It's all getting a little racey...

Chuffin' Nora. You wait for a race for two months then a whole cheaply-printed, bound-to-fall-apart goodie bag full of them comes along at once. No matter. Unlike Mel Gibson, Republicans and you're average Daily Mail reader, I'm a fan of all races; a chock-a-block schedule positively bursting at the seams with competition and dripping in race juice can only be a good thing.

Especially as I've not raced since the Creek Striders Half at the beginning of December. On one hand, I'm interested to see if January's BIG mileage month will reflect on speed and fitness. At the same time, I feel like all those base kilometres are probably in need of some higher intensity efforts on top of them, and where better to push hard than in a race?

So, what's on the schedule? Why, thank you for asking, allow me to explain:

First up is the Skins Al Mamzar triathlon on 3 Feb. This is an event I wouldn't usually do because it's been of a questionable quality in the past, but I haven't raced an Olympic distance tri for a year and just fancy it. Previously, as I said, the organisational element wasn't A1 but there was another race in this series a couple of months ago and everyone who raced reported that it had improved considerably. The only problem being swim times that suggested a swim course that was at least 3-400m short. I reckon I could look at a body of water and guess a 1,500m swim more accurately that that so, in these days of Garmins and Google Earth, this sort of error margin is really pretty unacceptable (listening Ironman UK?). It looks like that hss been sorted for this race but, worst case scenario, it's a good hit-out and my bike and run times will be directly comparable with last year's race.

The good thing about a course that's well short and a bit of a draft-fest? Guaranteed PB! Even if it is one I'll never come close to again.

Anyway, one week later is the Wadi Bih run. This is one of those super-cool little events that a few pissed-up mentalists started a couple of decades ago and has taken off. Like techno and Flight of the Conchords, or Wales.

Basically, teams of five tackle the 72k course that runs through the famous Wadi Bih (a wadi is a dried-up river bed here in Middle Earth). You take it in turns to jump out of your support vehicle and take your leg of the relay – some sections are 5k long, others are 2k straight uphill. It's basically all good fun and, although there are a few teams who take it seriously and try to win, they are - and I'm going to be very careful not to generalise here - usually a bunch of charmless knobs. It's one of the few events I've not raced here so I was happy as a tornado in a trailer park to be asked to form part of one of Nike's media teams. I'm sure there'll be more about this event in future blogs.

So, we jump to 17 March and the RAK Half Marathon. Not much to report about this quite yet but I'll be looking to break 1:30 for the first time there. The last race of February will be the Aerofit Sprint Tri – one of our regular series of sprint triathlons. Again, it'll be interesting to see if all this hard training is turning my muscles into hardcore turbo triathlon speed machines or just squelchy pain sponges. One good thing about having a regular series, like the Aerofit, is that I know exactly how I do there – what position I'll finish and who'll overtake me where. It's a little depressing when I write it out like that, but that helps me to gauge if/where improvements have been made relative to other racers.

Finally, it's the first of my three big races for the year ahead – Abu Dhabi International Triathlon. Last year's race was top-notch, even if it was hotter and windier than storm season in Hell (Hell as in that place really far down South – where the boy Satan lives – not the towns in Michigan, Norway, The Cayman Islands, tho they could be quite hot and windy too for all I know. Actually, I'm pretty sure the one in Norway won't be that hot.).

Again, this is very much a race against myself. I'm doing what ADIT calls the 'short' race: 1,500m swim (an actual 1,500m too!), a whopping 100km bike and a 10km run. Last year's race was the first time (or maybe second?) I'd ever ridden 100km, I got hydration and nutrition all wrong and the conditions multiplied that. So, unsurprisingly, I bonked big time on the run. I'd like to put that right this year and knock a whopping big chunk of time off too – that'd show me that I'm on course for IM Austria (check out the fancy new website for that event, by the way!).

And there you have it... I'll leave it at that for now as my intention is to post far more often now. I'll try to get something up here to irritate/educate/frustrate every couple of days at least, so I don't want to shoot my load straight off the bat, to awkwardly mix some rather odd analogies.

Take care kids, and happy racing, training or whatever it is you do to avoid having to watch X Factor with t'other half.