Sweet and Sour Chris McDonald IM China RR

HI Guys,

well as many of you know I headede to China this past weekend to start my 2010 season with another crack at IM China after suffering from two flats there back in 2008 .
I was excited to race both Macca and Luke McKenzie in such a tough race , However it was over before it began.

10 days before the race I had a treatment on my lower back that actually put me in a lot of pain . I was confident that it would be fine and made my way to Haikou 7 days before the race . Ultimately two days before the race I was still in pain and decided to swap to the Ironman 70.3

Having prepared to race and IM this was kind of sour ! However I was lucky that there was a 70.3 happening on the same day so that was sweet!

I headed into to 70.3 with an open mind and hoped that everything would be fine with the back.

After watching the Ironman start and cheering for our friends we had a very reasonable 9am start time. I had a solid start and managed to get on the feet of the lead swimmer and hold my place in line for the entire swim .
Onto the bike and it was a Howler! As I ran through transition and jumped on the bike I watched one of the transition tents get blown over. my first thought was maybe one lap of this bike course might be a good thing :-)
The next was put your head down and build a gap . I had not done any real hard riding in training for a 70.3 as I was expecting to race the IM and I knew that it was going to be a race of the last man standing not really the "fastest" athlete.
I felt pretty good considering and managed to build a lead of 4 :30 over Freddy ( eventual winner )
We hit the run and it was HOT! I knew right away that I had Ironman pace and that was it . I was passed by Freddy at the 15 km mark and just had to stick to my Ironman shuffle and get to the finish line in 2nd place .

It certainly was a frustrating week having to switch races but I was happy to take 2ND place in the 70.3 and look forward to a big year ahead.
Next up is Super frog half IM in San Diego and then onto Ironman St George.

Thank you for all your help and lets look forward to a great year.

P.S the back ended up fine and the treatment was worth it long term:-)

Cheers Chris