Tom finished 26th in his age group, and 129th overall. Full results here http://www.lagunaphuket.com/triathlon/
Hey, Tom great race. I was just curious as to your comments on your split times. According to your splits your strength is running, followed by swimming, with cycling as your weakness. I’ve been a mediocre cyclist in MI for a while going back to your State championship TT days. So I’m curious, have you trained your weaknesses to the point where they’re now strengths, do you just not put in the bike time like you used to or is their some other factor?
Shawn Tyrrell
Hey Guys, thanks for looking in! I have to tell you: You must do this race. It is incredible in every way. The setting, the accomodations the race course, the field. Look for a full report quickly. I just got in and am working on my photos and story right right now. Huge thank you to Scott Molina, Norman Stadler, Murphy Reinschreiber, Deepak Patel and all the wonderful people on Laguna Phuket. Amazing. I’m trying to decide if I had my worst or second worst race in my life there. The race was a lot of fun but I had a terrible race. Looking at the results I know I could have been top 3 in my age category had I had a “normal” race. I had huge back problems. It happens about once every three years. I injured my back in 1984 and it has never been the same since. Since my race was going crummy I just made it into a “tour” and stopped a few times on the bike and run to help other people in the race with technical problems. It was a lot of fun. I’m am definately going back next year for a better race. Amazing place, excellent race.
Hey Shawn, to directly answer your question: I had to stop at first on the bike because my legs started going numb and I couldn’t pedal (or get off my bike or stand very well). I stopped and propped myself up with my bike for about 4-5 minutes and the feeling started coming back. I got back on and it happened again so I slowed down and asked an Australian guy who was riding past me, “Do you have an allen wrench?” He gave me a allen wrench and I stopped again and tried raising my seat about 7mm to take the pressure off my lower vertebrae. Just then a guy came buy and shifted his rear wheel in his dropout and almost fell over. I put down my bike and helped him. I got back on and could only go about 16 mph so I just sat up and talked to people. I stopped and changed a flat for a guy, stopped to pee, adjusted a guy’s derailleur and just generally did the “Tour de Phuket”. On the run I stopped and chatted with some guys I knew who are pilots and a fella I had met earlier in the week and then wound up running with a customer of ours a little way at the end on the beach. It was really fun to just go “casual” and not really race. Yeah, it sure was disappointing not placing- especially when I knew I was fit. But hey, a bad day in Thailand is better than the best day anywhere else. I’m going back next year to race, not tour.
Sounds like you had a great time regardless of your back. I just had a look at the site and noticed that the swim is split in two. Was it not a little weird to run across the beach and then start swimming again?
I thought it was one of the many unique aspects of the race. I liked it. It also kind of typifies the region with its incredible waterways and amazing natural features. The water in the lagoon was not warm, it was HOT! Like swimming in a hot spring. Weird. Very cool though. It took me about :30 seconds to cross the beach from the Andaman Sea to the inner lagoon. Not being much of a swimmer I have to say that was a super cool swim, but a little long according to athlete consensus.
I just gots to know. Is “Phuket” pronounced like it’s spelled? Thanks.
I read somewhere it is actually “pooh-get” but I got in the habit of saying foo-ket. I never really heard many Thais saying it any differently.
Here’s a teaser photo from the over 800 photographs I shot there:
!(file:///C:/WINDOWS/Desktop/Thai%20final%20cut/thai%20sunset%202%20small.jpg)
So, ah, how the heck do you paste a photo to a post anyway? Obviously that didn’t work…
You have to upload it to a server (like your bikesportmichigan.com site) and then link to the image there.
I remember you mentioning IM New Zealand – will you be racing there?
Hey Ariel, Thanks for the tip. Some guys were able to get photos in their posts in the past, despite me reading somewhere on here that was not possible. Anyway, the story I wrote will be up within the next day. I’m still jet lagging.
And about IM New Zealand- yup, I’m entered and I’m racing. My race in Laguna Phuket was somewhat discouraging. It has been a long, long time since I had a really bad race. One thing I had to remind myself of though: It has been a number of years since I actually went to a race to race, as opposed to participate. So I suppose it may be somewhat unrealistic to suppose everything goes absolutely perfectly the first time out. But then again, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t … My training has been going fairly well so we’ll see…