Disneyland Race Report

When you're a kid, you are at a creative peak. You are constantly wondering what things could be like and what you could become. 

Disneyland is something kids regularly dream about visiting. Becoming an athlete is something I dreamed about. For me, the two came together in a 24 hour period that I enjoyed as much as I could.

Arriving at Hong Kong Disneyland's Hollywood Hotel the afternoon before the race involved a 20-30min cab ride and ended with two grown adults degenerating back into a child like state of giddiness with the unbridled excitement.

The excitement quickly deteriorated into frustration and anxiety upon dealing with the entire lack of transparent organisation from the race. I say transparent because it's just the Chinese thing that someone knows what is going on, but from the end-user perspective, you just have to have faith that it will all work out.

We travelled into the city via shuttle bus for the Elite race briefing and pre race dinner. I found it cool to be a part of the scene, while the Hong Kong boys flipped out and gushed like Beliebers at being in the same vicinity as World Cup winner Tony Moulai.

The briefing and dinner were held at the Panda Hotel. It was Panda-monium.

Before we returned to our own hotel for an early start the next morning. But not before we marvelled at how Mickey is on every detail of the hotel.

I got to the swim start with diabetes in check, everything managed well, a good plan of how to race to my best and a psychological set up to minimise anxiety on the start line, everything was ok. Then I realised I had forgotten my timing chip. The odd thing about this race was the 1.3k swim to bike transition run…where my timing chip was. I couldn't afford to race down and back in the 10mins before the race started.

Here is where having a former national cross country representative runner for a girlfriend helps! Bless her soul, she sprinted the almost 2 miles and made it back with about 10-20 secs before my name was called.

Discovering a lack of timing chip

Having my name called, despite the anxiety I had just put myself through, was really cool. I hadn't had it called in China, so to have it called "Chris George, Australia" filled me with pride briefly before I returned to focussing on the task at hand.

After going out too hard in China and the subsequent mental torture of needing to have a better swim, I had to race separating my sub-concious from the conscious mind. The little guy wasn't allowed to talk to the big guy. Your sub conscious knows how to do it all, everything you've experienced, it's experienced and can recall. 

Far right

My sub-concious was too aware of what it did wrong in China and how it felt. I actually went through the following process in my mind: The little guy wasn't allowed to talk to the big guy apart from positive encouragement. I imagined him as a ball, dressed up in a cheerleader's outfit, while I imagined the big guy as a shadow of me, but slightly larger (more capable). The swim went much better than China, but it was still below my best. It's pretty easy to work out what was lacking in my training so that will become a focus for the next race.

I emerged from the slightly long swim with a 3min deficit to the leaders. Given that over less than half the distance two weeks prior, I'd lost 1min40, it was an improvement. Most importantly, I emerged at the front of a group. The run to transition was a matter of staying in front of these guys and nothing more. I didn't see the point in sprinting after the group 90secs ahead of me solo and fortunately the guys behind me didn't try to pass me. 

The bike leg was controversial. Normally in ITU racing, if you get lapped, you are to drop out. In this race, you were allowed to continue if dropped, but I assume you weren't to jump into other packs. I formed a duo that quickly ate up a third and then fourth rider. The "pack" in front of us had 2 and the main, lead pack had everyone else in front of us. 2 laps in to the roughly 9 lap course around the entrance to Disneyland and "Inspiration Lake" our group had brought that 90secs down to 20.

Two of the Hong Kong boys had started to drop out of the front group, making a new 2nd group on the road, putting my group into 4th. The 3rd group that we were closing on all of a sudden had picked up 2 extra riders, then a 3rd and a 4th before also picking up the HK boys. I didn't realise until after the race that these extra 4 riders had in fact been lapped, because of their deficit swimming, not cycling. This group of 8 out rode our group of 4 and reopened the gap to 90secs. Tsk, tsk, tsk and what could have been.

Occasionally you'll do a race where it benefits you immensely. The bike leg had a few big moments for me. 

Firstly, it was basically up and down a small hill the entire time, a weakness of mine that gives me massive neural problems. Despite this, I was riding very well and cohesively in a group that should have been riding faster than half the field. I take away the belief and knowledge that I can ride well enough for this level of ITU racing.

Secondly, there is a word in cycling "creeping". When I was first introduced to it, it was described as the situation every cyclist goes through, where they are at max effort, heart rate red lining, and you start to drop away off the group. You notice that there's a metre or so, then another metre and before you know it, you're out of the draft and there's no return. It's pretty horrible on the mind.

It happened to me. Yes, I said I was riding well, but it was two of us carrying the other two, I had just taken a turn and the other guy was on the front. Problem was, he would surge each time and put whoever he rolled past into difficulty. I started to slip out, metre by metre. I had that moment where I said to myself "Oh crap, it's over! I got dropped. How did that happen! How embarrassing. But I'm stronger than two of them! Those useless pricks sapped my energy! They are so much smarter at this style of racing than me!".

Nek Minut…

"Just keep going! Just keep going! Just keep going! Any moment they might ease up! Ride against all those moments you've dropped off the back and wished you'd kept trying for that little bit longer. What have you got to lose?"

And suddenly the road started to flatten. The years of practice I've put into maintaining power over a crest came in and I was taking distance back and surely enough I had got back on. Defeating one of cycling's inevitabilities will encourage me to push for that little bit longer for some time to come.

Back into transition, past Inspiration Lake. Around the turn described "If you overcook that corner, you'll end up in the Lake." Bumping with the guy from Macau through it and subsequently getting attacked and dropped by the leader. And out onto the run, hoping that the cramping that got so bad that as I pulled my feet out of their shoes, my hammys both seized completely, would go away.

I was relieved to be on the run. I could turn my legs over and get to the finish. I left third from my group and basically ran straight past the second. 

On the third lap of four, one of the guys that had been lapped but drafted incorrectly passed me on his way to a great run leg (I'm sure my run would have been better if I'd been able to sit in a bigger pack too!). Towards the end of the third lap I noticed I was within range of one of the HK boys. 

In February or March, I had been inspired that I could survive ITU racing after riding through and running with the same Hong Kong triathletes at a race at Bribie Island. So to be finishing the season by possibly proving that theory correct was poetic and re-inspiring.

I tempted my pace right to threshold and was stunned to have caught him with 1-1.5k's to go. I tried a little surge, figuring that with the way I had caught him, he shouldn't be too difficult to dispatch. I was wrong, he survived it. Then I figured I would sustain my effort, he had been in a hole, he'd go back in soon enough. I was wrong again. Then the cramping came back. I knew I had a stinging final kick still around if the cramps could hold off, but I had to be careful. I kept the pressure on right up until the final turn.

At the final turn we actually caught the leader from my pack and passed him. But it's also where I lost the battle. We raced in a giant field with grass higher than your ankles and witches hats sparsely laid out and no signage. I picked the wrong witches hat to run around and as I did it, the other guy sprinted and put 20m on me in no time.

Still I was very happy with my result, my effort and super relieved for it to be over for now. All I had left to do was enjoy Disneyland and Halloween out on the town in Hong Kong City!

Just when you thought the story was over, I had to share one more really awesome thing.  When I was a kid, I used to ride my bmx a lot. I was attached to that thing. I also watched the bmx focused movie "Rad" a tonne.

I was obsessed with it. The town we lived in was about 2000 in population and the video store must have laughed every time mum came in and hired it out for me. That movie and I must have kept them in business.

One thing I was desperate to have was the number plate that the racers had. It would mean that I was a racer and that I had made it. It dawned upon me that I had indeed made it, standing in the baggage drop off line at the Hotel, when the little Chinese girl who would have been the same age as me when I watched the movie stared at and told her mum all about the number on my bike!

Lantau Island & Tian Tan

Following my race in Meizhou, I travelled to Hong Kong for the next race held a fortnight later.

I got to enjoy some of China's differences to Australia further.

They clearly don't understand negligence law the same way as we do. We packed 10 or so bike boxes into the corridors of a bus, then onto the seats and finally on top of the seats. Had the bus come to a sudden stop, someone would surely have been decapitated.

Apparently buses don't come to a complete stop though, they just keep driving. I couldn't see where we were driving, but given one of the Aussie girl's constant gasping down the front every time we came to an intersection, our driver owned the road and everything got out of his way. It's hardly surprising that a country so in touch with moving in synergy would also be able to drive this way.

I actually got off my flight landing in Lantau at some time around midnight and began my taxi ride to the hotel my brother and I were staying. The airport is on the north of the island and our stay was on the south. There is only one road and it goes straight up and over the mountains that essentially make the island.

In Australia we occasionally have road signs that indicate gradient and might state the actual gradient, but in Hong Kong there are constant reminders. Being a maths teacher, numeracy is something I think about regularly. Most people I know are innumerate. Here's a test for you that I enjoyed about Lantau: If the road signs indicate the road is at a gradient of 1:10, 1:8 and 1:6, how steep are each of those segments? Because 1:10 was almost the average!

After being dropped off in a taxi that advertised that for each bird or animal it transported, you would be charged $5HKD, into a back alley under someone's house's awning my brother helped me back to our room at around 1am with me telling him how we had to stop on the road for a while for a feral buffalo. Welcome to Lantau!

It didn't improve much as the next day we discovered the walls were paper thin and aside from having to put headphones on for each visit to the toilet, the neighbours were doing their best effort to break the bed.

I had the ability to train though, which I should be thankful for and there was also western food that my diabetes wouldn't be copping surprises from.

Our accommodation was a bike and footpath away from the beach, with a big section (120ish x 60ish) cordoned off for swimming and there was a 4 x 25m pool a five minute walk away. The beach left you smelling like rotting seaweed, so I tried to go to the pool as much as possible. Often it'd be really peaceful being the only person in the pool, but even though I was informed by the manager that I wasn't allowed to use a pool buoy or paddles as it would endanger any other swimmers. Hmmm.

Riding was…interesting. I had about 3k of flat road to play around with, the rest was the 10%, 13% and 17% climbing I mentioned. My 30mins easy was 8k. My hour out, hour back was 42k. I would be lying if I said it wasn't fun though. The sights (when the pollution didn't get in the way) were great. The feral cattle droppings all over the road didn't smell much worse than Karana Downs and the traffic saw you as an equal. There was one hairy moment when I had to choose getting in the way of a bus rather than a feral buffalo, but the climbing and descending were great fun.

I even managed to find somewhere to run intervals, but not until I got attacked by wild dogs for the second time in under a week!

The highlight of the time between races was definitely the trip up to "Big Buddha" or Tian Tan Buddha. My brother and I had planned to ride up to this monument together, meeting my girlfriend at the top who would take the bus there. But due to him being sick he caught the bus.

Yes, I am breaking a cardinal sin by wearing tri gear, but I just rode there. I'm sure this guy over my shoulder would have forgiven me ;)

The statue is 34m tall, made of bronze and sits atop a 450m mountain peak. While it is overshadowed by Lantau's highest peak of 950m, as I rode past the reservoir, it stood out magnificently and drew my attention away from everything else in the world. It is such a marvel. It even made me briefly forget how odd it was that they had built a prison at the bottom of the spillway from the reservoir.

The image below are the stats of my ride out and my ride back. There was a moment where the auto pause kicked in and I had to start zig-zagging up the final climb. As I sat at the gateway to the Tian Tan Buddha grounds ruing the decision to ride and the hurt that I had put myself through, my brother strolled over from the bus declaring "I am so jealous of you right now". My sentiment exactly!

We were lucky to have arrived early enough in the morning to beat the tourist crowd that cemented our decision to leave when we did. The discouraging thing about the tourists were the trivialisation of Buddha's own teaching by the way they traipse around the site ignoring just about every sign put down for tourists. I like to think that after the deep suffering I experienced getting up there though, I had learnt my lessons from him (he searched for a an answer to the meaning of human suffering) as my ride home featured far less suffering and my trip time was almost halved :D

I did a few other touristy things not worth reporting on once April arrived and I did come to enjoy the relaxed nature of the little town we were in. Lantau isn't exactly a place ready for tourist travel. It's a great place to escape for a day on the weekend if you are sick of the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong Island or the Kowloon Peninsula, but apart from Disneyland it's just not ready for us yet.

Meizhou Debut (the director's cut)

The 2013 Meizhou ITU Sprint Triathlon Asian Cup will forever stand as my debut Elite triathlon. It was the occasion where my dreams became reality.

As I've detailed before, I made the risky decision back in March to quit my job and begin training full time as a Triathlete to become an "Elite" triathlete. At the time I was stressed out about the lack of direction I had in my job and overwhelmed by the feeling I was welcome where I was working and seeing trust in me being eroded on a daily basis. There was a song on the radio that whenever it came on would calm me, allow me to escape from the situation and dream of what could be.

To me it spoke of a conceptual place where people who have grown up, realised themselves, or achieved something were. I was not there. In the song, it talks of trying to reach this point by overcoming struggles, taking the risk of the initial step and escaping the things we have laid in our path to prevent ourselves from getting there. 

The last four lines were magical to me. The darkness I left in was the risk I was taking of having no fixed income. The place I'd never seen was Elite triathlon. I'd heard about it, I'd watched the Pro's, my friends had been racing it for years, but I'd never been a part of it and barely had any clue what it involved. Since I was a child I wanted to be an athlete, I had ignored so many opportunities in my life for fear of them impeding my progression to this level of the sport. It was where I felt I should be.

You can imagine the poetry in where I was racing then, pushing myself to my limits on a course littered with lanterns...

Racing under these five times: 3 on the bike, 2 on the lap.

Race morning was quite easy and relaxed. Breakfast opened with it's usually bizarre food and I chowed down on a meal that closely resembled the fried rice I normally have, while the others stared in disbelief at their options, barely eating anything.

I mentioned in my last post how I'd been having trouble with my Blood Glucose levels. If I didn't get these right, there would be very little point even trying in the race. As I went to bed the night prior, it was ok. But during the night it rose to a HI level, so I had some more insulin to bring it down. When I woke up it was still HI! The different styles of cooking was really annoying me now, but about an hour after breakfast I had it at a normal, non-diabetic level for the first time in a few days - HOORAY! Fortunately I managed to keep it at this level for the last test 30 mins before the start. I was stunned by my management skills to then have it barely drop at all during the race. 

One of the big differences between ITU Elite racing is that you all get an "Athlete Lounge" that you will often be marshalled in for the race start. From here they will regularly play a nerve wracking heartbeat to some inspiring, instrumental backing piece. It is well known throughout ITU racing for it's ability to silence the crowd and turn the atmosphere up to the intensity of a world cup soccer penalty kick, that the ITU regularly monitors Youtube to prevent it from being duplicated. Obviously the Chinese couldn't get their hands on it, so we got to come out to this: 

Fortunately, we got to sit around for 15mins before each of our numbers got called and we scuttled down to our spot on the pontoon for the start and any giggling was overcome.

A pontoon start was a new one for me too, something I'd been looking forward to. Even at the World Champs in Auckland last year we weren't allowed to start on it, instead starting from in the water and holding it, doing a push start.

I got a great little dive and fly kicks, breaking the water nicely for my first strokes. I'd been told how important the swim to the first can was and evidently psyched myself up too much for it. While I was in the faster 10-15 over the first 100m, I blew up big time and found breathing very difficult until after the turning cans were finished, 400m in. From there I was able to get some rhythm back, but still swimming well below how I'd been training.

I still had some guys around me, so at least I wouldn't be riding solo.

The bike course can be seen here described as "flat".

It wasn't. But I guess the swim wasn't even close to wetsuit legal and the run had a nasty hill on each lap, but when you want a watch made with meticulous attention to detail, you go to Switzerland not China!

The course was constant bends and basically we weren't quite riding, just trying to hold speed through corners. Until we got this "flat" piece of road each lap.

One of the bends on the 5.5k descent

Complete with safety mats

The entire bike leg was spent with two Taipei guys, one of which didn't want to take turns after the first time up the climb. You couldn't see much more than 10 seconds in front of you which meant you had no idea where you were in relation to the rest of the race. We regularly saw riders popping up in front of us, each time given me a brief glimmer of hope that I would have at least one other person to share the work with, only for us to pass them and for them to disappear just as quickly as they had appeared.

Given the short nature of the race, I didn't have to worry about sugar during the race, but still had about 300ml of regular strength Gatorade on the bike.

The other big difference between ITU Elite racing and age group racing is transition. The norm is to not get a hanging bike rack, instead a "jam your wheel into the gap" rack and a box to put everything apart from your running shoes in or face a penalty of 15 seconds. I suppose there is also the fact that everyone at this level does a quick transition, including mounting and dismounting the bike, so I wasn't able to grab the small head start I normally do.

Out onto the run course and the real fun began! I recommend to anyone that can run a low 16min 5k or quicker to do the Noosa Bolt for the chance to run in front of a crowd of its size. While that course remains the wildest 5k I've done in my life, this one was easily the best triathlon run course I've ever done. The crowd was 5 deep on both sides for as much of the course as 5 deep fit. Where it didn't fit, they just climbed the cliffs and stood on outcrops.

I personally hated the song "Jai Ho", but I will admit that I'm thankful for it or I wouldn't have been able to understand the thousands of Jai Hos the crowd cheered for me. It was just cool that I was entirely insignificant in these people's lives, but for that one or two hours, I mattered.

Some of the crowd knew a little bit of English. You know how sometimes when people speak a different language, they baulk just before saying it to check that are about to say it correctly? Well, when the person you're cheering for is doing 5m each second, you have less than a second to get it out. To the lady who called out from behind me "You are well! Very well!", it was appreciated :D What I didn't really blow up about, but didn't quite enjoy was running along, trying to focus on my breathing and seeing a puff of great, big cigarette smoke drift in front of me. It was a constant and the only downside to the course.

Limited time to cheer or take a picture. My brother had trouble opening his eyes that day and perhaps not the best choice for photographer!

I hadn't made any mistakes in transition or throughout the course, so the board was clear when I ran through to the finish which was lucky as I was in pursuit of two athletes. I had seen them from about a mile out from the finish. They had joined together and lifted their pace in an effort to beat each other. I was keen to catch them as no one had run past me, I was having fun, it's the whole point of racing and with every person I beat, I confirmed the reason for my existence in the race. My legs were running faster than I thought I wanted them too, but it's good when my sub-conscious triumphs over my conscious mind, as it's my biggest weakness. Nonetheless, for over a kilometre they had prevented me from gaining more than 5m on them, leaving 15-20m still to go at the penalty board and 400m to the finish. 

Empty penalty board, always a good sign

As we came under the lanterns for the final time I had a bit of luck. The Hong Kong athlete looked over his shoulder at me and basically gave up. Within 50m I had flown past him and was within 5m of the Taipei runner, trying to judge just when to hit him with the change of gears. 

The finish was a sharp left turn, run through a corridor for 90m, sharp right for 10m, sharp right onto uneven pavement that had carpet over it, so you couldn't see where to step for 70m, then a complete 180degree turn with the same surface for 50m to the finish. I was right up on him at the very start and knowing the intricacies of u-turns in a sprint finish, as well as not trusting the surface and having a tide of momentum behind me (and the need to stave off an existential crisis), decided to hit him with a sprint as soon as I could. He seemed to have some brains too as he started to edge towards the inside corridor wall, attempting to block my path.

The walling were those metal crowd control barriers that stand on feet that jut out though, meaning he couldn't get a clean line against the wall. I'm an Australian and we win by taking advantage of everything we can. So in true John Bertrand fashion, I started my steeplechase career and just skipped over the barrier feet, somehow keeping the leg speed to overcome him and get the last two straights clear to myself!

Across the finish line, I received a medal. I've mentioned how I used to find medals as demeaning because it symbolised how little pride I had in my effort and the disappointment within myself that I hadn't prepared or tried hard enough. Well given this medal is the physical evidence of the exact opposite reason to why I hated medals, I'm keeping this sucker!!!!

Self worth confirmed :)

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