Cold Storage Triathlon Race Report

It's been a while and I have a confession to make. I don't report on some races namely races I feel embarrassed to talk about. For example the latest Tri-Factor Sprint Triathlon I did. I sucked giant ass and well...what can I say, I was lazy, I didn't train quite as hard as I should have and I just plain didn't take the damn thing seriously. The only thing on my mind was finishing it up early enough to make it for champagne brunch. Sooo....no race report on that unfortunately...I've said too much as it is!

Anyway, on to a race report on the Cold Storage Triathlon. Technically just a race report on the swim leg of the Cold Storage Tri since that's all I did...and pretty damn slowly, might I add. Our team consisted of Mun, Rich and I. Rich was dragged along for the ride essentially since Mun and I had discussed doing a tri relay and were looking for a runner. Poor Rich - thanks to the weird time schedule, Rich pretty much had to run in the mid-day sun.

My wave started at 9.50am which is pretty late considering some people were actually doing the full triathlon on their own...I would NOT like to be starting my 10k run at noon! Since there were that few relay people, we had to start with the age 50 and over individual men's wave.There were a crap load of men - I spotted maybe 5 girls tops. When the whistle blew I pretty much let the wave of men fight their way in before I strolled into the waters. Surprisingly there weren't any breast-strokers with this lot. I guess men think it's not macho enough to start of breast-stroking? Who knows.

All was going sort of fine-ish I suppose. I didn't swim like a snake, I sighted every 6 strokes (except when I forgot, then I did some weird trying to catch the buoy at the corner of my eye whilst trying to breathe and glide and remember a whole bunch of things I was supposed to do), I didn't get kicked in the ribs...it was all good!

Then I spotted some chick hanging off the ropes. I think it might have been her first time in the sea but she'd pretty much freaked out. So I stopped. I can imagine how scary it can be swimming in open waters. I'm not that freaked by it since when I was windsurfing I got pretty used to being thrown off and floating around (even then I had my board to hang on to!) but I know sometimes when I go to Sentosa (a grand total of maybe 5 times) to do laps at the lagoon I sometimes think 'If I just had a cramp here or if there was some undercurrent that dragged me out, no one would spot me and that really wouldn't be a fun way of dying'. I told the chick I'd swim with her for a bit. So she went a bit and stopped and hung off the ropes again. I checked to see if she was fine and we swam for a bit again before she had to stop. We did this for maybe 100-150m. Then she tried to go it back stroke and went the completely wrong direction. So we stopped again. By this time she had got herself pretty winded and was pretty much over it. We shouted over for the canoe and I think that was it for her. Fair play to her for trying though. I'd have given up and called it quits much much earlier on.

The race of the swim was pretty uneventful other than a damn stitch and the weird fact that there was no where to grab a cup of water when we got out of the sea to do our 2nd lap. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that you do a full 1.5k (instead of two 750m laps) in the sea without coming out in other triathlons, so they're trying to mimic that? I was freakin' thirsty at the end of those 2 laps. After I got out of the sea, still no water in sight. And then they made us run. There were plenty of cuss words in my head at this point of time, the sanitised version pretty much read 'why the beep do I have to run? I'm the beeping swimmer and they make me run? Where the beep is the beeping transition point? And why isn't there no beeping water in sight!?!?' The run bit sucked ass. We had to run over some overhead bridge thing (lower than the ones you get on the street) but what a pain in the proverbial ass that was.

I was so happy when I shoved my sandy, salt-watery timing chip to Mun and could finally grab some water...from the water bottle that Rich passed to me. Mind you there was still no water point in sight. I think they just hate the swimmers. That has to be it.

I sat around with Rich waiting for Mun who nailed his bike leg (6th out of 15th! - 40k in 1:17hrs) and then caught some breakfast with Mun whilst waiting for Rich who despite having done zero training did pretty well (11th out of 15th - 10k in 1:07hrs). We finished up 12th overall thanks to me. I let down the team! I did, however, beat my PB 1.5k timing and finished my swim in 39:06mins. Yay to me! And yay to Small Dragon Baskets! We didn't finish last - which really was the goal of this race.

Race Report by the cyclist in the team - http://tourdejapan.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/cold-storage-tri-29-09-12/


Timings:
Swim (1.5k) - 39:06 mins
Bike (40k) - 1:17:52  hrs
Run (10k) - 1:07:41 hrs
Overall - 3:04:38 hrs