This was my second time at this year and it gets bigger and better every year. It is hard not to come up with superlatives for this race. Now well and truly my favorite race anywhere in the world. How about "The Hollywood of Triathlon"? This seems to cover it perfectly. This race is now the biggest annual international sporting event held in the Philippines. It is that big! And it's an even bigger deal for Filipinos as triathlon is a boom sport and this race brings out many celebrities with names like "Bubbles" and "Ding Dong". My mate from last year, heart-throb, actor and singer Matteo Guidicelli, showed up again to race. There is so much bike bling on display, I have never seen so many expensive bikes at a race as here. And not many people riding them are very fast.

Logistics are easy. t's only a 4.5 hour direct flight out of Narita, Japan, and this time I flew on Cebu Pacific. I booked a room in a local diving resort hotel located on the run course about 1.5km from the main race hotel and base, the Shangri-La Mactan. But the Shang is the place to stay with Transition, the swim start and the finish on the grounds.

This year the race was designated as the 2016 Ironman 70.3 Asia Pacific Championship, and for the first time held outside of Australia or New Zealand. The Championship race will be rotated around the region and next year in 2017 has been set for Penrith, in Western Sydney, Australia. 

It's a great place to do the race with friends, and Cebu is a really nice place to hangout and enjoy. It has embraced the race, once again there were tens of thousands of people out on course watching the race and cheering loudly. There is nothing like it!

For me it was just a matter of getting to the finish line ASAP as they have the best set up of any race that I have been to. A cold water shower to cool down, the wading pools full of ice with cold cans of beer floating in them, a huge massage tent, ice-cream, flavoured milk, food and more beer. This time I jumped into a wading pool, cracked open a beer, then got out and had a massage while I waited for my friends to finish. Then back into the pool and three more cans of beer. It doesn't get much better than this.

A bucket list race for sure!