Dan in Vietnam: Week 17 - The Triathlon

Hello everybody, well I could about a few events this week, but one event stands out more than any, and that's simply because it was such an unusual and unexpected event I found myself taking part in. The T

ribob 'Vietnam International triathlon' which included a 1500 metre swim, a 40k bike ride, and a 10k run took place on Saturday the 23rd August, and I found myself agreeing to be part of a relay team, meaning I 'only' had to do the 40k bike ride. now I just want to say that temperatures reach the 40 degree mark here and my ride was at 1500, so for those of you thinking a 40k bike ride doesn't sound so bad, think again... I had to drink so much much water for the race to keep hydrated, I could have filled three swimming pools in one trip to the bathroom! Our team, aptly named 'Hallo Motobike' (the single most heard phrase a tourist hears in Hoi An), consisted of Liz (Australian swimming teacher), Me, and Loc, (one of my vietnamese colleagues). Loc was the star as he not only ran the 10k at lightening speed, he ended with a real sprint finish, where I had been waiting after my ride and my free

massage. The massage seemed like a good idea at the time, but with muscles so cramped up, I wasn't sure what was the most painful, the massage itself, or the last 5k of my cycle! I think I came 78 out of 100+ in the cycle, which considering my brief 3 week training, wasn't half bad. Some of the professional racers had those special carbon bikes and were obviously well into this kind of thing, so I wasn't too disheartened when several people overtook me on the first 5k of my ride... I had been fortunate enough to borrow a half decent 'racing bike' for the day of the race, and to show how nice people are here, they bike was given to me for free by one of the owners of a local cafe/restaurant, who was friends with a friend of Liz. I offered them some money post race for the bike, but it was so nice that they just let me turn up and use the bike. When I returned the bike the next day, I think the guy's wife thought I had just finished the race there and then, as she instantly sat me down at a table and began wiping my face with a towel, it took me a while to explain that I had actually raced yesterday, and the sweat on my face was just a normal days sweat in this heat!

There was a gala dinner that evening with some awards, which consisted an extortionate mount of food, and ridiculously overpriced beer at a big hotel here. I get a little critical of the dinner here simply because the 10k run had been routed just yards away from the hotel and through the opposing local village where the level of poverty is so low, the cost of one night at the hotel could probably feed a family there for a month... still that's the so called progress through tourism eh?!