4hrs, 8 minutes, and 42 seconds of racing came down to an epic sprint against my good friend and Korean triathlon mentor, Younghwan Oh!
This is only the second year of the Yeoju 70.3 Triathlon. Last year, I competed on a relay team doing the bike leg and I posted the fastest bike split by several minutes. This year I was happy to compete in a pro/elite field 9 deep.
This race was well run by the KTF(Korean Triathlon Federation). It is a very spectator friendly course for the bike and run. The swim is one way, no loop, the bike is 3 .5 laps on fairly flat roads, and the run is a flat 5 loops on a path. My family was able to stay at our tent (oh we camped out at the race site the night before) for the majority of the race.
The Swim: 1.9km in 26:12.
The swim is in a river, starts out under a bridge, and follows along the bank for 1.9km ; which actually ended up being about 2.1 km, but we were swimming downstream so the extra few meters didn't matter much. I went out strong for the first 500 meters, as usual, and then settled in to a fairly comfortable pace. I trailed the guy in front of me and at one point he must have had a bad site because I was able to keep my line and pass him. I came out of the water in 4th (2:00 behind the leader) with my family cheering at transition.
The Bike:
As I went off on the bike, so did my boys. Our friends, Nathan and Bethany, came to cheer at the race and took the boys off on their bikes to cheer for me at the turn around while Kristin stayed near transition for photos.
The bike is 3.5 laps with several turnarounds and less than ideal road surface. This made keeping speed difficult, but it was the same course for everyone. I took off about 2min behind the leader. I pushed the first half of the bike pretty hard. I caught the lead guys in front of me at the end of the first lap and by the end of the bike I had a 2 min lead going in to the run.
The Run:
With only a 2 min lead on some very fast runners, I knew that my lead was not comfortable. I tried to settle into a good rhythm, but this is definitely the area were I have the greatest room for improvement. The catch came only 7km in! The eventual winner, a young Korean ITU guy, ran the first half very well and shut the door on me quickly…. ouch. But… I did very well to not self-destruct when he passed me. It is a long race and if you let your emotions control you, you will crash and burn. Instead, I tuned it out and ran my race.
One of the difficult things about the run course is that the leader has little to no information on his competitors. Every time I went around the 4+km loop I would get information that is 15-18min old news. This course is set up well if you are a chaser! The chaser knows accurate gaps and can measure efforts accordingly.
Truth is, I had no idea that Younghwan was coming. Kristin did a great job cheering for me, but no one even mentioned that the gap back to 3rd was closing. I assumed I had a comfortable lead to pace in the last KMs. I was so surprised when he ran up next to me with 1 KM to go! By this time the 5 lap course was very crowded with participants. We surged through the last KM yelling at people to get out of our way.
The Finish: 300m to go the run course narrows as we flew past transition still yelling “비켜” and “앞으” (“move!” “up ahead”). Just after transition with about 200m to go there was a aid station with people literally coming to a stop to take on nutrition. At this point we were almost full speed and it is a miracle that we did not crash and take someone out. Younghwan ran smart and kicked early surging just ahead, I was forced to follow through the traffic into the finishing chute were I opened up into a full on sprint! I only had about 60m to try to come around him, and in the end I lost by fractions of a second according to the chip time.
This was one of the most exhilarating finishes I have ever had in a race. I gave it everything and I went toe to toe with a great friend!
