Shane Barrie - Amakusa Race

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Category: Shane Barrie

This was my third time to Japan and I always enjoy coming here. It’s such a friendly, quiet and clean country to visit and the hospitality we receive is second to none.

The swim venue for the swim was heavily affected by what the tide was doing so the first time I went down to Hondo Beach, there was literally no water. That would have been interesting! But the organisers had high tide synchronised and it was a beach start for the race. This brought me back to my surf life saving days and was able to get off to a good start. I hit the front of the swim at the 200m mark and lead for the remainder of the 2‐lap swim by 10 sec over the next competitor and 20sec over the little breakaway pack.

I headed out onto the first hill of the ride flying solo after a comfortable T1. Five athletes caught up and we were pushing hard to keep this group away but a second group of seven athletes were not far behind so we waited and formed a solid front pack. It was an out and back bike course so it wasn’t the most challenging. This made the front pack roll smooth turns for the remainder of the bike along the coast with an average of 45km/h. With the hill again just before T2 it was important to make sure you stayed near the front to ensure no chaos in transition – I did this coming in the top five.

The run was a challenging with three major hills and another smaller include so no one wanted to head out at a cracking pace. A group of seven were together for the first 4km with 2 athletes going off the front down a major hill to open up a gap. Personally, I thought it was suicide for them and we would catch them later on but they held strong at the back end of the race. Meanwhile, I was running in a group of 4 feeling good so with 3km to go I opened up and tried to break the others and get that podium. Unfortunately I only broke one and I faded a little in the last kilometre to finish 5th. I’m happy I left it all out there and still getting some decent points to move up in the ITU rankings.

It was another step in the right direction and I’m feeling more and more confident/comfortable/aggressive about this ‘racing’ thing. Thank you to everyone for there messages and well wishes. It means a lot. I have a week of recovering before putting the toes on the start again on Sunday in Gamagori, Japan.

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