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Liuzhou Race 2019
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A few weeks back I took part in my first 70.3 in Liuzhou.

Bit of an intro. It has been a bit of a whirlwind start to Triathlon for me. After having the 10km Shonan OWS swim in Tokyo cancelled last year after doing quite a bit of work in the pool I was a bit lost and was looking for a challenge so I thought I’d give triathlon a try. Long story short, I’ve been doing triathlon now since last October and so far my first three races have been a Sprint, then an Olympic and now a 70.3 in that order. I’m definitely enjoying the journey. I’m a foreigner based in a small town in China so most of the learning has been via this website and youtube, and most of my training has been solo.

Anyway, Liuzhou.

My wife, daughter and I decided to drive to Liuzhou from our hometown in Dongguan, around a 650km drive which we split over two days. We arrived in Liuzhou on the Friday afternoon before the race, enough time to register and get the race kit that afternoon.

On the Saturday morning I took the bike out for a ride to check out some of the bike course and did a river crossing swim at the open water starting point to get a feel for the water. In the afternoon I dropped my bike off to Transition and managed to get a fairly good nights sleep before a 4:50am wake up for Race day.

Awoke on race morning to a wet wet wet day. The Radisson hotel I was staying at was around a 1km walk from the T1, and I did the walk to T1 in the pouring rain. It was race day and I had a grin on my face the rain couldn’t wash away. After checking my bike, I, along with all the other competitors hopped on shuttle busses which took us to the starting point of the swim a kilometer or so down the river.
The swim went fairly well, and with the rolling start beeper there was not much hustle bustle in the water during the swim. The water was flat and it was fairly easy to settle into a good rhythm. After the swim it was a quick run up the 80 or so stairs from the river to T1 to grab the bike gear and get riding.

The bike course was fairly flat, and with the rain about I found my heartrate really kept pretty low. Going on the advice from this site I tried to keep my power average around 85% of FTP for the entirety of the ride which made the ride fairly comfortable. Next time I’ll follow my Garmin FTP as opposed to my zwift trainer as I find the Garmin does read a little higher and I probably could have pushed a bit harder in the ride. Coming off the bike I scurried into T2, put on my shoes and hat and started the run.

Within the first 500m of the run I was hit with pretty severe cramps in my legs. Damn. Being so early into the run I grit my teeth and tried to run it off. I’m guessing my training was lacking some good brick sessions to properly prepare me the for the transition.

After a painful 5km or so the cramps started to subside and I managed to get a bit more into the run. Out of the three sports in Triathlon the run leg is definitely my worst, and it became apparent by around the 15km mark that my legs, while ok for a standalone half marathon, are not good enough for a strong run after a 1.9km swim and 90km bike ride. My legs felt slow and heavy.

By the time I hit the last kilometer of the run I decided to pick up the pace and get to the finish. Unfortunately the last 500m of the course was wet, had quite a few turns, a bit of up and down and I managed to slip and slam really good on one of the final turns. Coming down hard on my hip and knee. Being so close to the end I managed to pick myself up off the wet pavement and do the adrenaline run to the end before the pain of the slam really kicked in.

Pretty emotional feeling at the end, and happy to crack 5 hours first time round.
00:26:15 02:34:00 01:45:54 04:55:21

Finally, any feedback on my bike fit would be appreciated, I’ve got no idea where to start and it’s a bit tricky where I am in China to get some expert one on one advice. Average power on the ride was 215W (221NP, 35kph) and I’m 72kg.
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Re: Liuzhou Race 2019 [oddbudman] [ In reply to ]
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Re: Liuzhou Race 2019 [oddbudman] [ In reply to ]
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Nicely done. HK expat here - good to read info on one of our 'local' races!

My race site: https://racesandplaces.wixsite.com/racesandplaces
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Re: Liuzhou Race 2019 [oddbudman] [ In reply to ]
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Congratz on the sub 5. Whilst I'm in no position to critize fit, I'll do it anyway and hope for some more experienced fitters to chime in :)

First I think people would like to see a side shot of your fit. Preferable with the pedal at the lowest point. From this view to me it looks like the front end needs to be lower and/or more stretched out (and/or sadle foward). Lowering your head would be benifical as well I think.

From an aero point of view, other shoes and a deeper rear wheel (or disc wheel) seem smart as well.

And last, but not least, you should shave your legs a bit futher, and not just untill the knees (or wear longer shorts) ;)
Last edited by: Cnasta: Apr 25, 19 7:05
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Re: Liuzhou Race 2019 [oddbudman] [ In reply to ]
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nice job. i think you probably paced the bike ride pretty well. as to fit, looks fine from that angle, but very hard to really tell without seeing you from the side.

i think you're in the right sport, right place, right time. i'll be interested to see what triathlon's future is in china. qujing looks interesting to me. i'm glad these races are pushing inland and not all on the coast. i just wish they were in less populated places. chongqing, i like that there's a race that far west. but it's bigger, as a metro area, than beijing.

there's a guy i ran into, going to college here in the US, he's from dali. now that looks like a cracking place for a 70.3.

i think you've got the tiger by the tail. where you live, there's all the expat races in hong kong, macau, there's vietnam, singapore, philippines, and then those races popping up in china. i'll be interested to watch your progress.

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman
Last edited by: Slowman: Apr 25, 19 7:13
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Re: Liuzhou Race 2019 [oddbudman] [ In reply to ]
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Well done on your race. It was a terrible day weather wise but I would love to do it again on a dry day as it is a great course and fast. Sorry to hijack your thread but I would be curious if anyone knows how the guy who crashed on the hill ended up. I came through on my second lap and he must have just gone down, he wasn't moving and the amount of blood on the road was obscene. I am assuming a major head trauma? By the sounds of Greg Welch at the presentation the race was almost called off.

I am curious considering why you think you could have ridden harder when your legs were cramping on the run? My legs weren't great on the bike so I held back from my normal power riding to feel and had a blinder of a run.
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Re: Liuzhou Race 2019 [Shambolic] [ In reply to ]
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It certainly looked like a very bad accident. I remember riding up the hill heading to the turn around when I saw a foreigner riding the other way yelling what I thought was words of encouragement- in hindsight I know it was a warning of what was to come. As I went over the hill and down the other side I saw what at first looked like a man lying on the pavement with a lot of blood running down the road. Since I was going downhill it all happened so fast and was hard to process exactly what I saw. Definitely the stuff of nightmares.


With regards to the cramps in the run, they were pretty immediate- kicking in before I even made it out of T2 and worsening as I went. I’m guessing the change from bike to run muscles really kicked my ass. For the ride my HR was well down compared with previous training rides and perceived effort wise the going felt a little easy.


I've got a little local dualthon on here in a few weeks so I'll try and get a few better bike photos sorted and try to dial up the bike power a little more and see how things go.
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Re: Liuzhou Race 2019 [oddbudman] [ In reply to ]
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Being a relative newbie to the sport it sounds like you are probably lacking the endurance you can only gain by more miles on the bike and why your cramping immediately. If you plan on racing 70.3 I'd definitely recommend working on your bike miles and strength. Throw in regular runs off the bike even just a few km's. Give it time and all the best...
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Re: Liuzhou Race 2019 [oddbudman] [ In reply to ]
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I passed the guy going up second loop. Chinese policeman was videoing him with his phone. Western guy jumped off and ran to the guy. He had clearly crashed coming down the one fast sketch part of the course which was otherwise great.
M
He had crashed across the median and was bleeding from the head and the blood was a good 5 meters down in the rain and he was not moving.

I was shocked since i didnt really see him till I was right on him but luckily a bunch of guys were stopping to assist.

The on the way back on second loop there was a van of some sort in the road (other than that it was very well run) that must have been associated with the race and on the exact same sketchy part I was trying to slow down and had to pass outboard of him and was right on the center line terrified I was going to get a head on.

Thank goodness for disk brakes.

Nicely run event otherwise. Only annoying thing was no swim warmup - the race guys pointed us to a place to warmup and police wouldnt let us.
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