{"id":206289,"date":"2015-07-28T06:00:38","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T20:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=206289"},"modified":"2015-07-28T06:00:38","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T20:00:38","slug":"erico-aims-to-make-best-of-cebu-ironman-stint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/erico-aims-to-make-best-of-cebu-ironman-stint\/","title":{"rendered":"Erico aims to make best of Cebu Ironman stint"},"content":{"rendered":"

Erico Castro left for the Philippines last Saturday where he will be competing in the 2015 Cobra Ironman 70.3 Philippines set on Aug. 2 in Mactan City, Cebu province.<\/p>\n

\"Erico<\/a>
Erico Castro makes a turn leading to the Sound of Music in the bike leg of this year\u2019s XTERRA Saipan. (Jon Perez)
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Castro, along with his dad Ricky took an early morning Asiana Airlines flight to Korea before taking a connecting flight to Manila. Peter Prestley is also set to compete in the Cobra Ironman.<\/p>\n

They would be staying for almost one week in Subic in Zambales, in the central island of Luzon, which is his father\u2019s home province. They would head to Cebu via Clark International Airport in Pampanga this weekend.<\/p>\n

This would be Castro\u2019s second time to join a Half Ironman distance\u2014composed of a 1.9-kilometer swim, 90K bike, and 21K run legs\u2014race but first competing in an off-island event. He did the Tagaman Triathlon in March this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll try to see new places in Subic and continue my training there. I\u2019ll try to join if there\u2019s any local races there,\u201d said Castro in an interview with Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve joined a lot of racing events but honestly, I\u2019m feeling kind of nervous like it was my first time,\u201d added the incoming senior at Mt. Carmel School.<\/p>\n

Castro said that more than 2,000 participants would be joining the racing event in Cebu, where Filipino celebrities Kim Atienza and Matteo Guidicelli are expected to compete.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not expecting anything in this race but I would like to improve on my time in the Tagaman, my first Half Ironman event,\u201d Castro added.<\/p>\n

The 17-year-old finished with a combined time of 6:35:34 in this year\u2019s Tagaman. He had 42:04 swim, logged in 2:59:01 in the bike, before wrapping up his campaign with a time of 2:54:29 in the run leg.<\/p>\n

Castro said he\u2019d be busy in the last quarter of the year as he plans to join the Tour de Guam in November and the Hell of the Marianas in December. \u201cOf course I\u2018ll do the XTERRA and Tagaman again next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that triathlon became addicting to him where he slowly transitioned from riding the bike to doing the multi sport event.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to challenge myself and try something new. Yes, it is tiring but also fun to do the whole thing. I did Taga Kids before and also tried shorter distance triathlon courses,\u201d Castro added.<\/p>\n

The Cobra Ironman offers 40 qualifying slots to the 2016 Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Mooloolaba, Sunshine Coast, Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Erico Castro left for the Philippines last Saturday where he will be competing in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":206292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6192,6193,3100,407],"class_list":["post-206289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-cebu-ironman","tag-cobra-ironman","tag-half-ironman","tag-racing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}