Qujing 70.3

Some drone footage of our waterfall trip, T1 & T2.

The longer the travel, the greater the risk of getting sick. It's a risk I have been willing to take since racing professionally, and even before then. I typically travel quite well and adjust to time zones pretty quickly. This trip was a rare exception, and things went downhill when stepping off the plane in Beijing for my layover.

I started to get a sore throat after I drank some water in the lounge, it was quite weird to go from feeling fine to having a sore throat. From that point on, things just progressively got worse. I ended up spending a lot of time sleeping, did very little training and started to have phlegm coming up after day 1 of being in country.

On top of all of that going on, this race was at elevation, had a pretty tough bike course and the run was nice and flat, but still at 6k feet. I started to come around by race day, but still was far from 100%.

Swim- 27:17

I was pretty happy with my swim here. I swam strong and felt good in the water the whole time, even with it being at elevation. I came out of the water just ahead of Dougal Allen and just behind the eventual winner.

Bike- 2:12:46

I came out of T2 just behind Dougal and the eventual winner, but I just couldn't close the small gap to them and they slowly rode away from me. At the first out and back section I got a split of 2:45 behind the lead group of 5. Power was quite low, but that was expected due to being at elevation, and I didn't let that effect my ride.

Run- 1:32:33

I came off the bike in 7th and the race paid through 6th, so I was just focused on getting into the money. The gap was quite big that I would need to bring back, and I ran hard through 15k. Everyone was holding strong, and Dave Dellow came by me around 12k as he had to serve a penalty on the bike. So back in 8th place with everyone holding strong, I shut it down and just jogged it in the last 6k and called it a day.

Swim- 27:17 / Strava

Bike- 2:12:46 / Strava

Run- 1:32:33 / Strava

Total- 4:16:14

Results: http://eu.ironman.com/triathlon/events/asiapac/ironman-70.3/qujing/results.aspx#axzz4yLTNI275

Once getting back into Oxford I immediately went to the doc as I wanted to make sure I didn't have anything too serious. Come to find out I had a nasty virus and luckily the antibiotics kicked right in and I was feeling better a few days after getting home.

The best part about this trip was the day after the race the local tourism authority took us on quite the journey. I spent a total of 8hrs in the car on Monday, then onto an airplane, but it was well worth it. We drove 3 hours from our hotel to the "Nine Dragon Waterfalls", had an amazing lunch in a local village and then drove 3 hours back to the hotel. Straight from that car, into another car to then drive 2 hours to the airport. Quite the journey, but as you can see from the photos and the video it was well worth it! Big thanks to the Qujing Tourism Authority and the race staff for organizing this for us!