Half Ironman China Report - Ishmael Muscat

Those of you who know me might remember that I suffered from a terrible running injury for the first three months of this year. In view of that injury, I was planning to abandon my participation in China's first ever Ironman and Half Ironman race in HaiKou city, HaiNan province, the latter Half Ironman race also known as the 70.3 Triathlon race.

I have never recalled feeling so nervous the week of a race. This was only my second triathlon in one and a half years and I would be going from a one hour triathlon race experience to six or more hours of triathlon racing! In fact, I was new to all the triathlon rules, regulations and procedures. All the previous seven years racing road and mountain bike races have no regulation relationship to triathlon and Ironman races.

I was one of 800 competitors and and thirty-nine countries represented in the race. My swim was rather weak and I emerged out of the water after 45 minutes, a long time after the majority of the athletes.

I started my 90Km cycle conservatively, but after 1 kilometre I had already overtook a number of athletes on the bike. I thought I was going too fast too soon but as I passed the 10 kilometre mark, I realised I was probably going to have an awesome cycle segment!

Indeed, as I rode and rode my bike, in an aerodynamic position which, as one competitor described as: "Your bike position was really cool!", I realised that this day was going to be one that I will remember.

As I climbed DaoTang village with a few other athletes, the hundreds of children encouraging us to ride on, enabled me to open throttle and fly up the hill leaving the other athletes in my wake. Nevertheless, as we rode on to ShiShan, I nearly cracked on the end of the climb. The reason was obvious; there was too little food in the food stations in the first 60 kilometres of the course and I was nearly running out of energy.

To my luck, I regained composure on the descent towards HaiKou city and opened my throttle again. I recall only being overtaken by two professional athletes and I think I must have overtaken around 100 athletes in the cycle segment.

My Half Marathon Run was a worry. I did not know if I would make the distance or if I had used too much energy during my fast cycle segment. I ran and ran and ran, slow at first, but with an increasing pace as I approached the end of the race. It was very hot and a few professional athletes were evening walking parts of their race, while I was still on my feet, jogging, slowly, but on the move.

The last 4 kilometres towards the finish line are difficult to describe. I was in pain, yet, because of the crowds standing by the road side pushing me on with their encouragements, the pain seemed to drown away. Tears, joy, love for the race - mixed emotions that one can only understand when doing the race itself.

As I crossed the finishing line, I felt I was the winner! I was my own winner, to manage to finish the distance and race faster than more experienced triathletes than myself really makes me think about the possibility of giving more importance to triathlon racing.