Miyajima Triathlon

In a continuing effort to experience more novel and unique endurance events I travel to Hiroshima last weekend to participate in the Miyajima "Woodman"Triathlon. 

Miyajima boasts perhaps the most spectacular swim start of any triathlon in the world (well perhaps second to the notorious Escape from Alcatraz) --the Miyajima Island World Heritage Site and its iconic floating torii gates. 

We were ferried out to the island at sunrise where we  change into our wetsuits and prepare for the swim in a 500-year old wooden shrine.

Then we proceed through the orange corridors of the main Itsukushima shrine where all the athletes stop to pray (in my case praying to survive the swim which preoccupied me at that moment, though in retrospect I should have prayed for more strength coming off the bike and onto the run).  

The island is overrun with deer who aren't at all skittish about creatures in wetsuits

The swim was surprisingly pleasant with the mass start of 500 age group swimmers spread out over a wide course, and the straight, point-to-point nature of the event eliminating the congested turns around buoys. 

I was a bit off-course with my tendency to drift right – as you can see in my swim path here (in grey)  vs Keren's more direct route (in red): 

I have lost count of how many times Keren has told me since the race just how terribly slow my swim split was at 48:42  for 2.5k.  But I was reasonably pleased with it given how much I've struggled recently to do 100s in the pool on a 2:15 cycle, and having not been out in open water at all this year. 

I came out of the water in 222nd place and started moving past people on the bike's early short uphill sections.  I had read and heard the warnings about the long, steep switchbacks on hill #4  toward middle of the bike section and hill #7 toward the end.  The hills were definitely challenging –   but I felt surprisingly strong and the crowds of spectators and drummers toward the top of these hills helped.  

Admittedly I struggled on the final 2k descent with young girls rocketing past me -- my arms felt bizarrely tired and I just  focused on not crashing on the tight corners.    Still by the time I finished the bike I had overtaken 134 competitors to move up to 88th overall with a bike in time of 2:21:27.

The long hill on the run I had also been warned about, and in contrast to the bike hills the climb on the run proved far worse than I anticipated. By 11k I feared that my run time was going to be a disaster, but thankfully  much of the last half of the run is downhill and I was able to regain my form and some strength and finish the race in around 4:51, good for 5th place.  I was told that Woodman is somewhat equivalent to a half-ironman distance race, and 4:51 is far faster than my previous efforts at that distance. 

So it was certainly worth the extra effort to journey to a unique, new endurance event.   Apart from about 50-minutes of sheer, unsurpassable, torturous misery during the middle 8k or so of the run, I was smiling and enjoying most of the triathlon. 

Moreover, the triathlon was a good excuse for visiting the Hiroshima area.  Keren and I flew down to Hiroshima on Friday morning on the new Spring Airline low cost carrier (only 7,000 yen each way though you have to travel via the notorious new Narita Terminal 3), and I shipped pretty much everything but a small daypack to our weekend hotel, so there was none of the usual effort to lug bikes and wetsuits and gear.

This facilitated our fine tourist experience – visiting the obligatory and sobering Atomic Bomb Museum and Park, sampling the Hiroshima-style IPAs at the craft beer pubs, swimming at the Hiroshima-style public swimming pool, lounging at the European-style cafes along the river filled entirely with Australians, and  eating Hiroshima-style okanomiyaki at Okanomiyaki Village, a building filled with floor after floor dedicated entirely to mom-and-pop okanomiyaki stalls.