Race Coverage

Smog, Smoke & Strange Porta Pottys...

Wednesday, 11 January 2017 23:10

By Heather Lendway (heatherlendway.com)

Hefei 70.3 Race Report - With the purchase of Ironman by the Wanda group based in China, a few pro races were added in China. After a little research on China I decided it could be a worthwhile trip to take.  There were a few hoops to jump through to get a Chinese Visa, including a letter from the entity that invited you to China, receipts for your flight and hotel stay and a new passport photo, so plan in advance if you ever want to go!

I didn’t have a ton of time off left at work so it would be a short trip, I left early Wednesday morning flying Minneapolis to LA to Shanghai to Hefei. I splurged and used all my sky...

miles to get a first class ticket for the trip making it a lot more comfortable for 30+ hours of travel (the cheapest I’ve ever seen a First Class Ticket with miles).  My flight from Shanghai to Hefei was delayed a couple hours and the drive from the Hefei airport to the hotel was about 90 minutes.  I finally got checked into my hotel around 3am Friday morning.  I tried not to sleep too late, setup my bike, got workouts in, checked in to race and got to bed early.  Saturday was busy with our pro meeting and getting my bike to the race site, which was about a 2 hour round trip by bus.  Sunday morning I was up really early, I struggled to sleep well after 2am.

I was on a bus to the race site by 5:30am. I was surprisingly one of the earliest athletes there at 6am, the Chinese athletes were late risers and much more casual than what I typically see at Ironman races.  The part I was most nervous about was using the porta potty’s.  They were not like anything I’ve seen, they were squat holes and BYOTP which you disposed of in a small basket.  I packed plenty of TP for backup although they did have a small amount available on site.  This is apparently the norm in some parts of the region but it was definitely an extra challenge for those of us not used to squatting over a hole.  While people say this is a more “natural” position I also felt it was a lot less sanitary.  It is something that will impact my decision on racing there again. Enough about the porta potty’s how about the race…READ MORE