Port Dickson Triathlon 2011

This was my 1st Triathlon event and what the best way to gain your maiden Triathlon experience than competing in a Team Relay event.

Our team Tadonamo comprises of KC (swimmer), Ziff (cyclist) and yours truly (runner). There’s two category for team relay event; mixed relay and men relay. The distance was an OD (Olympic Distance), Swim (1.5 km), Bike (40km) and Run (10km).

Ziff and i arrived on Saturday afternoon and checked ourselves into Seri Malaysia, just about 5km from race venue (Avillion Admiral Cove). We just missed the official crowning of a certain Diket Menchanak as an Triathlete, he completed the Sprint event that morning – congrats buddy, Ironman Kona awaits you.

We had “mentahkedarah” session at Avillion Club House before the animated briefing by the famous Uncle Chan at 8 pm. I could see that Ziff was somewhat nervous during this time, he even forgot to bring spare tube for his bike. Azmar save his his arse when he brought along few extra spare tubes.

We had early shut eyes as we need to wake up around 5.00 am the following morning.

After the Subuh prayer that morning, we headed straight for the race venue, thankfully we had a good mind to come early as the parking was almost full when we arrived.

Met KC at the entrance and Ziff immediately setup his bike at the transition area, he just bought a new top a day earlier at the race Expo, it suite him perfectly – now he looked more macho than Fahrin Ahmad and Ahmad Lazatsangat :)

After KC had his new tattoo, we all went to the beach for the flag off. It was done in waves, with the Elite and Men Open started the 1st wave and the relay swimmer started last.

Quick briefing before the start by Uncle Chan reveals that most of the good swimmer were taking part in the relay event. Even the Team Relay is a serious matter for some, there were many good teams eying for the top three cash prizes for the event, we on the hand was only concerned on finishing the race within the 4 hours cut off time. KC told me that Kash urged us to complete the race within 3’15” as a target, we really do not know what to expect in terms of finishing time.

The Triathlete crowd is somewhat different from the runners crowd, runners crowd i get, this is a bit different as most of the participant knows what they’re doing – most of them (including the newbie) has competed few events before coming here (either running, bike or swim).

After bidding KC good luck, we made our way to the transition area for our preparations. After more than 30 mins, KC arrived somewhere in the middle. The 1st swimmer completed in 19 mins, what??? that was freaking fast!

Ziff took the timing chip from KC leg and transferred to his leg and off he went chasing the other cyclist. I had chat with Ziff before hand for his estimation of ETA back to the transition area, in the mean time i warm up a bit, drank some Milo and consume a PowerGel.

I was not nervous before, but upon seeing cyclist arrived from their 40m ride, i started to get jumpy, i looked at the watch and it was about 10.00 am and it’s still early for Ziff to complete his cycling duty. When i looked at the next cyclist arrived at the transition area, he looked somewhat familiar – oh oh it was Ziff, he arrived early. He must have pulled some kind of Lance Armstrong magic here!

Good job Ziff, i immediately pushed my way through the crowd and took the timing chip from Ziff’s leg and after secured it nicely around my feet off i went for the running section.

 

It was 10.00 am and it was hot, the sun was up there. I decided to run with a bottle of 100plus, which was a brilliant decision for this race.

The running route took us through the main road before entering trails road along the beach, damn i hate the trails route, it was soft as you ran on sands and grass, which unable me to maintained my earlier pace on the tarmac.

I felt relief as i made my way passed the u-turn in front of Seri Malaysia, no more soft trails, just flat tarmac for the rest of the way. By the way, Uncle Chan brief us that there were 9 WS along the running route, but only 2 of them was fully operational, the other 7 WS was dried up – thankfully i decided to carry the 100+ bottle.

I passed many familiar faces along the way Julie, Kam Kasturi, Jaja. I only managed to catches up with Jaja about 300 meters towards the finish line, she was running strong and congrats Jaja on your sub-3 timing.

I pushed all my reserved energy for the final few meters, finish strong was always my forte. Another reason to complete this as fast as possible was that i was running for my team, and i could not let them down. It was a great finish, we completed in 2’41” , sub-3 finish for our first team relay, not bad at all for our first try.

Men Relay Team # 32 Team Tadonamo
NG KEAT CHEONG |MOHD RAZIF GHAZALI | RAZIF YAHYA
0:31:13 (swim) |1:21:51 (bike) | 0:47:55 (run) | 02:41:51 (total)