Ironman Gurye—Part 2: The Race

At the beginning of this year, I was waiting for the announcement of the Ironman Malaysia (IMMY) in Langkawi. I joined the race in November last year, and although I finished the race, I wasn't happy with my performance, and I was hoping to be able to have another chance to redeem myself. Unfortunately, many people said that there will be no more IMMY. I therefore started looking for other Ironman races in the region. For a while I was seriously contemplating doing the Ironman Western Australia again. But then I received a Whatsapp message from my friend, Anslem, about the Ironman Gurye, and before long I found myself in a Whatsapp chat group for the event. The funny thing was that just shortly after I registered for Ironman Gurye, it was announced that IMMY is on again this November, and so I registered for that race too.

Anyway, I found myself at Lake Jirisan in Gurye last Sunday morning. Of all my Malaysian friends, I could only remember Quintine's race number, and I could remember the location of his bike because it was in the same row as mine. I had no idea where the rest of my friends were. Later, however, I saw Anslem when I was queuing for the toilet; and let me tell you that too few toilets were provided!

It was just about 10 minutes before the flag off when I was done with the toilet visit, and I took my time getting into my wetsuit. And then I bumped into Amy, and she took this shot.

I've never really felt comfortable in a wetsuit as it's very tight; and I'm not such a big fan of wearing the swimming cap as the top of my head looks quite a lot like the tip of a condom! Yes, I know what you must be thinking, but I can't change the fact that I'm born with a very creative imagination!

Anyway, participants were flagged off in waves, and I watched from afar as the first few jumped into the water at 6:40am. I was still a little nervous of the swim leg. It didn't help that it was a misty morning, and standing there in the crowd, I couldn't even see the far end of the swim course. I felt like I was up for a huge challenge to even finish the 3.8km swim. It must have been close to 7am when I finally entered the water, and as I had expected it was so chaotic. Too many people were blocking me; and I dare say I was blocking other people behind me too. As always in the swim leg of the triathlon, I received a few blows to  my body from unruly hands and ridiculous kicks of breaststrokes swimmers. I tried to remain calm as best as I could, but it's not so easy to remain focused for over 1.5 hours!

One would imagine that in such a chaotic situation, I would be occupied in solely focusing on survival—and only survival. But then some of my loyal readers are aware of the disease commonly known as KIASUNISIS which I'm suffering from. In between the slapping and kicking and swallowing a few gulps of the murky lake water, I still had the time to worry about the rest of my friends being ahead of me! I remember telling myself that whatever happens the rest of the day, I must make sure that I won't be the last guy to cross the finish line. Kiasunisis, as you can see, is a terrible disease! Well, eventually I emerged from the lake after 1 hour 41 minutes of nightmare, and once I was up on the pontoon, running towards transition, I felt a huge relief. Thank god I survived the swim leg.

As I was running towards Transition 1, I spent the time to wriggle myself out of my wetsuit, and when I reached my T1 bag, I only had the lower half of the wetsuit to deal with. Then I put on the socks, my cycling shoes, wetsuit into the bag, and I was ready for the bike leg. But first I made a quick visit to the toilet. In the end, I spent roughly 10 minutes for T1. As I was pushing my bike from the transition area to the mount line, I noticed that Quintine's bike was no longer there, and just for a brief moment, I felt a bit of adrenaline surge in my system! Amy was there to take this shot.

In the months leading up to this race, I had come up with a game plan. I would spend a bit more time working on my bike strength and speed in the hope of leaving a bit extra for the final 42km run at the end. The plan was to ride a steady 33kph-35kph on flat roads, and take my time climbing up the slopes as slow as I can on very light gears to conserve energy. According to my plan, I would target an overall 6:30 to 6:45 for the bike leg, having taken into consideration that the total elevation for the entire course was over 1200m.

Now the hardest thing about having a game plan in any race is of course to stick to that game plan. Most people would abandon their game plan as soon as they are flagged off. On many occasions during the bike leg, I was so very tempted to go all out. When going down the slopes, it was possible to reach 50kph fairly easily, and it was so tempting to keep going at 40 kph thereafter. But no, I kept reminding myself of my plan.

The final 20km or so of the bike leg was through a highway, and I felt like I had the energy to ride at least 35kph on that stretch, but I kept at about 32kph. I eventually finished the bike leg (180km) in about 6:37. As I was crossing the bridge across the lake, leading to the end of the bike leg, I saw Dr Yap running across the bridge. So that would mean he's about 15 mins ahead of me at that point.

I spent another 10 mins in transition as I made another visit to the toilet. I felt a bit of pain on my right foot, but it soon went away, and I was able to run quite comfortably. In fact so comfortable to the extent that after all the hard work of sticking to my plan, I finally lost it at that critical moment. I had planned to keep a steady 6.5 min/km pace, but instead I ran a 6 min/km, and that soon became 5:45 min/km. I felt like I was dreaming to be able to run that fast after the 3.8km swim and 180 km bike. Then about 7km into the run leg, I finally caught up with Quintine. A short while after I overtook him, I saw Anslem on the return leg of the loop, and I estimated that he must have been about 10km ahead of me at that point. After running about 10km or so, the exhaustion finally began to set in, and I realised there and then that I should have remained true to my game plan. But alas, it was too late. I could feel the fatigue quickly building up in my legs, and I could foresee the rest of the run leg will be a run-walk-run-walk affair.

After I made the U-turn of the first loop, I caught up with Dr Yap. By then I was down to about 6.5 min/km. And a few km later, I had to slow down to a walk. Coincidentally, Amy was waiting at the roadside and took this pathetic shot.

I caught another glimpse of Anslem on the second loop, and I also saw Nick on the other side of the road. But for the most part, I had no idea where the rest of my friends were. Soon it was nightfall and although the run course was mostly lighted, there was no hope of finding my friends in the crowd. By then I was walking much more than running, but I tried to at least jog slowly as much as I could. About 1km to the finish line I started a steady jog again, and the pace kept building up until I crossed the finish line.

This was how I performed in the race.

Obviously it's not anything to shout about, but I'm still happy to have achieved a personal best anyway. 

In the end I received this finisher medal.

I'm also glad that I wasn't the last to finish in my group. But actually, just finishing an Ironman race, time regardless, is a big achievement in itself. Been a lot of fun. I mean the race, not the Korean food and the diarrhoea that followed. If ever I'd join this Gurye race again, I think it won't be so soon. I will allow a few years for the organizer to fine-tune on some of the minor points on how they're organizing the race before I even consider if I'd want to make a second visit.

I'd like to mention here a few factors which I think have had some positive effects that had helped me in achieving a better performance in Gurye. First and foremost, I think the slight tweaking in my training programme which shifted the focus from run to bike, as well as sticking to the game plan on race day. As far as the training goes, I must say thanks to a friend, Dennis Tan, who's residing in Perth, Australia, as he was kind enough to share his training programme with me. Although I was unable to follow his programme to the T, I was at least able to mimic some of the schedule. I've also dealt with replenishment of electrolytes, thus correcting my mistake in Langkawi last November. And finally, I must thank my new friend Felix Tan who introduced me to Fitnessdrink of the Fitline brand, which I consumed during the bike leg of the race.

I'm also grateful for making new friends from West Malaysia. It's been fun chatting through Whatsapp, and I couldn't help providing the entertainment to the group. Now a short rest, and then will be back in action again next Saturday in the Challenge Iskandar Puteri. I'll be seeing some of you there!

Ironman Gurye 2017—Part 1: The Journey

The inaugural Ironman Gurye 2017 was my fourth Ironman, and it was quite an experience like never before for me. 

As you can see from the heading of this post, I'm posting the story in two parts: Part 1 will be mainly about The Journey, and related events along the way, to the race venue in Gurye up to the eve of the race; whereas Part 2 will be about the race itself.

I had expected to have some difficulties to communicate with the Koreans, but it was worse than my expectation. Of course Google translate helped to a certain extent, but at times I found that South Korea was even worse than France. They kept speaking Korean to me even though I said I couldn't speak the language. I'm beginning to believe what my friends said to me—that I look a lot like a Korean?

Then the food—oh! Korean food was just awful for my taste buds—I'd say it's safe to estimate perhaps 80% to 90%  of so-called Korean food is hot; like really hot. Chili, chili and more chili. I don't know if the Ironman God up in the heavens had wanted me to hydrate myself well before the race; I drank jugs upon jugs of iced-cold water each time I eat those food. I felt like I was eating dynamites!

Generally, hotel rooms in South Korea provide coffee and tea sachets and tiny cups. And when I said tiny, I really mean tiny. Not to mention the tiny towels which were actually just face towels as far as I'm concerned. Although I did not try to search in the departmental store, I bet it would have been quite a challenge to find a decent bathing towel in South Korea.

I landed at the Incheon International Airport in the morning of the 6th of September, having departed Kota Kinabalu International Airport in the evening of the 5th. I spent the night in a nearby guesthouse named Harumi. I would usually stay in a hotel when I travel overseas, but Harumi was a convenient place which was just about 7km from the airport. I was the only guest at the time, and I was greeted by a tiny furry dog which had some sort of pathetic condition with its voicebox—its barks were almost comical! I spent almost the whole day trying to catch up on my sleep, as I didn't get any sleep throughout the flight from Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 the night before. 

Before nightfall, however, I walked to a nearby shop for an early dinner. I don't even know what I ordered, but of course it was hot; I could almost sense that I was venting steam through my ears. 

After dinner I stopped at a pharmacy on my way back to Harumi where I picked up a pack of Vaseline lotion for the race. I had wanted to buy Vaseline in KK before the flight. But as Murphy's Law would have it, when I was rushing in the last few hours before my flight, the pharmacy that I went to had run out of Vaseline lotion. The only available lubricant was KY Jelly, but I decided against it. I thought it's not a good idea to provoke too many questions from my wife, if you know what I mean?

The next day, I made my way back to Incheon Airport where I met the rest of my group from Malaysia. I had known Anslem and Amy, of course, but the rest of them were only friends that I've "met" through the Whatsapp chat group that we had created specifically for this trip to Gurye. Quintine and Victor were there at the airport, and I can confirm that they looked like what I had imagined them to be, that is to say not as handsome as me. Their respective spouses were there too. Nick and Wee Wong were there too, and Dr Yap Eng Hui was also there. Kenny Tan, the young lamp post from KL, arrived just shortly before 10am. Apparently he enjoys making a big last-minute entry to add to the thrill of his travel itinerary, you see. 

We have all reserved our seats in the 10am shuttle bus to Gurye, but the South Koreans are not generally known to be punctual people. I was at the airport as early as 7:15am, and I took my time having breakfast at KFC. I was the at bus counter way before 10am, but to make the long story short, it was about a quarter to 12pm before we finally embarked on our journey to Gurye. We were travelling together in the same bus, except for Kenny. He was somehow put into an earlier bus, but of course that bus was also delayed.

We finally arrived at our hotel late afternoon. The name of the hotel was S Hotel (not ASS Hotel). Next to that hotel was K Hotel. Kenny was supposed to have reserved a room in K Hotel, but somehow the organizer had messed up with his reservation, and his name was not in the list. When our bus pulled up near S Hotel, Kenny was standing alone at the roadside, looking so pitiful with his bike box and luggage. Eventually he was able to get a room in S Hotel too.

I was still feeling sluggish after the long journey, and I felt like my legs have not fully recovered from the months of training, even though I've had a 2-week taper period. Accordingly, I put on my shoes and went for a very short run. The rest of them decided to assemble their bikes and go to the race venue for athlete's check-in.

As the days got closer and closer to the race, the excitement was mounting. And we had our swim practice session on Friday morning at the lake. We all rode to the lake and put on our wetsuit. It wasn't funny at all. 200m into the swim, I was already gasping for air. I held on to the ropes for a good 5 minutes before making my way back to shore. Everybody was in good spirit though. We met some more friends from Malaysia. Among them was the famous Rupert Chen and his underlings. We took the opportunity for a quick photo session.

And then later that day we went to deposit our transition bags and attended the reception dinner for the participants. We took the opportunity for another photo session, especially to show off our T-shirts sponsored by Ultron.

Back at the hotel room, the plan was to sleep early, as I had planned to wake up at 3:30am the next morning to prepare for the race. But I could hardly get any sleep, as I kept thinking about the 3.8km swim in the Lake...