Before I get going on this particular race report, a word of warning. If you haven't read one of my race reports before, these things are usually pretty long. I try each time to keep it shortish, but to be honest I have failed before and I may again. You have been warned.
So, to start, the what, where and why.
The Subic Bay 70.3 is a Half Ironman held up in Subic in the Philippines. Why this race? Proximity and time of year really. I wanted to do a race in March and this was a race in March. Whilst Subic itself is a bit tricky to get to, flying to the Philippines from Perth is quite straight forward. Plus I have heard good things about racing in Cebu and so thought doing a race in the Philippines would be worth a try. I wasn't disappointed. That pretty much covers it, it wasn't the most in depth decision making process.
Subic itself is about 150km from Manila, but be warned, if you fly into Manila and then drive up, the drive can be up to 4 hours. Hence the 'a bit tricky to get to' comment above. My drive to and from certainly took at least three hours each way and I spoke to a couple of people who had four hour drives. You can rest assured though that the time it takes isn't due to poor roads. The roads are mostly expressways, so the drive itself is comfortable. Most of the time is spent getting out of Manila, which can have some nasty traffic. If you are flying in from overseas, adding in the drive can make for a very long day of travel. My trip was about 18 hours door to door.
On a side note, I hired a car and driver through Avis to get me there, which I organised before I left. Taxis are another option. There is also a couple of different bus companies that drive up. From what I saw hiring a car or taxi seemed to be around 5000 to 7500 pesos one way from the airport to Subic. The bus is a lot cheaper and by all accounts is quite comfortable. Not sure how the bus would go with transporting a bike, so that would be something to confirm.
Subic itself was a pleasant place. I must admit that I had never heard of it before and I am still working the place out in my head. It is sort of a tourist precinct, but not over the top like Phuket or anything, take a big step back from there. If anything it felt like a tourist precinct aimed at locals, certainly most of the people I saw wandering around seemed to fit that category. Which kind of added a nice feel to the place. The hotels and everything are a bit more basic that the luxury resorts you find in places like Bali, but dare I say a bit more genuine as well. Clean and pleasant, but not six star, some of them a bit run down etc. If you don't go in expecting Bali/Phuket, you won't be disappointed.
In terms of getting around, the bulk of the hotels are in a small area and so I was able to get around on foot mostly and I felt comfortable doing so. In fact it felt a lot like walking around small towns in tropical Australia. Walking around I had no trouble finding shops to buy some supplies, such as cereal, milk, bread etc. Although eating out is also super cheap. The only times I felt a little unsafe was actually when I was on my bike and that was mostly just adjusting to the traffic being on the other side of the road. Once I got used to the local traffic conditions, even riding around wasn't too bad.
The other big question people will have is the weather. The short answer is yes, it is warm and humid. I say warm rather than hot, because to be honest that is what it was (although that might also depend a bit on whether you are coming out of European winter or not). The mornings and evening are lovely. Even during the day is isn't unbearable. I wandered out to do some shopping around 11:30 one day and it wasn't that bad. Having said all that, the weather certainly needs to be factored into your race plan.
So hopefully that gives you a bit of an idea of the place. So moving onto the race.
The race is a tough one, no two ways about it. The course is solid, not the hardest in the world, but it has some hills and is not a walk in the park. Add the weather into it and you have a day that you need to be prepared for.
What does the course look like?
A bit like this:
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Now at this point I wouldn't normally bother mentioned T1, but on this race it is worth a couple of words. The main reason for this is that it is quite long, about an 800m run up a slight hill according to my Garmin. Once again not a big deal, but good to be aware of.
Once out on the bike, the course looks a little bit like:
The course is all fine, one big out and back heading away of town. The more interesting map is this one:
You probably can't make it out of the above image, but it says at the top of the elevation profile that the total elevation gain is 987m with a max slope of 17%. Now I am not sure about the 17%, I can't remember any bits that felt that steep. But the total elevation gain I can believe and so does my Garmin. 1000m elevation gain over 90km is a decent amount in my book. A lot of that elevation gain is in one long hill that you hit after about 8km. This hill is 4km long and just keeps on going. That is the big spike that you see at the start of the elevation profile. And yes you have to ride back up it on the way home, although that side didn't feel anywhere near as bad. After the mega hill, the rest of the course just rolls on, you never really feel like you are on flat ground. The climb up to the turn around doesn't feel as bad as it looks on the plot though. Really just feels like you are riding slightly up hill for a long time (which I guess you are).
T1 is located on the Subic Airport runway and the first 3km or so is down the runway, which is about as fun as it sounds. From there you are on some local roads before you find your way on to the expressway. You will have come into town on the expressway if you drove from Manila. The expressway is a pretty cool road (not literally), two lanes each way. The organisers shutdown one side of it, so the race has one lane heading out of town and one heading back. The road surface is a bit of a mix. As you would imagine for an expressway, there are sections of wonderful bitumen, but there are also sections that are pretty chopped up. I'll call it a mixed bag and leave it at that.
As is the case for many big roads, the expressway is open both to the sun and the wind. We had strongish head winds on the way out and a wonderful tail wind on the way home. The headwind was enough that it was annoying, without it being soul destroying. Tail wind was awesome obviously. In terms of heat, I actually felt pretty comfortable for much of the ride. I didn't start feeling warm until 60km or so I think. Really on the bike the heat really wasn't too bad.
Aid station wise there were 5 I think. Most of the ones on the map were double sided. If you have read any of my other posts about this race you will know that I wasn't happy with the hydration given at the aid stations. I am not going to labour that point here. In short the water given at the aid stations was provided in small, screw top bottles. They were hard to open, didn't hold enough water and were too small to put in a bottle cage. I wasn't happy about it and have given feedback to that effect to the race organisers, moving on. Hopefully it is better next year. Definitely worth heading into the race with three bottles though, just in case. I know some people who raced with two and it ended up hurting them.
Most of the ride course is closed to traffic and the rest of it is controlled. You do end up sharing the road with traffic a little bit of the time, particularly going up and down the big hill out of town, which is only one lane each way. But most of the time you have the road to yourself.
According to my Garmin the bike course is about 88km, give or take, but that is only based on my measurements.
That is enough riding stuff, but before I move on to the run, T2. Nothing really to note about T2, other than that it is in a different place to T1. Because of the different locations, the organisers require you to drop your running gear off in a 'run bag' the day before. They then put the run bag at your transition slot on race morning. Because of that it is entirely possible to not see your T2 spot until you race into transition on race day. T2 is laid out exactly like T1, so based on that you shouldn't have to much trouble finding where your bike goes and where your run gear is. It is still worth checking out the day before though if you ask me. No 800m runs this time around.
Moving on to the run, it looks like:
Similarly to the bike, one lap, out and back. You basically run back to the swim start and then back to T2. Elevation profile looks like:
In contrast to the bike, this elevation profile looks worse than it is. You do gain about 280m according to the elevation plot, however the run really felt pretty flat other than one big hill that you run up and down both on the way out and the way back in. Rather than hills, the big factor for the run is heat. By this time of the day it will be starting to get hot, guaranteed. On race day I think the temperature was into the low 30s for the run. A bit like the bike, a lot of the run is fairly exposed to the sun, so you feel a lot of it. If you look at the results you will see that everybody ran slowly. This was the heat. On our race day we also had a solid wind blowing in our faces in the last 10km. I have to say it was very unpleasant. As bad as the heat was, the thing that hurt me the most was the wind. Sometimes it just felt like I was being blown backwards. About 12 aid stations I think (about every mile). What they provided was a bit hit and miss. They all had water and Gatorade. Some had sponges, some had these big one litre bottles of water which they gave you (it felt wasteful, but it was also lovely to have so much water to pour over yourself). One aid station had coke. Assume water and Gatorade and you will be safe.
Another little bit worth mentioning on the run is that the first and last 2km or so are essentially off road. This leaves the main road and loops though a section of a roughish, dirt track before rejoining the main road. It isn't a big deal, just worth knowing really. The potholes are definitely something to be aware on the way back when you are on tired legs.
Based on my Garmin the run is about 21.3km or so. So close to bang on.
Once you get through the run, it is down a very nice finishers chute and across the line. Day done. Time for an ice bath.
So with the course described, how did I find my day across it. My day went quite well it must be said. Just a solid day where everything went more or less to plan.
The day started very, very early, about 3:00am, so that we could catch the 4:00am shuttle bus (Jeepney) to the start line. There was another shuttle at 5:00am, but with transition closing at 6:00 and the drive taking between 20 and 30 minutes, we thought the later bus might be cutting it fine. I was certainly glad that I went early. Not that I had anything go wrong, but it was a lot less stressful in the long run.
Once the bike was checked, rechecked and good to go I headed down to the start line. For this race I was racing as an Age Grouper and so I was in the second wave of the day, with about 300 other Age Groupers. After a bit of a warm up, I lined up under the starting arch, got myself a good position and got ready for the gun.
Once the gun went it was a mad dash down the beach, a couple of dolphin dives and I was away.
I knew from the entry list that there was at least one very quick swimmer in my wave and so I set myself the goal of sticking with him. As it turns out there was two. I jumped on some toes and held them for around 600m or so until we starting hitting the back markers from the professional wave. I found myself a little caught up and by the time I got clear a small gap had formed and my toes were gone. After that I settled in to getting around the course, which I did without any further issues. Although on reflection I may have taken the foot of the pedal a little to much, with a time a bit slower than it should have been. All up a time of 25:09, which was 9th quickest over all and third in the Age Groupers.
I got through the long run up to transition without any problems, then it was on to the bike and away.
I managed to catch the two age groupers who had beaten me out of the water within the first 5 or 6km. From there I more or less figured I would be on my own. I hit the mega hill not long after that and settled into getting to the top.
I was surprised at how the climb went. It was certainly hard, but really it was a tempo hill that could be spun up. It was long, but never felt that bad. Just after the top I was passed by one of the Professional men that I had passed in the swim, closely followed by another. Whilst the first of these two was going quite rapidly, the second was more around my pace so I made the decision to hold on to him no matter what. In the end it was a decision that I was very happy with. Even with 10m between us, having somebody to chase just kept my mind in the game. This was particularly important on the way out of town when the hills and the wind really started to take their toll.
In this fashion we went through the rest of the Professional women and made it out to the turn. After the turn my new found friend cleared out on me and I was alone again. However, I now had a raging tail wind behind me and I didn't really need much motivation to ride fast. The average speed took a massive jump and I headed for home.
Up to this point I had been more or less bang on target in terms of power and heart rate. However, on the return trip I felt like I was pushing into the red a little bit too much, plus as I have mentioned it had started to heat up by then, so I eased back a touch. With the tail wind the speeds were still good, but it just allowed me to regain a bit of composure. Doing this meant that by the time I hit the big hill on the way back into town I was feeling a lot more comfortable with myself. I saw fellow Daryl athlete Tim Green just before the 80km mark, but other than that the trip home was a lonesome one.
I got to enjoy screaming down the big hill back into town (70km/h was my max) and then it was through T2 and off on to the run.
Bike time was 2:16:09. I was the first Age Grouper off the bike and about 7th over all.
Straight away the run was tough. It wasn't that I had blown myself up, it was more that it was hot and my heart rate was through the roof. Given the conditions this race was likely to have, in planning I had decided to pace off heart rate for the run. However, from the start I was struggling to get my heart rate into my target areas. With this in mind I eased off the run early on to make sure I didn't risk a collapse later in the day.
Moving at what felt like a crawl I settled down and got on with getting through the next 21km.
The run passed along fairly well in this way for the first 10km or so. I wasn't feeling great, but I felt like I was within myself. Just moderating my pace as necessary to keep my heart rate under control. Grabbing everything that I could from the aid stations. At about the 8km mark, heading up the big hill, I passed Christoph Schlagbaer and moved into 6th.
From the turn on the run, things got tougher. As I have said above, the wind was blowing in our faces on the return trip and it really starting to get into your head. There were sections where I was simply focusing on putting one foot in front of the other.
Usually in a race like this there is a point where you say to yourself, 'I have this, I am going to get through'. Typically for me that point comes around the 18km mark. In this race is came a lot later. Past the 20km mark I think, such was the extent that I felt like I was 'just holding on' in that last 10km.
In the end though I did get through and across the line. My run time was 1:35:55 (not pretty) and my over all time was 4:20:37. I was the first age grouper across the line and 6th out of the male field.
It is this last result that I am happiest about. If everything goes to plan this should be my last race as an Age Grouper for a little while. Moving into the Professional ranks has been a little bit of a leap of faith and this result makes it just a little bit less so. Gives me some confidence going forward.
Looking at this race as a whole, it leaves a good impression. Yes there were a few niggles that annoyed me on the day, but they are pretty minor and easily fixed. Beyond that though there are lots of positives. The Philippines seems to be a country very much in love with the sport of Triathlon and this was obvious at the race. There was a clear passion on show, little things like the expo being massive, the enthusiasm of organisers, volunteers and crowds, the generosity of the sponsors (this race has by far the biggest registration pack I have ever seen), the list goes on. Combined it makes for a great experience. A tough day out for sure, but all up an enjoyable one.
Now, time for a few thank yous. I don't normally do this but first up I really do have to acknowledge the sponsors of the race particularly Gatorade. As I have said the sponsors were amazingly generous. To the point that they put up some awesome prizes for the Age Groupers, which is a bit unusual, but very welcome. It is nice to get that sort of acknowledgement as an Age Grouper.
Beyond the race sponsors I need to thank Break Your Limits and Mizuno for being both awesome and helping me out. Paul Newsome for being about the best swim coach I have ever had. Coach Daryl, for being boundlessly patient, infinitely knowledgeable and getting me ready for this, one step at at time. Tim Green for a great few days of hanging out and catching up and giving me a great insight into what it means to be a professional triathlete. And of course my wife and family who have to get the biggest thank you of all, for not just putting up with my insanity, but actively encouraging it.
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