This year my first triathlon race of the season is the Mediterranean Epic Half, a middle-distance race near Oropesa Del Mar in Spain.
hello haven’t made video in a while but um yeah to The Day After Tomorrow is race day and it’s my first triathlon of 2024 I’m in Spain I’m going to be racing a Mediterranean epic half Mediterranean epic HFF which is a race happening in a town called orapa Delmar I just drove to to the town to the venue and this is going to be the main stretch of the road that will take us to the bike course to the main bike course and then on the way back there’s going to be two loops and now basically I’m coming off sickness I haven’t been training properly for the last week but uh yeah I’m trying to get fresh to the race and today is the goal to just see the actual loop I know that it’s going to be not super flat there’s 750 m of elevation for 85 km I think uh and um there’s going to be two laps that are completely the same and for the first something around 15K we’re going to be climbing then there should be a flat section in in the middle and then we’re coming back like flat again and then uh downhill so the goal for today is not to do anything crazy not to get super tired it’s just to ride the course and see um how slow will we be going uphill and then how much speed can we get on the downhill it’s pretty straight so I think that probably it should be a relatively relatively fast up and downhill and here’s a nice intersection so here we’re going to be turning left and getting out of the Town first 8 minutes in and it’s super nice like the road is actually very flat and smooth and straight I had to ride two climbs which were like Bridges for I don’t know like two 200 M maybe not more so nothing special so far but we are going to be going somewhere up there but the biggest gradient should be not more than 10% on like a very short section I think so we’ll see I’m catching up on someone who I think is also getting ready for the race so now going through the main climb right now I’m at 1.2% gradient I was just riding uh 2 and 1 half% and so basically it’s not hard I will probably try to Target around High Zone 2 sorry no high Zone 3 on the climb so something around 260 280 WTS probably on the climb and you can go like now the grade is 2.7 and I’m going 24 25k an hour at 260 270 Watts so you can go fast so I’m going to be staying on the Arrow bars basically throughout the whole route so far it’s really really nice like the views are amazing I keep climbing and there was only one section where I had to go to the small ring so far everything is super smooth like the road goes so gradually uphill that’s on the race day I would be just riding all the way on Arrow bar I’m not sure about the Descent because it’s actually not super straight I mean of course it is ridable on the Arrow bars but if I can also spin the pedals and if I change gears a lot because I don’t have a TT bike I’m probably going to be staying on the drops what’s interesting there’s a few sections here where they have kind of noisy paint and then there’s a bridge uh with just a concrete on the top the quality is pretty bad but so they have this paint and they have speed bombs so you know when it’s coming but actually it’s quite sketchy so I’m very happy that I’m riding the course now because tomorrow tomorrow no the day after tomorrow it’s good to know like what’s coming and more steeper section coming and here comes the climb I’m riding around 5% gradient now and it just slightly kicks up and it looks like this is the only kind of steep section I already ascended 200 M and there’s going to be 350 per lap so so majority of it is not noticeable really it’s not going to fly super fast but it’s not going to be super hard either and it’s such a nice place and I’m all done with the clam now what’s supposed to be is just a completely or almost almost flat section back and forth and then descending the same route and on the Saturday we’re going to do this twice right now I feel like I’m already going yeah I’m going quick so it’s yeah it’s flat it’s nice going to stay in Arrow bars the views are very nice and the climb wasn’t that hard like I started a little bit less far today because I live like on the road but I managed to the top of the climb in 30 35 minutes which is and it’s not it’s not that bad I mean of course it’s not half the loop but uh there’s going to be not that much more coming because there’s a big flat section and then we turn turned back in yeah I think 5K then I’m turning back and then going descending so that’s going to be it uh also this morning I went for a swim which is an interesting point I haven’t been swimming for a week after being sick I did 10 times 100 m and then every third 6th and 9th I did hard efforts so the first one was actually tough I did 13 5 which is I mean it’s not a fast 100 for me but then the last I did 130 so the body is recovering that seems nice and coming to the turnaround Point AR roma [Applause] roma ride around that thing and then go back so the guys who are going to be doing full distance they have 60k La laps and there then they’re going to continue climbing further but we’re going to just turn around here and now let’s see I have 47 minutes up I’m going to see how much time do I need to get downo and I’m almost done riding through the town I have I think a few hundred meters left to the house but uh yeah so the lap I’m doing is 1 hour 20 minutes for the race I would be happy if I do it in maybe like 110 so let me see right now I’m averaging a little bit over 30k an hour on the race I want to do 35 36 uh yeah but we’ll see I mean there was more to give today for sure especially in the early stages of the climb and I know that there is no really scary parts of it so there’s no reason to really save the legs on the climb because there’s nothing super critical coming up so yeah it should be good to go and uh I think I’m going to try to record something on the race day but we’ll see anyways like subscribe and you know like everything the usual now I need to find where my family is to get the keys from the house very weird place super empty Like A Zombie Land I just finishing with a small comment on arar it’s very interesting place uh it looks like a just like a bunch of hotels on the seashore and yeah and that’s pretty much it and there is no one around here so I think it’s not really the season yet so everything looks super empty and like all the roads all the streets there’s just no one around and yeah but all the buildings are huge because it’s like hotels so very interesting to yeah to see it I got the race [Music] number now just need to walk through the Expo prepare the bike and um yeah and leave it for the transit area Okay so after speaking to a guy uh I decided to leave my bike uh just as it is without any tools without helmet because it it looks like it might rain a little bit overnight and so of course having anything wet in the morning is not is not nice Before the Race So the trick is that everyone or not everyone but a lot of people are Federated so they are members of the Spanish triathon feder a as amateurs and here they get their own chip which they carry with them throughout the year so for every race they have their own chip that they just bring with them and they don’t get one when they sign up and uh on my previous race the problem was that after I finished I didn’t know where to uh where to give it away like because everyone had their own and everyone was like yeah I don’t know I I I I got my own chip so it was a problem to actually uh return it to the organizers because no one knew who to give it to so yeah now I have the answer and this is yeah this is the sea it it looks much better when it’s morning um tomorrow it should be sunny it should be quite warm and yeah we’ll see how it how it will play out I feel very fresh uh I ended up running a little bit for like 20 minutes today and we went carting with the family which was quite quite nice so yeah not a very active day which is good for the free race day good morning it’s 6:40 race day uh today I decided for the first time not to have breakfast first thing in the morning I just woke up had a coffee picked all the stuff I have and I’m going to a transition area it opens in 5 minutes for an hour to get everything ready and today we have the full distance like the Iron Man length distance starting first at 8:00 a.m. and then my start which is like non Federate at 70.3 half distance we’re starting at uh 8:45 sorry no 9:45 so I decided that it doesn’t make sense to have breakfast more than 3 hours before so I’m going to transition then I’m going home and then I’m just going to show up at the start line which is I think this is the best thing I’ve done before that you can um yeah you can prepare the bike and then go back home leave the stuff you don’t need and then only show up for for the race so Al done I think I put on I decided to lube the chain R was likee yeah all done this way I’m going to run for the bike then after the bike I keep having a feeling that I forgot something I mean racing before I was racing like eight times a year and this is completely different thing when there’s almost mus muscle memory for even preparing the bike and yeah today it’s my first race since 6 months and then before that my last race was a year before that so I’m not really racing frequently and I’m not planning to get racing more frequently like this year I maybe will do another one or maybe two triathlons which is uh yeah for the for the 70.3 distance that is actually fine probably because it allows to be in good shape for each but uh yeah but I’m not really doing the short ones which I do a lot and they they allow to prepare well for the yeah for the old administrative side stuff around it when in transition you don’t really think about anything anymore you just run through it and yeah on my previous race I lost my bike and today yeah I think everything should be fine but I’m not sure like we’ll have to see during the race like I I forgot the rubber bands that will already slow me down all ready my start is in 15 minutes and um yeah I cannot be any more ready than I am now I think just left to drop off the bag and uh yeah the rest is all done [Applause] woo so I’m done um it was not easy after all so the swim went actually very it went very well but it was a very adventurous swim so the time is actually pretty bad um I finished in 37 minutes but according to my watch like the GPS track I swam extra like 150 M at least which I think is actually true because there were like the waves were big enough that you cannot see anything so I was going actually quite quite okay I was I’m I’m happy with like pacing and and the way I was moving from forward but I I just could not see where I was going and um and basically I could see people in front I could see the boy maybe 50 m when it was uh in front but not not much more then with the bike I’m actually quite happy the bike was very strong like the uphills and the the descends I think I managed pretty well um uh in terms of the power it was not that high but I think the speed from power was not that bad for the course today and I was overtaking like many many people on the bike what I think went um went well also is like nutrition side I I took I think it was 230 G of carbs for 2 and 1 half hours of the bike so that like went very well but uh basically by the end of the bike like the end of the second lap I was feeling that like the head is not that clear anymore not that like I felt bad but that I actually needed to focus on to pay attention to like to make sure I ride safe and like I it just felt as like small extra effort to um yeah to pay attention to the road so uh yeah I mean I I was sick just a week ago I had fever so I think that was just not um like not recovered yet and then when I went to the run I started not too fast I started maybe around 445 450 per kilometer and I was feeling that this is probably my best pace for today because I just don’t feel like it’s going to go anywhere not because like I was sore not because I was like I had any lack of energy Just Energy but not not the kind of energy that is like from carbs and fueling but more that just overall body was not ready to to to perform so I I decided that I’m going to just go slow I’m like the goal was to just enjoy everything so I went slow and then I walked every eight St station I just took some water I didn’t really want to eat anymore because I was not going to run any faster and I was like I just just had plenty of carbs so yeah just proceeded like that and finished with my slowest run in a few years probably for a 17.3 so like the Run itself was 1 hour 50 minutes and I did run like hour and a half half half marathons in in the distance in the tron and then I ran 125 just half marathon so that was just not the day I should have I could have potentially been running 415 or so per kilometer and I did slower than 5 minutes I think the average was like 520 including the walk breaks but um yeah that felt like this was the kind of day I had uh and uh after being sick I think it was yeah it was just a a normal way to finish it um so yeah the total time is like 5:06 which doesn’t really mean anything um because yeah having 2 hour 30 minutes on the bike and then 150 On The Run it’s not it’s not really a race anymore uh but yeah but the bike was really enjoyable and I think that uh if I felt good I could have probably had more power in the legs to push up the hill especially for the second lap but uh yeah it is what it is I’m I’m quite happy I think it’s it’s nice and I can see a train which this one’s probably going from Valencia to um to Barcelona or terragona or something like that anyway that’s like the weekend done I’m yeah drawing the stuff and tomorrow morning we’re going to Valencia and then back home to yeah to to get there so yeah actually a week from now I’m going to do a super long ride which is interesting um I I’m not going to tell about it now I’m going to try to make a video about it and Le’s let’s see what happens there and for now I just going to recover for that