Taitung or Bust (Challenge Taiwan 2014)

So today I am finally declaring my intention to the world. On Saturday April 18, I will be competing in my first full ironman distance event (Run by The Challenge Family) in Taiwan.  (http://www.challenge-taiwan.com/en)  More about the event and the venue I will provide in subsequent posts.

The reason that I am so excited about this event and am so keen to talk about it today is because of the fantastic day I had yesterday in preparing for it.  The girls all returned to Sydney about 5 days ago and they have been settling back into their Sydney routine.  Meanwhile I am staying over in Singapore to finish off my work for the year.  As I know I had time available, I laid down Saturday 21 December for a big ride.  My goal: to cover 200 km in a single day.  Any of you familiar with the geography of Singapore will know this entails criss-crossing the island 4 times.

This was a totally crazy goal, as my longest ever ride to date has been about 120 km.  However, if I can not do 200 km at this stage, then I am real trouble come April.  Happily, I did it.  It took about 9 hours with a few stops, but I covered the distance and did it in reasonably good shape.  It was pretty painful, but not as bad as I feared.

This was also set down to be my last ride on my faithful Tri-bike and 2 wheeled companion of the past 3 years.  I picked up my Polygon 450 tri-bike when I first came to Singapore in Feb 2011 and together we have covered almost 9000 km around the Island of Singapore, with a brief sojourn to Bintan.  I am soon to be the proud owner of a De Rosa Cycle when I take delivery from Santa in 3 days!

The Polygon in action

The coolest thing about the day, apart from setting an all time personal distance record, was that on my first circuit of the island as I rode onto Changhi Beach Road, which runs parallel to the Changhi Airport runway, I was joined by another cyclist who struck up a conversation with me. Much to my surprise and delight, he asked me if I wanted to sell my bike.  He is a Tri Coach here in Singapore and he has a young fellow in his squad, who he thought would do well to step up to my bike.  I said, "well this is a coincidence, as this is the last ride I will make on this bike, and I will be very happy to sell"  We stopped up near Changhi Beach, he got my details, sent a photo of my bike to the boy's father and the long and short of it is that I had offloaded my bike by 8:30 pm the same night.

I think that this is an omen, and a very good one at that.  2013 has been a bit tough for me as a triathlete.  Personal bests did not come, I struggled with soreness, particularly in my left knee, but I think I have got most of those issues sorted out.  My swimming is getting stronger, I have a new bike and recently I have been able to put in some good consistent runs.  I am looking forward to the build up to and preparation for Challenge Taiwan, whatever it brings.  And I have had a number of really positive outcomes from my landmark training event giving me a real confidence boost.  April 19 2014, bring it on!