Jeanette Wang is fastest Singaporean woman at Ironman 70.3

By Les Tan/Red Sports. Additional photos by Lai Jun Wei/Red Sports.

Jeanette Wang

Jeanette Wang, Singapore’s fastest Ironman. (Photo 1 © Les Tan/Red Sports)

Jeanette Wang finished as the fastest Singaporean woman at the Ironman 70.3 Singapore last Sunday, March 22nd, 2009. She did the 1.9km swim, 90.1km bike and 21km run in 5 hours 29 minutes and 46 seconds.

Jeanette also completed the legendary Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii in 2006, setting a national record of 12:09:38. She finished 13th in the women’s 18-24 age category. She qualified for Kona when she won her her age-group category in her debut at the the 2006 Jeju Ironman in Korea.

In 2007, the went even faster at the Langkawi Ironman, clocking 12:03:30. She finished second in her age-group and missed qualifying for a second trop to Kona by about 10 minutes.

She also competed under the nation’s flag at the 24th South-east Asia Games in Pattaya, Thailand. She finished 7th in the duathlon.

Jeanette is a Nanyang Technological University and Raffles alumni and played netball at national level before the triathlon bug bit her.

When not running, she runs after stories as a sports journalist.

Here is the account of her race on Sunday in her own words.
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By Jeanette Wang

The last triathlon race I did was last year’s Aviva Ironman 70.3 Singapore in September, and I kicked off this year with the same race (they shifted it to March) on Sunday.

It is easy to get a bit rusty when it comes to triathlon if you haven’t been doing it awhile. Seemingly insignificant things like packing for a race and setting up transition takes more than double the usual amount of time instead of being second nature when I used to race at least once every month when I was representing Singapore.

Even more so when it comes to finding your running legs off the bike. If like me you haven’t been practising what they call “brick training” (biking and running simultaneously in training), then it makes running after the bike even harder.

To be honest, my focus at the start of the year has been the Sundown Ultramarathon on May 30th, for I’m defending my title in the 84km race. So, the focus of my training lately has been running. In the three weeks leading up to Sunday’s race, I probably swam a total of 10km and only biked a measly four hours.

Work and my birthday celebrations meant missing my 100-odd km bike rides on Saturdays and I have been building up to my biggest training weeks for running – I ran 80km in the week prior to the race along with about 4km of swimming and 2 hours of biking. Oh, that plus a day job.

So when asked to list the highlight of the Aviva Ironman 70.3 Singapore, for me, I would actually list the whole race.

To begin with, I surprised myself in the swim. I was first off the line, first to plunge into the water and managed fourth out of the water. I’m not known to be a fast swimmer (I only started swimming front crawl at age 18) so being among the leaders after a swim was pretty foreign to me. Things were made even more eventful by a jellyfish sting on my right wrist and my entire left arm during the swim. But I have a pretty high pain threshold so the burning didn’t get me down too badly.

Buoyed by confidence from the swim, the bike went pretty well too. I recall I struggled on the 90km course last year, but this year it flew by quite quickly. Perhaps it was the perfect, cool overcast conditions. I focused on keeping a good pedal stroke and high cadence, and before I knew it, the bike leg was over.

Finally, the run, the only leg where I was feeling a bit more confident about. But not doing any brick training negated whatever running legs I had, at least for the first few kilometres. So, I took small, quick strides to begin with, allowing my body to select the pace. Eventually, my legs began to flow naturally and I felt like I was cruising. Once again, the 21km run seemed to go by pretty quickly.

Some 5h 29min later, I was home.

I guess I was lucky I avoided the thumb tacks that had been strewn along the bike course, allegedly in an attempted sabotage of the race. A girl who had been closing in on me did not managed to escape the shiny silver objects and punctured. My sympathies goes out to her and everyone else who were victims of the prank taken too far.

The supporters seemed to be out in greater force this year, probably in part to watch reigning Ironman world champ Craig Alexander and triathlon legend Chris McCormack. The cheers each time I passed Big Splash were definitely uplifting.

Overall, the Aviva Ironman 70.3 Singapore was a very successful outing for me. Given I only signed up for the race two weeks before, I can’t complain about the outcome.

What’s next for me? The May 30 Sundown Ultramarathon. Recovering from that, from last year’s experience, takes about two months. I’ve not yet planned what I will do after that big race, because I have to see how my body responds and recovers. But I will definitely be racing the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Clearwater, Florida in November (by virtue of qualifying at Sunday’s race). I’m also tinkering with the idea of racing December’s Ironman Western Australia in Busselton. Ever since qualifying for the 2006 Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, I’ve been dreaming of returning to triathlon’s holy grail ever since. The only way to do so is to do an Ironman.

But, I guess the Sundown race is really the big one for me this year. I prefer to pick and choose and train well for big races, rather than race small races week in and week out. Long course triathlon also calls for longer build up and longer recovery, so I have to be very selective in what I race.

For this week, though, I will be having some good rest and active recovery, before resuming my ultramarathon training.

Jeanette Wang