Desaru LD Tri 2007: Race Report

Finally have the time to write this! Heh.. =)

Drove up to Desaru with my parents on a rainy Friday morning. In the other car was Chris, JS and Keiko. This was going to be my third Desaru race, while it was JS's second and Chris' first. 3-2-1 start and yet a 2-3-1 finish. Heh. Read on to find out more about the race!

Reached Desaru after a one-and-a half hours drive from JB, no thanks to the weather and the heavy traffic along the way. Checked in into our respective rooms at the Pulai, then headed to Golden Beach Desaru, the official race hotel to register, attend the race briefing, and go for the carbo-loading dinner.

uncle chan up to his usual antics.. =D

my parents and me at the dinner

with the rest of the whole jinn gang

Desaru is one of my favourite races because it starts at such a late time (10am) such that I can sleep in on race day unlike other races where it is almost always necessary to wake up at an unearthly hour to make the start line. And so I woke up about 0800 and went about with my usual race prep. Chris was nice enough to come over to send my parents and Keiko over to the start line, while me and Jinseng just rode our bikes over.

Met many familiar faces (as usual) at the transition area. I was feeling extremely at ease because I knew I was doing this race for fun and not really wanting to push it. Just went about the usual transition area preparations and that was about it. The weather was sunny in contrast to yesterday's rain and I was happy. Little did I know what was to come..

prepping at the transition area

me and Chris

three of us plus Calvin the super Ironman

me with my parents again at the start line

The race started very punctually at 1000hrs. Unfortunately the waves were as bad, if not worse than last year's. To make things worse, there were no line buoys to guide the swimmers and so many of us swam way out of course. The fact that it was quite an uphill swim (no kidding) meant that it was quite difficult to sight the turning buoys and thus compounded our problems. Twice I swam too far right going out to sea and thus I had to swim back to the turning buoy! Finished the swim in 1 hour but I suppose I must have swam at least 2.4km! Although I was disappointed with my swim time I was glad to make it out of the water: I was definitely more confident with my bike and run leg! Mounted my bike in no time and proceeded with the bike course. Unfortunately there seemed to be something wrong with my bike: My wheel seemed to be in contact with something as there was a constant rubbing noise and vibration which I could feel all the time! It got to me so much that I stopped by the road after 30km to check out the problem. Unfortunately I could not spot anything and so I continued along, vibrations and all. Even more unfortunate was the fact that it started to rain after my first bike loop and it made cycling alot more difficult: It was impossible to see anything and the ground was slippery. At that moment I felt that my goggles would have been more suitable than my shades! =D

In any case the rain stopped after an hour and I finished the relatively monotonous 90km bike ride in exactly 3.00hours. A little disappointing, but I thought little of it in the bike to run transition.

Because it had rained earlier it was still cloudy in the afternoon and those were perfect conditions for a PB in the run leg. Thus unsurprisingly I managed a PB of 1hr 45 mins. Hence, my total time was quite exactly 5hr 45mins, a large improvement over last year's 6hrs 45mins. But I was very sick during the race last year and that does not make for a fair comparison. I think many others also did their PB this year.. Probably due to the lesser number of racers this year and the kind weather.

Kudos to the excellent race organisation again this year by uncle Chan.. Dam boleh lah! It was truly a fun and enjoyable race for all! =D

running out of transition

dunno WTH ah pui trying to do also..

FINISH!

me and my ever surpportive parents again

with the rest of the finishers sans ah pui.. Haha..

keiko and jinseng

For videos of the race kindly provided by IMIM Clifford, click here, here and here.

And so after the race we went for the highlight of the trip: Seafood dinner! Drove down to Renggit and as expected, it had been colonised by the Singapore triathletes, at least for a day. So so that ends my race report on Deraru LD Tri 2007; I'll leave you with some parting shots of the food! =D

remmants of some leftover food and lobster

up close and personal with mr Lobster