Port Dickson Triathlon 2012 Race Report

Venue: Avillion Admiral Cove, Port Dickson
Date: 15th July 2012
Time: 7:30am (wave start every 5minutes)

PD Tri this year was a good race for me. Everything went smoothly except the swim felt much like a washing machine. It is the first time that a swim felt so rough at PD. It didn't help that the buoy line that was laid out the night before to mark the course was washed away together with the net that was supposed to block participants from cheating. Thus, I felt the swim was a mess with people swimming all over the place. I tried my best to keep close to the people ahead of me as sighting was very difficult with the waves. On top of that, the "mini" turning buoys were simply quite pathetic. I could barely see them until I was really close! I almost completely missed the last buoy marker, the one that you hit before turning and swimming back to shore!

The swim started late for whatever reason but when my wave start began it was almost 8am. I came out of the water with 42:18 on my watch. It was 2 minutes slower than I had expected to swim but seeing that I struggled quite a bit with the waves and had to stop to fix some technical issues three times during the swim, I was overall quite happy with that time and also happy I managed to swim the forward crawl all the way this time.

I transition fast enough and was soon on the bike.I spinned for about 500 meters before I pushed into the big crank and it was big crank and ride hard all the way. The bike course is the same every year and I will say the terrain is rolling. It is not flat! I pushed hard on the bike, so hard that before the turnaround I started to worry if I had enough fuel in the tank to tackle the run. I feel as if there are actually more hills on the ride back. It felt good to catch up to the people who were out of the water earlier (swim is my weakest discipline). After the turnaround, I was grateful to have some guys who were wearing the Malaysian Airlines cycling club jersey form a peloton around me and were with me on and off throughout the last 20km of the ride. They were terribly nice and encouraging to me. If any of you ever read this, thanks a lot! On the bike I caught up with two lovely ladies from Penang, Ding Ding and my cousin, Wendy. Both are terribly good swimmers!

I got back to transition with a time of 1:18:59. Just as I was coming in I saw Mei See about to run out. It is good to see familiar faces during a race. Not too long after I ran out into the transition, I ran past Lie Wei. She was looking good but because she has been recovering from a knee injury, she wasn't going to push on the run. Next I bumped into Jasmine (also another fantastic swimmer) and just ahead I saw Mei See. It wasn't until 800m to the finish line that I actually caught up to run side-by-side with Mei See and we pretty much ran with each other until the finish line. It was nice of her to let me go past the tape first. She was only 3 seconds behind me. The run course this year is challenging because the second half of it is on the beach so it is especially tough when your legs are already tired and sinking into soft sand. You have to exert a lot more energy to pick up your feet. I did run the second half of my run slower than my first.