2015 Japan 70.3

Japan 70.3. I decided to head up to this race really because it was at a good time of year for me and it was a nice excuse to head to Japan which is a country I have always wanted to go to. Making the decision to go up ended up being a good choice since the event turned out to be one that I remember for a while to come.

The Japan 70.3 is a UNIQUE race. Really that is putting it mildly. I have written unique in capitals but if I could have written it in flashing lights with sparkly stars all around it I would have done that too. 

Due to the unusualness of the race I am going to write this race report in two parts. Part one is about the event and some of the things that are worth knowing if you are heading over to it. Trust me there are lots of those. Part two is about my day out. If you just want to know what the course and race are like, read Part 1. If you want to know about my race, read Part 2. If you want to know it all, then you should probably sit down first, it could take a while.

So with that sorted out, here we go.

Part 1

The Japan 70.3 is a unique race for many reasons. Yes the course is like nothing you have ever seen before, but it is much more than that. For one, the administration side of the event takes place in an airport. Registration, briefing, expo, awards dinner, all of it happens in the Centrair Central Japan International Airport. Sound strange? Well yes I will admit it is a little unusual.

What else? Well the airport is located on an island and so is most of the event accommodation. Unfortunately the only way to the mainland is either by a road or a train. However, you can’t ride on the road and you can only take a bike on the train if it is packed in a box. Tricky.

So that is some of the quirks of the event, but there are ways around all of them and I will talk about that in a minute. For now though, back to that course. It looks like this:

The ride goes where???

The ride leg looks like somebody tripped over and spilt a bowl of spaghetti on the page. If you take the time to count them you will see there is something like 18 hairpin turns. Riding it is every bit as strange as it looks on paper.

But I am getting ahead of myself. First things first. The swim. The swim looks like this:

Straight forward

It looks fairly straight forward and it is. The few times I saw the swim course it was always quite flat and I could imagine it usually is because it is well protected. Having said that during our swim we had a small bit of cross swell on the return leg. Not much, but enough to notice it. The water temperature while we were there was around 20 to 21 degrees, so a wetsuit swim. I gather that sort of temperature is pretty normal. What else? Despite what it said in the athlete notes, we had a beach start. The water quality it okay, it was quite murky and visibility in the water was low, but it didn’t seem dirty or anything. The course was well marked so sighting and navigation was straight forward.

In case you can’t see from the map above, yes, it is in the ocean, so salt water. Speaking of ocean, I think in years past the swim has been heavily affected by tide. We didn’t have that problem in 2015, but being in a narrow channel I could see that it could be an issue.

So the swim is quite normal. After that things become a bit different. The Japan 70.3 uses gear bags to make the logistics easier. That means that at the end of the swim you need to grab your ride bag, grab your cycling stuff out, put your swimming stuff in and then head to your bike. The same thing happens at T2 with your running gear. The run bag has to be dropped off the day before the race so that it can be set up in T2 for you. All this isn’t a big deal as it happens at a lot of other races, however there are a couple of things to be aware of. You can’t have your helmet on your bike, so it has to be in your ride bag. You can put shoes on the bike, but the helmet must be in the bag. When it gets to T2 you have to put your bike shoes in the bag. I am not sure if this was for logistic reasons, or because it is a Japanese Tri Union rule, but it is something you have to do. That means running through T2 with shoes on.

After you exit the water, you run up a steep bit of beach and go and grab your ride bag. Helmet out, swim gear in, you hand the bag off to a helper and run towards your bike. And run, and run. This race has a seriously long T1, it is around 500m. That is because the bikes are placed in a very long skinny car park, which you have to run the entire length of. As you can see from the photo below you are running on bitumen for a lot of that. If you are unsure about running on the bitumen then you may want to put your bike shoes in your ride bag so you can run in them. We ran barefoot and it was fine.

Our bikes were right down the other end

Once you are through T1 you are finally onto that bike leg.

So other than being highly technical, what makes this course unusual? Well I am not sure if I can describe it, but I am going to try. You ride through a variety of different types of road. The first 32km is spent doing two laps on a fairly normal, flat four lane road. There isn’t much to say about this bit. It is quite flat, the road surface fairly fine. The only hill in this section is when you ride over a bridge which you will do four times. You do go and do a lap around part of the Lixil factory (one of the sponsors) which is sort of fun. There are also some narrow bits of the course where you need to keep your head, but other than that nothing crazy here.

The swim start and T1 are on island, so once you have finished your second lap you jump on to the footpath (yep the footpath) to ride across a bridge to the mainland (it is a different bridge to the one mentioned above). Shortly after the footpath is where you get inkling that you may not be in Kansas anymore. You start off riding along a pedestrian path, but every now and then there are plywood ramps to get you past stairs or other obstacles in the path. Some of these plywood ramps are not insignificant. Once you are out of there you are into some Japanese suburban streets and everything seems normal again. Until you head down a little one lane service road between a couple of rice paddies. Things continue like that for about the next 40km. During this 40km you will find yourself riding over and through all sorts of things. Around countless corners, up plenty of short (and not so short), sharp hills, over more plywood ramps, through more rice paddies, down small lanes, through wooded areas. You never quite know what is around the corner. It truly is like nothing you have seen before.

Spiky

Around the 75km mark you find your way out of the winding, twisty stuff and onto a Motorway, for a more normal 16km blast to T2. This section is not to be underestimated though, since, as you can see from the elevation profile, it isn’t flat either. My Garmin measured the total elevation gain at around 600m. After the Motorway you roll your way down another footpath and into T2, which is in a school.

In T2 the bike racking area is small and the racks are not designated. Rather a person at the entrance to T2 will point to a free rack for you to put your bike on. They do this because the bikes are quickly loaded into trucks and so the racks never fill up. Once you are done with your bike you clip clop your way to the gear tent, grab your run bag, change your gear over and you are away.

Straight away the run is a little different. You start out off road, heading down a steep hill, hitting pavement at the bottom. Around the 2km mark you hit a very nasty hill going back up again. From there the hills don’t let up until around 13km.

Lots of up and down

The run course quickly heads you back towards the Motorway that you were riding on earlier. This time you run along a service road beside it, occasionally heading away from it. This service road is full of hills. Bits of it resemble a roller coaster. Coming off a demanding bike leg, this section is a real test.

It is pretty though too. When you aren’t next to the Motorway you are running down country roads, more rice paddies, past houses. It is an interesting course.

Around 13km or so you come down your last hill and you are finally at the coast.  At this point you climb a set of steep stairs (carefully) and you find yourself on part of the seawall that protects areas of Japan’s coastline. This section is interesting in its own way and you run along the outskirts of suburbia on your way back towards the airport. The surface is flat and good (other than the occasional stairs) and it is a bit of a relief after the hills.

After 8km or so of that, you run around a marina, down a road and across the line. That is you done.

So that is what the course is like. If I haven’t conveyed it sufficiently above, be assured, this course is tough. All the stop starting on the bike, combined with the hills, makes for a leg burning day out. It is also truly unique though. I know I have said it above but I will say it again, I have never raced on a course quite like this before.

Another thing to say about this course is the level of crowd support. We had people cheering us pretty much where ever we went. From bridges along the Motorway, on the back roads on the run, in front yards. Every time you turned a corner there would a handful of people clapping as you went by. Good atmosphere.

So what about some of the other quirks of this event and some tips about them.

Okay well first tip. If you are coming from out of town, stay at one of the event hotels on the Airport Island. Whist that essentially traps your bike on the island, it makes the entire trip much easier logistically. The organisers do a great job of getting you around. There are shuttles that go from the airport to T1, trucks to take your bikes to T1 on the Saturday. More shuttles to bring you from the finish line back to the airport. When you get back to the airport you will find your bikes and all your swim and riding gear waiting for you. If you stay at the airport the logistics work for you and make the entire process fairly easy. If you don’t, then it becomes much harder. The whole thing works remarkable well. It takes a little while to interpret the Athlete Guide and figure out how the system works, where you need to be and when. But once you figure it out, you will see that it has you covered.

On top of that Central Japan International Airport is an amazing facility. Most stuff you are ever going to want for a trip like this is available there. There are a number of little convenience stores, any number of restaurants/food stalls etc. You really can support yourself out of the airport. If not then more shops are only a short train ride away. Plus plenty of room for things like expos and briefings etc.

Queueing for the briefing

What about being trapped on the island with the bike, what about training. Well this isn’t ideal, but the Airport Island has a number of good roads. You can get in about a 5km lap if you try hard enough. It is not particularly inspiring, but it works and is fine for checking that the bike works and getting in a bit of a spin. These roads work great for running too.

Airport Roads

How about swimming. In 2015 there was no specified time that the swim course was opened. But, the swim start takes place from a public beach which is part of the Shinmaiko Marine Park. However, from what we were told, people don’t tend to swim at public beaches in Japan unless there is a lifeguard. Before we knew this we headed down early on Saturday morning and had a swim on the course. Nobody stopped us in the morning (there was nobody there), but I know people who tried to swim later on Saturday and they were stopped. Do what you want with that information. Otherwise I know pools are available on the mainland and aren’t too hard to get too.

What other tips do I have? Well a big one is this, make sure you do some handling work on the bike in your preparation. Sounds like a silly thing, but I am deadly serious. You would be amazed the amount of time you can gain or lose simply because you can/can't get around a sharp corner quickly.

Another tip would be to not lose too much sleep over a bike recce. I am a big fan of learning as much about a course as I can before race day, that is part of why these race reports are so long. But with this course, most of it you aren't allowed to ride on before race day. The bits that you can ride on, I guarantee you won't be able to find where you are meant to go, we almost had our taxi driver in tears trying. Sometimes you just have to know when you are beaten and just go with the flow.

So that is what the course looks like, and I think that is most of the tips I have. As I have said a couple of times, from the outside it looks like this race should be a shambles, but it really does work.

So moving on to Part 2. My day in the sun.

Part 2

My lead up to this race could have gone a lot better to say the least. Coming into this race I had been struggling with a plantar fasciitis niggle for quite a while and which had really flared up at Busselton 70.3. This had made running training difficult. Then on top of that I got a cold two weeks before the race. My lead up was rocky enough that I seriously looked at pulling out a week before race day. In fact if my airfares had been refundable I probably would never have gone. On top of illness and injury my bike got lost in transit and when it did arrive it was damaged. Not awesome.

So when I lined up on the beach waiting for the gun, I wasn’t quite sure what the day would bring. What I did know though was that for it to go well I needed to try and keep contact with the lead guys in the swim. When the gun went I quickly found some toes and held on. As we got out to the first buoy I was surprised to find that the pace was actually quite sustainable and so I settled into a rhythm. This is the way it stayed for the entire swim. There was the odd surge and a bit of cut and jumble where I would lose one set of toes and have to find another, but really the swim went quite smoothly (other than a corker of an elbow to the head). As we ran up the beach to the transition tent I was very pleased to find that I was sitting 4^th in a big bunch, 22:47 for that leg.

I am the one in black neoprene with a white cap

Once I had my gear bag my next challenge was to make sure I was still in touch with the lead guys once we got to the bike. With such a long run to the bike rack I didn’t want to lose contact. With that in mind I was out of my wetsuit like a scalded cat and was second onto the long run to the bikes. I made sure I didn’t let the others get away through the transition area, grabbed the bike and was away, onto the bike in third.

As I have said above the bike is where the fun really began. For the first flat two lap section we had a group of eight spread out down the road. During this section Alex Reithmeier and Mitch Robins made a couple of determined breaks which the rest of the lead group worked hard to close down. These moves whittled the group down to six, which is what we had when we headed over the bridge and into the rest of the course.

About to ride on a footpath

 Things stayed this way as we pounded through rice paddies and down the back lanes. By around 50km the lead group was down to four and I was hurting a lot. At this point I was seriously questioning the wisdom of sticking with lead group, but knew that if I dropped off now I would be limping into T2. With around 30km to go Mitch Robins made a big move up a hill and Alex Reithmeier went after him. I had nothing to go with and they were away, leaving Ryan Waddington and myself to get through the remaining 30km as best we could.

I was really starting fade in the last 20km or so when we hit the Motorway. Based on the winds of the previous days I had been hopeful for a tailwind on the Motorway, so was a little crushed to get there and find a headwind. Still there was nothing for it, Ryan and I knuckled down and did the work, rolling into T2 in 3^rd and 4^th respectively. My bike time was 2:21:46, about a minute down on Alex and two minutes down on Mitch.

Sitting in T2, my future was uncertain. I knew the next 21km was going to be hilly and I really wasn’t sure how my fatigued legs were going to get through it. I headed out of T2 figuring I would find out. Ryan ran off looking very good on his way to claiming 2^nd place over all. Once I got going I found running was okay, within reason. My foot was sore, but not unmanageable. My legs were toast but moving.

Within 3km Swen Sundberg and Kaito Tohara came past me and I let them go. From there I spent the next 16km or so taking a shuffling tour of rural Japan. Ticking the kilometres and the hills off I was pleased to see that I was getting through it, just not quickly. When I got to the coast I would have done a little dance if I didn’t have so much running to do. With around 2 or 3 kilometres to go Yu Shinozaki came past followed not long after by Kuniaki Takahama. Soon after that I crossed another bit of plywood, came around a corner and was finally in the finishers chute. Crossing the line with a run time of 1:34:24, total race time of 4:23:17, 8^th overall.

So that was my race day. Some things maybe could have gone better, perhaps some opportunities lost, definitely some lessons learnt, but overall a result that I am happy with. It is tempting to ask questions of myself like could I have done better if my run prep hadn't been so disjointed or what if I had paced the ride better. But to be honest I haven’t been second guessing myself in that way. In the end my race preparation is what it was and I am happy with the way I raced my day. I think I would probably do it that way again if I had my time over.

Overall it was a good day. A very unusual one, but when all is said and done I think I enjoyed it. Sure, every race has room for improvement, and this is no different, but when I take a step back and think about this race I find myself remembering all the little fun bits, rather than any of the negatives. In my book that makes this a good event.

As I usually do, a few thank yous to finish off with. Firstly, a big thank you to Ironman Asia Pacific. I don’t usually say that, but when I found that my bike was broken and I was just a little bit panicked it was these guys who came to my rescue and made sure that the right parts turned up. Thanks too to the sponsors, Swim Smooth, Hammer Nutrition, Mizuno Running Australia and in particular Sportreat Sports Medicine for getting my foot to the point where racing was even an option. Thanks to Break Your Limits for asking how it went and actually caring about the answer. Thanks to Daryl Stanley for putting handling practice on the training program. Finally the biggest thanks to Shelley, the kids and my parents. Shelley for the patience and coming on this adventure with me. My parents for not coming on this particular adventure and staying home with the kids instead. Saints.