70.3 Singapore

Singapore 70.3 in my Sluggo's



Yes there was a ALOT of HURT during this race. ( more photo's at the bottom )

One more race down for 2012 and i'm heading in the right direction... 6th place is better than my 8th in NZ two week ago.
We flew in late to Singapore for the race, We have been traveling so much over the last two weeks we thought we'd try and get some normality back into our lives and as such decided to leave on friday for the sunday race.

Once we landed I was instantly reminded of the humidity and thought hmmm... "was this a bad choice?".... then i thought " I'm so happy I packed my salt tablets "

On saturday we spent a good portion of the day sorting out our gear and racking our bikes .
Then boom it was race morning and I was doing a walk jog trying not to sweat too much before the race ... I was failing....

It is at this point i thought i'm going to wear my Budgie Smugglers, Speedos, togs, swimmers and however else you want to describe a pair of undie like swimmers...
Why would I do this? good question.... my reason being I thought it was going to be really hot and wanted as little on as possible " goal achieved " Also it was a non wetsuit swim and wearing swimmers under my blueseventy swimskin makes me feel fast

Moving on to the race... It was always going to be a VERY tough swim .. having 3 boys that have lead out of the water in ITU world cups... So pretty much the fastest swimmers in Triathlon.... I can usually hold my own in the front swim pack however today these boys smoked us and had a 2:30 advantage out of the water.
Other than that the swim was pretty smooth ... just rolling the arms over trying to keep the heart rate down as I thought the pace would be on as we hit the bike..

Once out onto the bike... It was Tim Marr, Ollie Whistler , Allessandro and myself.... I didnt have the legs I had in NZ a few weeks earlier which was a shame, could have been the heat or ?? anyway we were riding ok .. but the group of 4 in front was putting time into us and unfortunaltey for us we couldnt response and ended up being 6:30 down off the bike...OUCH!!

Out onto the run and it felt like some one had put me on a treadmill in a huge oven and thrown in some water to make it 90% humidity in my oven.... My face was getting so hot that at every aid station I was throwing electrolite, water and what ever liquid including coke over my head and face.... when I felt a bit cooler I ran better ... but in short.. it was a grovel of a day and I just tryed to keep running.. "one foot in front of the other".
Turns out most people suffered through the day ... So we all shared in the same pain..

All and all it was a good day and perfect practice for the races I have coming up... Only one way to get use to the heat.. train in it and race in it .
It's an exciting start to the season and i'm looking forward to improving and racing more.

Thank-you one again to all my sponsors and supporters..
You are awesome

My Website is going through a few changes and I'm trying to help promote you all, please check out WWW.GUYCRAWFORD.US and http://www.guycrawford.us/news.php let me know what you think.

Thanks
Guy

70.3 New Zealand

Hi All

I'm sitting in the Hawkes Bay region of New Zealand ( Wine country ) thinking about the week gone... What a crazy week it was.
Kate and I flew from Perth where the temperature has been consistently above 35 degrees Celsius into New Zealand where its struggling to get over 18 Degrees Celsius...
We flew here for Ironman NZ; the first IM in the calender year. To cut things short, basically a severe weather warning was issued for the North Island of NZ and the race was cancelled for Saturday. However; not all was lost as they were able to put on a 70.3 for Sunday... ( first ever 70.3 on NZ soil I believe )

Kate and I rolled with the punches, but we felt sorry for the first timers who couldn't get to do their IM.

So race day rolled round and the chilly waters of Taupo "invited" us in for the start at a civilized hour of 7:45am.. YES!!!
Once the gun sounded the pace was on. However everything settled down after about 400M and we rolled round in a group of 8-10 with all the main contenders in touch.



Onto the bike and for the first 10KM the pace once again was hot, a few riders got dropped from the group... Fortunately for me I managed to hold on and the pace settled into a consistently HARD effort..( hope that makes sense )





Coming into town the crowd was awesome... the streets were lined with people and it had a real IM feel to it ...
through T2 the guys were flying... so I thought "it's a no sock day" as I didn't want to lose touch.... With Tim Reed and Terenzo starting at 3:15 K pace I thought it best to stick with my race plan and ended up holding 3:50 K's for the duration of the run...However the choice to wear no socks was definitely a bad one as I ended up with huge blisters on my feet.... on the plus side I have named them.. hahah

In the end I finished 8th , but a happy 8th.. The season is early , but the body feels good and I'm confident I will only get faster from here.




RESULTS

1. Marino Vanhoenacker - 3.55:03
2. Timothy Reed - 3.55:51
3. Cameron Brown - 3.56:38
4. Romain Guillaume - 3.58:03
5. Aaron Farlow - 3.58:57
6. Marko Albert - 4.00:43
7. Terenzo Bozzone - 4.01:51
8. Guy Crawford - 4.03:29
9. Jamie Whyte - 4.12:05
10. Shanon Stallard - 4.14:46

I'm excited about 2012, thanks to you all for your support

Thanks and talk soon