyre change, doing it with no real urgency. As a result, it cost me 14 minutes. It isn’t that I don’t know how to change I tyre, it is just that I took my time doing it. I later heard that Carlos got a flat too, but got it sorted in 5 minutes and went on to run himself into 3rd. I feel I perhaps didn’t give myself the chance that I should have. Oh well, that decision is in the past now.

From the point where I got the tyre fixed to the end of the day it became a fairly cruisy affair. I got to the end of the bike without further mishap, although I didn’t entirely trust the repaired tyre and so I had a few nervous descents. I never really figured out what I hit either, since every time I went past the spot I got a puncture I couldn’t see anything. A rogue rock is my best guess, causing a pinch flat.

Photo Credit: PhiLinh PhiLan

When I restarted the bike I decided that I would continue to pursue my pre-race power targets etc, which I continued to do. By the end of the bike I was bang on what I had been planning for power and close on heart rate. At the time I was pretty happy about that, but it was also something I consider to be a major learning from this event. My bike leg was 2:42:37 which is officially the slowest bike leg I have ever had. At the end I was last in the Pro Men (7^th) by a decent margin.

After the bike it was out onto the run and I guess on this leg I kind of switched off a bit. I knew by this stage that I was about 3km off 6^th place in the men and a whopping 8km behind the leaders. I specifically remember thinking a couple of times whether I should pick it up and deciding against it. I was running to a particular heart rate and I was sticking to it nicely. However, in a normal race, where I would usually choose to go beyond that heart rate target and push on, I instead stayed settled. After 6km I also needed a quick toilet stop, which is very unusual for me in a half and something that I have some theories about. At the time though the toilet stop was really just another part of a day that wasn’t going to plan.

Photo Credit: PhiLinh PhiLan

That isn’t to say that the run was easy, I still worked, but it never felt particularly good. Running had been going well in training and this run leg didn’t do me credit. By this stage in the race it was obvious that the day was going to stay cool but I most certainly did not take advantage of those conditions. 

Photo Credit: PhiLinh PhiLan

Still I tapped my way through the 21km at a comfy pace, eventually making it over the line in 1:32:53, for a total time of 4:47:44. My slowest half ironman ever, by quite a margin. I was 7^th in the MPro (last), 11^th overall, I was beaten by a couple of the women and a couple of age groupers.

Photo Credit: AsiaTri.com

So that was my day. A day that while disappointing I don’t actually find that frustrating. There wasn’t a lot I could have done about the flat tyre I got. I honestly feel that the flat wasn’t caused by any misadventure on my part. Sometimes you get flats despite your best efforts and preparations, this was one of those, so I can live with it. And while the race definitely didn’t go to plan it wasn’t without some positives.

The first big positive was a lesson on how to handle misfortune like a flat tyre. When it occurred I most definitely switched off and went into participation mode. I hindsight I sort of wish I had stayed more engaged and tried to race a bit more. Hopefully there are not many more flat tyres on my horizon, but if there are I think I will definitely approach them differently. It doesn’t have to mean day over.

My second big learning was about racing. Last year I got burned a couple of times where I ignored my own race plan too much and instead raced the field. Those experiences have caused me to completely flip recently and race the other way. Stick to my plan religiously and not race other people. This race proved to me that that perhaps is not the right answer either. I think racing without being mindful of your race plan is a recipe for disaster, but sometimes you need to look at what others are doing and perhaps take a chance. It can mean the difference between being in a race or being entirely out of contention. I think this will be a very hard thing to get right, but a lesson I have taken from this race is that sometimes I need to be willing to give it a go.

I often think that any race which you can learn from can’t be a complete disaster. I definitely learned some things from Challenge Vietnam, so whilst it wasn’t the race I wanted it certainly wasn’t a wasted day.

So there you go. Challenge Vietnam. A fun race in an interesting (and beautiful) place. I can honestly say I really enjoyed this race. I would definitely go back, despite it not being the easiest place to get to from Perth. It was very small this year (about 200 people) but the basics are there to make it into a real feature race for the region. On a related topic, I really can’t finish up without acknowledging the race organisers. Part of the reason this race was so fun was the organisation team. The team was a young one and full of energy which infused the event. Despite this race being in its first year, the organisation team did a great job of pulling it together and pulling it off. This success was no accident though, from what I saw the team worked very, very hard to ensure success. They even went so far as to bring in expertise from the surrounding region, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore to supplement their team in areas where they knew they were lacking. I have never seen an organiser do something like that. It was one of the more impressive organisational efforts I have seen in quite some time. Hopefully they keep it up for next year.

As usual I have a bunch of thank yous I need to give before finishing. Firstly, to coach Daryl Stanley for quietly persisting. Thanks to the club Break Your Limits for all the support and the likes on Facebook. Thanks to the sponsors Ridley Bikes Australia, Mizuno Australia, Caden Wheels, Mako Wetsuits, Hammer Nutrition and Swim Smooth for providing me with the gear and skills necessary to compete in races like this. And of course a massive thanks to my wife and kids for putting up with all the racing and the training and the time away.