Ironman 70.3 Thailand – Some pre race thoughts

Race week for the Ironman 70.3 Thailand is well underway so I thought it might be cool to write a little piece about Sunday’s race. Race nerves are slowly coming in and I can barely wait to race…

It’s a funny sight here at Thanyapura. The place is loaded with triathletes that are going to race this Sunday. Some are still training pretty hard, others (like me) are tapering (building off the training towards race day) now. This means lying on a sunbed, eating quite a lot, sleeping and occasionally doing some very short workouts. This sounds attractive, but to be honest I don’t really like it. I wish I could just fast forward these days and race hard already.

The race Sunday is going to be a hard but cool one. The 1.9k swim is in the sea (that can be choppy and has quite some jellyfish), no wetsuits allowed.

The 90k bike course is perfect for me. It’s damn fast and I feel extremely comfortable in aero position pushing high watts here. The bad thing is that we need to cross two high footbridges. We need to get off the bike, walk the bridge and then get on the bike again. Twice.

After the bike there awaits the big unknown of the day; the 21.1k half marathon run in burning heat, with crazy high humidity. People are going to suffer here, I’m sure. Getting nutrition and drinking right in combination with fast but sustainable pacing will be key to get a decent run split here.

I am more than ready to race and my expectations are high. I really want to qualify for the World Championships here, and I think it should be possible if all goes well. Together with my buddy Tim (also racing AG 30-34) I looked up some of the competitors. Some strong guys are here but it should be possible to get a good ranking if all goes well. Beyond this conclusion, it doesn’t make sense to think too much about competition. I trust my own good form and it will all come down to execution on race day.

Going into this adventure I was hoping to gain fitness by being able to train in perfect circumstances and rest more. I feel like the training program that Chris has put together for me really did what it should.  Starting this program on quite decent base fitness from the Ironman in Maastricht, I trained my ass of for 8 weeks in Girona and Phuket and really improved on swim, bike and maybe mostly the run. I feel better and stronger than ever. People tell me I look lean/skinny, and all the watts/paces in training indicate top shape.

Just three more nights of sleep. The race is on at 6:30 am local time. That’s 00:30 Dutch time. I will post a link to an athlete tracker later so those who want to follow the race can do so!