Aaron's Laguna Phuket Triathlon 1.8km/55km/12km

When I first came to Phuket back in April, I wanted this race to be my A race as I never did it before; 6 months of training meant I was going to be in the best shape possible, but that was not the case eight weeks before I was sick and then got ill again three weeks later (maybe covid IDK) two weeks out I had a bad accident where a motorbike pulled right in front of me on my TT bike, unbelievable I walked away with no injuries (just whip lash five days later) and no damage to the bike. Still, the two old Thai ladies I went through at 45 km did not get up. So as you can imagine, with this incident, I wasn't training much (oh, did I mention I got stung by a bee, and my eye closed over due to swelling)

 With all that behind me, I did my best to visualise a good race, but sometimes my body knew I wasn't recovering well from little training sessions; people just kept telling me im getting old; WTF? I refuse to let the old man in :)

On a positive note, I knew the bike course so well after riding it thirty times in the last six months; the hills can be brutal if you're not prepared.

Race day

waking up at 4:30 am is never really fun, but it's what we do; we set up a transition and wanted to do a run but weren't many areas to time as we needed to catch the boat over the lagoon.

The start line consisted of about thirty pros and elite age groupers; I knew I needed to find some feet to get a good swim, I knew who I needed to start behind, so I found my place; I held the feet for first three hundred metres then got dropped (FUCK) It was a lonely swim to the shoreline where we needed to run over the sand hill into the lagoon with another five metres or so, this is where I started to feel comfy with some long strong relaxed strokes, coming out the water into T1 was smooth with a quick transition jumping on the bike and started making the way through the technical course until i hit the highway where I knew I could put the power down consistently with 42-44kms , earlier on i dropped one of my bottles which had all my nutrition in it, lucky I could pick up a bottle of pocari electrolytes to keep me fuelled, the first hill was not easy but I paced my self not to push too hard but deceded as fast as i could knowing the course gave me the advantage to hit 75kms down hill the final hill I got passed by a few training partners but managed to come back on down hill, I reallly enjoyed the bike very different to any other course, T2 was fast I started slow but rolled my ankle on the soft glass on first km but it wasn't a problem, I started the run steady 4:30 pace and increased pace slightly after three km man it was getting so hot and at six km my body was failing my run technique was shit but I knew there was people behind me ready to pass, I focused my mind on staying strong and remembering what its like in my 10kms tempo runs on friday's with the group, the ice sponges and the pocari drinks were amazing keeping me going, coming over the finish line in 2:58:25  was ok time considering but feeling that I could do better but not today as I gave it all I had.

Thanks to Jurgen for the training and all the Z coaching team for their support.