I dreaded the Cebu Triathlon. I dreaded every aspect of it. I dreaded swimming in choppy seas. Biking on a narrow, crowded course. Running in mid-day tropical heat. I dreaded the thought of all the travel and costs and logistics.As usual in life and triathlon -- it all turned out well - I survived - I did not drown or crash or suffer heat-stroke -- I even managed 6th out of 41 in my age group, 243rd overall (out of some 2500 entrants), and enjoyed a memorable excursion to Cebu with a fun group of teammates.
Not that my fears were entirely groundless --
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In fact the swim was choppy. The rolling start was smooth enough, but when I rounded the second buoy and turned into the waves and the current I started to panic. I didn’t help that the swells pushed a slower earlier wave swimmer into me while 3 faster swimmers from later wave swam over me. But I reminded myself that I have done this many times before, and powered through the rest of swim, staying focused on each stroke. While my swim time of 47:16 minutes to cover 1.9k is a shockingly long time in the water, it was still among top half of finishers. And the bike ride did seem treacherous - at least at first when a dog ran across my path (reminding me of a childhood mishap), and countless riders burst past me (often then slowing down). Training primarily on an indoor trainer (if at all) means that once again I am not terribly aggressive starting the bike, though I did find myself passing a lot of riders on the later laps. The huge screaming crowd lining the course encouraged me. While my time of 2:58:33 was slower than my other half-ironman efforts is as good as I might expect.
And the run was hot. A blazing sun burned through the clouds just in time for the mostly shade-less, mid-day half-marathon. So I took walk breaks. Numerous proactive, carefully timed walk breaks - roughly every two minutes. I took leisurely strolls through every single aid station luxuriating in the feeling of squeezing the ice cold sponges over me and drinking cup after cup of sports drink or ice water. When I actually did break out into a run I was reasonably strong - my time of 1:46:44 was OK (fastest in the age group).
Total time: 5:40:39
Cebu was my longest and "biggest" race of 2018. By "biggest" I mean most talked about, most expensive, most anticipated and entailing the most travel. But by "biggest" I don't necessarily even imply that it was my "A race" -- the race that the well-coached endurance athlete would structure their training around. Normally a triathlete's longest race will also be their A race -- it works best that way with tapering and recovery. But my training leading up to Cebu included a lot of obstacle course drills and my key weekly workouts continued to mostly be shorter faster run intervals, just like the rest of the year. At least I did manage some long, enjoyable bike rides in the mountains this summer with the TiT group, so it is certainly not the case that I went into the half-ironman "cold"
