Reliving Wadi Bih

Falling a little behind on my blog posting over the past week or so due to recovering from illness, getting back to work to find a small mountain of chores awaiting me and having a friend from the UK visiting. Hopefully have a handle on things again now, however, and you can expect to see some more digi-morsels of my brain dirge spewed up on to this blog soon enough.

In the meantime, there's something I wanted to share with you. As you know from this post, I recently took part in the legendary Wadi Bih Run as part of the Nike Middle East team. 

Anyway, here's a rather good video of my team's exploits, anchored wonderfully by Dubai One's Layne Redman. It gives a great taste of the day, the team spirit and the challenge itself.

Have you read my latest blag post?

It’s a maxim as well worn as the caffeine-stained mugs, heavily scrawled-upon diary pages, and scratched mouse pads that adorn the offices of newspapers and magazines around the world: journalists, they say, live a rich man’s life on a poor man’s wage.

That’s certainly been true for me; it’s a profession that I love – the opportunity for creativity, the amazing interviewees, even the coffee and pizza fuelled thrill of hitting a midnight deadline – but it’s also incredibly hard work. Luckily, once in a while, there are some very special rewards that help to balance the 50 hour weeks and working weekends and holidays.

Over the years, these have probably added up to thousands of pounds’ worth of hotel rooms, meals and press trips. Then there are the freebies that get sent to the office.

Although I’ve done things that I’d never be able to afford in real life, the greatest privilege of my chosen profession has been when I’ve had the opportunity to do things that money can’t buy. Being drivenaround the Ascari racetrack in southern Spain in a Koenigsegg CCX (that’s thecar that The Stig couldn’t control in Top Gear) by Christian von Koenigsegg, for example. Or watching the majority of a Man Utd v Arsenal match sat chatting on the phone to Rod Stewart (knows his football, does Rod).

Recently, the PR team at Abu Dhabi InternationalTriathlon invited me to take part in that event – something I was more than happy and willing to do. There’ll be other members of the media taking part too – most doing the relay or the sprint race, but a couple of brave souls also tackling the ‘short course’ like me. At Abu Dhabi, ‘short’ is a somewhat misleading term: 1500m swim/100km bike/10km run (the long course is double, making the bike section notably longer than an Ironman).

In order to get us all ready for the event, the organisers have given us access to key figures involved and this is where, once again, I find I’m pinching myself. A few weeks ago, just four of us were put through our paces by UK pro triathlete and highly-rated coach Richard Allen. On Tuesday night, another group of us were given access to ex Ironman World Champ and captain of Abu Dhabi Tri Team Faris Al-Sultan, and the Abu Dhabi Tri Team manager (and ex pro triathlete) Dr Werner Leitner.

Of course, most of these sessions were pitched at beginners – and what an amazing opportunity that is, like having Nick Faldo and Sergio Garcia give you your first golf lesson – but I still picked up a few more advanced tips here and there on subjects like nutrition, warming-up, deep stretching and riding into the wind. I’ve been told I have quite a short stride length when I run – when I should really be using my height to my advantage – and Werner kindly showed me a few drills to incorporate into my runs to help improve that stride length and kick.

What I realised most of all, however, is that, while I still tend to think of myself as a relative newbie to triathlon and a bit of a pretender, that doesn’t wash anymore. I’ve been doing this a few years now, albeit maybe only a year with any degree of regularity and seriousness, but I know the vast majority of what there is to know; transitions are no longer mysterious zones of nerves and intimidation for me; I may get nutrition right or wrong on any given day, but I know what I’m aiming for; I hear and use words like ‘brick’, ‘drafting’ and ‘midfoot strike’; I’ve done small early season races in the UK with swims in a pool, and huge international races overseas. I may not be an experienced old-timer, but I’m a triathlete for sure.­ Going back to the parlance of my industry, I’m no longer “just blagging it”. That’s kind of cool.

The flip side of that is that these mini media camps reminded me of the nerves, horror and excitement that this mysterious sport of triathlon once brought. I heard the questions I’d once asked and felt the feelings I’d once felt, as these media newbies started their training or began stepping it up... it’s such a joyful feeling of achievement and one that I plan to never lose.

With that in mind, this weekend I’ll be part of the Nike-sponsored media team that’ll tackle the 72km (as a relay) Wadi Bih run through the mountains and gorges of Musandam. We’re not contenders; in fact, we’ll all just be happy to finish, and we’re going to have a great time doing it. Coz that’s what it’s all about. 

That and blagging free Nike swag, of course (I’m still a journalist, after all)!

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.