Ironman Malaysia – Long roads in Langkawi

My plan to do a second full-distance triathlon four months after the first one sorta-kinda-almost worked.

Ironman Hamburg in June was flat and fast and (by UAE standards) cool and I had done a full, measured build where my TrainingPeaks had a lot of green and almost no red.

Ironman Malaysia in October was none of those things.

For UAE-based triathletes, Langkawi is a perfect place to race. It’s easy to get to: 6 hours to Kuala Lumpur and a 1-hour connecting flight. The scenery is lush (with a bike course that runs through a UNESCO forest park); the sea swim is in a very picturesque lagoon (no waves) and the run is flat and mostly along the side of the sea (like Kite Beach…er…sorta). The temperature is cooler than Dubai too (28-32C), although the humidity averaged 85% for my four days there. It even rained. And we love it when it rains in Dubai.

For an Ironman 70.3 – Langkawi was perfect this year. One lap of everything with a nice refreshing rainstorm to cool you down and take off the humidity at the start of the run. But for those of us doing the full distance, the hour of tropical storm happened in the middle of the bike and sun was burning again for the start of the marathon. Happy days, if you like long runs in hot, sweaty weather.

Planning for failure

I chose Langkawi because I wanted to try and qualify for Kona in Oct 2024 and I wanted to do it early. I was in good shape in June after Hamburg, which I’d finished feeling I could have gone faster, and figured I could improve that fitness through the summer where I also had the Ironman 70.3 Worlds in August. (Spoiler alert: I missed Kona by one roll-down spot, 3 mins behind a Japanese guy who had chatted to me about his export business on one of the hills earlier in the race….who said competitors can’t be friends?).

The reality though was that the summer was more disrupted than I thought it was going to be with travel for work and in particular to Saudi Arabia which meant that a lot of my core training weekends were disrupted. On the upside I was fit and got through the day in Langkawi fine, but without much oomph. My takeaway is that if you are going to target an “A race”, don’t pick one where you know you are going to have significant disruption in your schedule. If you know you are going to have to undercook more than 20% of your training in the 3 months before, you should probably pick another race.

Let’s roll

Malaysia was a good race. I love racing and I enjoyed this one. I finished in 11h08; fifth in age group (50-54) and 36 out of 450 overall. I wasn’t expecting to go slower than 11 hours – even with the heat and humidity and 1300m of  climbing on the bike I thought I’d be 30 minutes faster at least. Obviously you always hope for a better performance/faster time/higher position. But all sorts of factors influence outcomes and here is my list of excuses:

Swim 

Langkawi’s swim is brilliant; in a beautiful setting with sheltered water. With 28C water temps I just swam in my tri suit, figuring that the potential minute a swim skin might save me I’d lose getting it off in transition. I got the intensity pretty well and my stroke held up well all through for average pace of 1m53/100m…only a couple of mins slower than Hamburg in a wetsuit. My sighting was good and there were loads of buoys. I didn’t manage to get on anyone’s feet (as usual). I’m still learning how to swim so I have lots of stroke thoughts on long swims: body line….rhythmic kick…. breathing low in the pocket….keeping the stroke long….relaxed arm recoveries etc. I took a drink of water on the Aussie exit, defogged goggles on way back into the water. Plenty of swimming over breaststrokers on both laps. They are hard to see!

I stubbed my second toe running into T1 (and broke it I discovered later). It was quite painful for the rest of the day. Still a quick transition though!

Bike

Ah – the bike. If ever something goes wrong it is on the bike….I seem to have done 75% of my races with something not working. I’ve learned to cultivate an attitude of acceptance. In this race had a lot of challenges with bike mechanics….all avoidable.

Langkawi’s hills are testing. The ups are short and steep and people were walking on a couple of them. I was envious of the road bikes (which a lot of people used). My TT bike isn’t fast up a hill. In retrospect, I wouldn’t have taken the disc wheel. My rear cassette is a 28/10 – I was using the granny gear. I’m glad it wasn’t a 25/10. At one point I was going 5kmph.

After two punctures in Finland, I’d got set up with tubeless tires for this race but with 28s not 25s and they were too big for the frame!!!! Added some extra pressure on the day before the race. While getting the tires done, the mechanic pointed out that the front brake cable was too short which was causing the mechanism to rub the tire….and…. one of the rear brake arms wasn’t releasing after braking. This last one was an issue, because during the race it was basically stuck in place and I had to get off 3 times to pull it off the rim…fun riding up those hills with a brake holding you back! Once I remembered which was the front brake lever (I can’t remember the last time I had to use a brake properly in Dubai), I just used that on the downhills in the second half.

The downhills in Langkawi are not technical, the steeper bits are straight with long runouts, mostly leading on to the next hill. The roads on half the course were quite rough: those 28 tires would have been nice. The screw on my onboard hydration fell out and the bladder kept bouncing out on the rough roads. (I’m not sure how necessary carrying 3kg of onboard hydration was – there are so many aid stations you could easily just do this race with just a couple of bottles.) A part of the course was also not closed to traffic, which made of a couple of close passes but provided opportunities to slipstream cars and overtake scooters, which is fun.

My bike computer didn’t work during the race…I had done a system update the night before, but I’d already checked the bike and I didn’t get to re-sych with my power pedals or HR strap. So when I athletically and powerfully got on the bike I had no numbers! The timer came on; the power came on but then got stuck; the distance didn’t seem quite right (read 187km at the end) and the HR was only showing readings occasionally.

So I did the whole thing on feel.

While doing things on feel is ok, I think on the long races having a power number (or speed number) in front of you helps focus your effort – it’s a long time to be riding with no stimulus. Afterwards I realised after that my watch was taking the numbers…. NP was much lower (175W v 200w) than I was aiming for. Blah: I was drinking beer in the bar at the finish line by that point. 5h40 for the bike.

Nutrition

I took 500g of carbohydrates during the bike leg – 3x Maurten bars, 2x PH 90 sachets and the rest in PH liquids. Also took 4 bottles of the Gatorade Isotonic from aid stations. It would be worth getting used to Gatorade a bit in training as that is what Ironman races serve up. I don’t have a problem eating on the bike. And reading about Dan Plews becoming the first age grouper to go sub-8 in Ironman only eat 1 gel in the marathon, maybe eating on the run isn’t so important anyway.

Run 

I’d run a bit more over the summer than before Hamburg including some in heat so I felt I might go a bit stronger than the 3h49 of Hamburg. The plan was to go out at target pace (around 4m50s per km) and accept that I would fade away. Which is what happened….pretty much immediately.

I just didn’t feel much spring in the legs from the start. The course was 2.5 laps of flat – along the sea (although it’s behind trees and you don’t notice it) and lot of the course is along an airbase….long, straight roads can get into your head at some points. It was hot and super humid during the first 2 hours of the run. I’d got a hat with ice cube holder and loaded up with them to keep me cool, which worked well. Just like in Hamburg I simply didn’t feel like eating. Coke, watermelon, isotonic was the basis of my nutrition. At a couple of points I had some pretzels. The course goes through a town and through the hotel where the finish line is (where I was staying) and the support picked up throughout the event. Running past your hotel room plays strange psychological tricks on your mind when you realise you still have 32kms to go.

I had to take a toilet stop after 32km which probably added 5 minutes to my time, but my guts felt much better after and my final 8km got stronger all the way through as I focused on a rhythmic and lengthening cue to get my hips pushing the ground backwards which sped me up about 20sec/km. The longer brick runs in an IM build up would have been super-helpful to help me realise that I can push through to a faster pace when tired. …. if only I had done them! Never mind. Like in Hamburg, it appears I managed my energy and had plenty of it left at the finish. 4h07 for the marathon and onto the after party, which was long and loud. But that’s another story.