Aaron's Race report- Krabi Thailand

The drive from Phuket to Krabi was about two and a half hours, which was short and scenic; it was the first time in Krabi, so it was great to get out of Phuket and experience somewhere different; arriving Friday afternoon at the hotel was what looked like an old kings palace was pleasant, I unpacked the car and thought id do a real small swim just to turn the arms over, my training loads had been big the last four months compared to being home in Australia, but these last two weeks I offloaded for this race mainly because the fatigue in my legs takes so long to drain out, many people disagree with this. Still, before a race, less is so much more on race day.....

 The Friday night food and entertainment were amazing as always in Thailand; you seriously can go anywhere and not worry about getting some fresh local foods, my new pre-race in green curry, papaya salad and race if I can't get my usual salmon and roasted veggies and maybe a mango sticky rice and coconut icecream for desert:) We hung around till about 10 pm and then headed off to the rooms after discussing the prerace training early morning.

The Saturday morning conditions were great with flat water and no wind, we did a little swim adding a few 20 stroke efforts followed by a ride on the bike course to familirize my self, then a quick 15 mins run just to turn the legs over, thats it done..... headed back to my room for the breakfast I brought with me and a little work to do, having only a smoothie for lunch and an amazing one hour foot massage that I actually fell asleep during was the perfect touch, race breifging and registration was at 4pm followed by supporting fellow team mates in the 4km beach run which was good to watch.

Race day, no nerves, just excitement and can't wait to get it started, my usual warm-up after bike racking and then headed down to swim for what suppose to be six starts. Still, you can be sure in Thailand nothing is ever on time, no buoys on this swim but long-tail boats that they were trying to organise in a triangle position WTF seriously this was going to go bad......

 The race started at about 6:25 am. I got a good start as always; the last month, id been focusing on the streamline in the pool of the wall, which proved to pay off also in my duck dives in the shallow water before we could swim, being at the front in the first two hundred I knew I needed to hang on to get the draft and good swim time, as we came up to the first right-hand turn there seemed to be some confusion every one turned at the front of the boat WTF I didn't even think twice and just followed dong my best to stay on the feet, turning again in front of the next right turn heading back to shore, anyway, to say the least, the swim was unorganised and not controlled enough to maintain consistency between all athletes.

Anyway, getting out of the water and heading on the bike, I didn't feel great for the first 20kms but knew I wanted a good run, so didn't need to destroy myself being in 3 rd overall positions I needed to be smart about not overriding, the bike course was good with some good technical sections, some rolling hills and fast slight downhill on way back, Each turn around I could see my two teammates on first and second positions, so I knew what I had to do, the last turn around and the 10kms ride back I decided to give it some power holding a good 55kms in some sections keeping it smooth and steady with a good cadence was important not to blow the legs too much, on the very last turn around I caught a teammate in the second position, and we practically rode tghe last few km together, coming off the bike in 1:01mins was the fastest split for the day:)

Now the run, over the last 3 months id really worked on my 10kms race pace run with so many variations in what would work best for me on race day, I've never been a good run off the bike and struggle to hold good speed on the back end of the ten km, but honestly, I didn't need to go super deep to finish in third overall but still pleased with how I ran I've still got a lot of work to do to get that time down near 40mins, but something I'm working on, the conditions on the run suited me very well with a bit of rain and not too hot, I focused on adapting to the pain in the start with good technique and cadence with efficiency which worked well, coming over the line in third overall position 2:11:52 and a little prize money too to pay for petrol.

It was fantastic to share the podium with teammates; big thanks to everyone who cheered us on, and more significant thanks to Jurgen Zack,  Z-coaching, for the training and motivation.

The next race is two weeks in Patthulung; coming down with a flu testing negative today (Tuesday) so hoping to recover in time to perform well and get another podium.

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