The weekend started with a mild panic as I went to register and was asked where my racing licence was. My what!?!? I was not allowed to register without it and I had visions of our weekend being spent as spectators rather than competitors. I contacted Claire and she called the HKTriA, which thankfully sorted the whole thing out. Phew. There were four of us from Hong Kong doing the race Claire Murray, Jeremy Sheldon, Graeme Torre and myself, Rebecca Kynaston.

On race morning, the weather was hot and fine, but not nearly as humid as Hong Kong. The sea was pretty cold, so it was a wetsuit swim. The start of the swim was divided into the times the racers imagined they would complete the race. Claire suggested I go to the top category, 1.02, and said I was capable of it……I didn’t really believe her so I compromised and chose the 1.06 category instead of the 1.10. The swim start was fine and felt a lot less crowded than I had imagined and I received far fewer shoves and kicks than I have in much less populous races. Well I thought it was all going fine until I received a jelly fish sting and apparently my body couldn’t handle the resultant adrenaline rush and I had a full on panic attack and had to swim breast stroke and backstroke for about five minutes. Everyone around me must have hated me. Plenty of swimmers went past and once the panic was over I had to overtake all the slower ones again. Claire and Graeme both got stung as well, Claire across the face! At the end of the swim we were all delighted with our swim times, Claire did a PB of 51, I did 1:00, Graeme did 1:05 and Jeremy did 1:19……so turns out Claire was right, I was capable of a quick swim.

The bike started innocuously enough with a flat stretch for about 20km until we reached the first aid station, possibly the worst managed drink stop of the whole race. I didn’t manage to get a drink, which in retrospect might have been a good thing as there was a 800m climb almost immediately afterwards with a 10% gradient. I didn’t find the climb a particular challenge, it was more the bottleneck it created. I had visions of toppling off as some people were going much slower and creating a fairly impressive domino effect with everyone around me. I got to the top without incident and we were off again. The course then starts going up and up and up and up. It seemed to me that we continued going up until about the 140 kilometre mark. I have a vague recollection of a small descending area somewhere before that but it didn’t last long. Even when the road looked flat, it wasn’t. Ouch. The scenery was spectacular though. Thank goodness several people had reminded me to look around otherwise I would have probably have spent the entire bike leg looking at the asphalt and muttering profanities.

There were plenty of supporters in the villages and along the roadsides who were terrific. I found that as one of about only 100 females on the course out of a field of 1100, I was cheered on with extra enthusiasm. Our race numbers had our names printed on them, so I had plenty of “Allez Rebecca Allez!”……yeah, yeah, I’m trying!!

The final stretch of the bike leg included about 40km of descent – about time! I had already felt woefully inadequate on the ascent as all the experienced legs flew past me at a rate of knots and this wasn’t going to change on the descent. These people were nuts! Plenty of people were speeding past me and taking really sharp turns without touching their brakes. I was totally pathetic and braked all over the place, but once I’d seen a few ambulances hauling people away after some bad crashes that was a good enough reinforcement for me. Jeremy must have been approaching the descents with the gust of the locals combined with the excitement of his new bike as he took a tumble and damaged his thigh, his bike and his bike shorts…not to mention a little pride! He did at least avoid having to be ambulanced off and finished the race in a great time.

The run segment was a little tedious for the competitors but good for spectators as it was a 10.5km loop along the Promenade des Anglaise, which we had to run four times. The one plus for having a short loop like that meant that the entire length of it was crowded with cheering spectators, who really pushed you along. There was a group of English girls in pink cowboy hats with pompoms, who cheered me on like they were my best friends. The support provided by Joss, Alex, Alex’s friends, Chantal and Hen as well as my parents, husband and baby were all invaluable through the run and improved my time no end as there was no way I was going to do any walking anywhere near them!

It was all over not a moment too soon at 12:10:31…….What a feeling running up the finish shoot! There is nothing like the feeling of accomplishment you get after crossing that line. I am an Ironman!

Rebecca Kynaston