Introducing… the pain corner!

With the year now well underway I decided that, in spite of the fact that I’m currently almost solely focused on running and weight training, it was time to set the bike up ready for a few spins here and there. And, as the Amsterdam winter weather is not always a cyclist’s best friend, that meant getting the indoor trainer ready.

While I would have obviously loved a proper full-on pain cave in the style of Andy Potts or the Lovatos, unfortunately Amsterdam real estate rental prices (and the fact that the missus and I quite fancied an apartment that looked like a home rather than a bike shop) meant that such exercise awesomeness wasn’t possible.

However, I’m pretty pleased with my pain corner.

The home trainer is set up (this time with a proper home trainer wheel and tyre – I learned my lesson after destroying a normal tyre on the trainer in Dubai!). 

I have a nice (currently snow-filled) view which almost helps me to forget that I’m sweating away like an idiot in an upstairs bedroom, as well as space for the iPad, Kindle and MP3 player (attached to my super-cool, not-yet-released-officially Philips sports headphones) to help while away some of the longer, steadier rides. 

As the body temperature heats up, I can simply open the window or, if that’s not enough, there’s a good fan to help circulate that cold air.

The trainer is going to feature much more predominantly in my programme this year. This is really for two reasons: firstly, it is far less time-consuming than taking the bike out which, in turn, means that triathlon training can be fit more easily around other aspects of my life; secondly, as I’m concentrating on 70.3s and less, then many of my bike workouts will be a maximum hour in length, working on increasing speed and power, rather than the long endurance rides needed for Ironman.

Pro triathlete Andy Potts' pain cave!

While knocking out three hours or more on the home trainer sounds about as much fun as having my head kicked-in (longer rides will still be done on the roads), I really enjoy using the trainer for shorter sessions with different effort levels and incorporating plenty of short, sharp intervals to keep it painful but interesting.

This is the 'pain garage' of married pros Amanda and Michael Lovato.

I’m somewhat flying by the seat of my pants (love that expression!) this year, creating my own programme, schedule and periodising based on what has worked in the past and what I think will work for me. As with the rest, this short, hard turbo trainer focus may end up not working out and, next year, I’ll go back to a more traditional programme, but I really feel that you have to keep changing things up as a triathlete – for motivation and sanity’s sake, as much as for seeing improvements.

Of course, there are some who like to follow the same schedule year-in year-out because they know it works for them, but I tend to have a touch of ADHD about me in all that I do, so – like a swimming, biking, running Madonna but without the flappy skin on the elbows, or the conical boobs, or the embarrassing granny dancing – it’s all about reinvention, evolution and moving forward for me. It’ll work or it won’t, but I enjoy the experimenting.     

If you fancy building your own full-on pain cave (or you're just looking for a bit of inspiration for a little pain corner like mine), check out these videos:

Top ten triathlon resolutions

Ok, ok, so you’re supposed to make your New Year’s resolution on January 1^st – I get that I’m a little late with all this but, as the old saying goes, better tardy than not at all… or something like that?

Anyway, here are my slightly delayed resolutions for 2013:

1.       Laugh, smile and always have fun –even in light of all the tough and painful moments, that’s what we do this for.

2.       Do something new. It’s important to keep things fresh so, this year, I’ll be doing more run races than before, my first ever 70.3s (yeah, I’m one of those guys who went straight from sprints and Olys to full Ironmans… sorry!), as well as an epic obstacle course race. Excited!

3.       Work on my weaknesses. As I’m now living in Holland and, therefore, can’t really do much to improve my laughably terrible hill climbing, 2013 has become all about strength training (something I’ve neglected these past couple of years) and doing more running than Forrest Gump.

4.       Remember – it’s just a sport. I’m going to try to make sure I never take triathlon, or myself, too seriously.

5.       Say ‘thank you’ more. That means to swim and run coaches, the trainer at the gym, all volunteers at races, as well as my supportive friends and family.

6.       Volunteer. The beginning and middle of the season are pretty busy but there are quite a few big run races here in Holland towards the end of the year, so I’m going to make sure I give something back and volunteer to marshal or whatever’s required at one of those.

7.       Take a non-triathlon/sport related holiday. This means leaving the bike at home and not even hiring one there. It probably even means not taking run trainers. Apparently, the earth will continue to spin…

8.       Goals = gear. It’s easy to trick ourselves into thinking that we’re not a little faster, or making the top 10/podium because we haven’t got the right bike, or wheels, or trainers, or bottle holder, or saddle, or (deep breath…) helmet, or bike jersey, or Garmin, or bike computer, or goggles, or wetsuit, or tri suit, or… well, you get how this goes. In reality, there are very few gadgets that can make as much difference as a block of good, consistent training or, in fact, losing a few unnecessary kilos. So, this year, the theory is that I’ll buy some minor tri-related additions – when and only when, I’ve achieved certain pre-set goals.

9.       Be less selfish. Triathlon is, by definition, a selfish sport. But I’m determined to find a balance this year. For every weekend of big training or racing, there’s a day at the beach, in the park or at a music festival. For every early morning race start, there’s a night out. Every time I have to tell the other half I can’t do something because or triathlon, I’ll make it up with something else or better.

1.   For those of us who’ll never top podiums, it’s important to remember that PBs and kicking your friends’ arses are also magnificent victories in their own right. I’m hoping to bask in plenty of PBs and dole out several ass-kickings this year! 

Bike porn...GRRRRRR!

As every triathlete or cyclist knows, there is one feeling that eclipses all of life’s other emotions and experiences. Sure, reaching the top of a gruelling climb feels pretty cool; watching the bike computer nudge past 80kmph as you smash through a long downhill is awesome; that little internal sensation you get when you’re in a race and know – just know – that you’re in great form and killing it is sweet too…

But none of these come close to the sheer primal exhilarating rush of buying a new bike!

The next best thing to buying a new bike, of course, isn’t setting a new PB or winning a race… it’s showing off pictures of your latest steed. And so, in true Slowtwitch style… ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to my latest set of wheels.

BOOM! This little beauty is a brand-new (erm, well, about seven years old) Altra Bravo. You can try looking that up online but you won't find a website coz it's just so darn, like, custom and niche and specialist and stuff...

DING! Oh yeah... it's got a nice shiny bell from Halfords. Does your Shiv have that? Does it??? Didn't think so...

BANG! Look at that bottom bracket! And the kick stand! And the chain protector cover thing that keeps your chain a bit clean and stops your jeans from getting dirty. Cutting-edge.

BOSH! Told you it was cutting-edge. The T3 is, I believe, SRAM's response to Shimano's Di2 gearing. After all, who needs 20-odd gears when you can just have three? (has an added feature that means you have to actually hold the lever in 1st gear for it to stay, and have to stop pedalling for a couple of seconds to allow it to change).

WALLOP! That's a lock that goes through the back wheel. And a pannier rack. And some elastic thing. All fitted tightly around the back wheel mud guards for maximum aerodynamic efficiency. Apparently, the geniuses at Altra (or Bravo - not sure which is the brand and which is the model!) spent months in the wind tunnel perfecting this design.

PING! A rear-mounted extra scooter lock on the back tucked into the elastic thingymajobbies.

SQUEAK! Ohhhhh yeah. Now this is a bike riding saddle. How do I know? Coz it's got pictures of people riding bikes on it. Didn't think of that, did you ISM? Missed a trick there, hey Fizik?

Anyway, that's my latest bike. I realise that you're probably feeling pretty jealous now, so where can you pick one of these bad boys up? Well, RRP is €60 from some dude in southern Holland who has a house and harden full of second hand bikes (that may or may not be stolen...). You can find him on marktplaats.nl (Dutch ebay). Happy shopping.

New year, new start

Well, what a year 2012 was. Personally, the changes were immense: from Dubai to Amsterdam; from living alone to shacked-up bliss; from Managing Editor to, erm, well, freelancer/job seeker... But it was a breakthrough year for me in terms of triathlon too, and that's something I'm hoping to continue into 2013.

This year, I spent Christmas and New Year at my folks' house for the first time in around five years and it was terrific. I caught up with friends and family, ate, drank and was merry. The girlfriend was there for most of it too and it was fun to show her the way us Brits celebrate Chrimbo and New Year (the traditional pantomime was a bit of an eye-opener) ... as well as introducing her to the football Mecca that is Goodison Park.

After a bit of northern uproar, we headed down to London Town for some more thrills and spills... maybe a few too many as, by the time we got back home to Amsterdam, I was sick as a sod and spent the next couple of days shaking like a nodding dog in the back of a bulldozer, with a head that felt as if it had been used as the ball for a Stoke vs West Ham match.

This long-winded, overblown and probably, now I think about it, a bit unnecessary exposition is basically my version of the school boy's "the dog ate my homework, sir" excuse. I'm supposed to be two weeks into my marathon training programme now and, instead, I've done two sessions.

I didn't mind missing a few sessions while back in the UK. I've put in some solid base miles (following the MAF principles) in the previous months, so an extra few days of enjoying myself wouldn't hurt, I decided. But I was eager to dive right back in as soon as we got back Dutch side, so the flu virus that wiped me out for a few days was a kick in the teeth.

One thing I did learn last year was that ignoring illness, injury or fatigue doesn't work. So I accepted defeat, rested up and waited... I was champing at the bit by the time I headed out this evening and, although it was only a little 7km run at 5.25/km pace, I was happy and excited to be out. That's one of the real benefits of taking breaks - something that doing triathlon in Dubai didn't really encourage - you need to get a little fat and lazy sometimes; you need to wake up and think about what chocolate bar to eat first rather than how far to swim that morning; you need to measure a day in pints rather than kilometers... That's where motivation and true long-term results come from, I think. It certainly seems to be the case for me, at least, because I'm now more excited about getting race fit again than I have been since Ironman Austria back in July.

And so it starts... I'm happy to be back in proper training and that means that normal service is resumed in terms of the blogging too. So, good news for those of you who get easily bored in work... You'll be hearing plenty more from me soon enough.

So far so good...

Well then, it’s been just over a month since I made the big move, said Du-bye to Dubai and Hola to Holland, and so far so good. I have to admit that I miss my friends and training groups back in Dubai, of course, but I’m absolutely convinced that it was the right move at the right time. I like that I left Dubai on a high (no Dutch jokes here) and while things were still good – my memories of the UAE now will always be positive, and I’ll definitely be trying to get back for occasional visits.

And what of Amsterdam? Well, the obvious thing first – it’s bloody cold, but, other than on a couple of occasions (more of those later), that’s not bothered me so much. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent most of the past decade living in Spain and the UAE, but I’m kind of enjoying the novelty of an actual, real winter. Coats, gloves, cappuccinos, hot chocolates and oliebollen… winter has its advantages. And for every mind-blowingly crappy day, there are days – like today – when the sky is blue, the cold is crisp and the leaves are on the ground… it really is beautiful.

Amsterdam

I really feel like I’m finding my way in the city/country now. I have my bank account and citizen’s number, so I’m official. I really like our apartment and the area it’s in too. The first few weeks maybe felt like a bit of a extended holiday but now it’s real life doing real things (with the exception of the working from home everyday part).

And, while Dubai had its advantages, I’m really lapping up all of the proper ‘European’ things on offer in the Netherlands. The parks and canals, stopping in cafes for beers and bitterballen (the Dutch, it seems, have a strange but tasty obsession with food in ball shapes!), heading to small art house cinemas (Pretentious? Moi?) and just wandering or cycling around the streets to discover new places and see new things.

We’ve visited Glow in Eindhoven – a cool, week-long art experiment when the buildings become light shows. We have tickets to a couple of festivals and music events next summer. There are weekend breaks planned. Gigs to be watched. And I haven’t even gotten around to seeing the museums, markets, the Heineken Experience or the pancake boat yet! But all in good time…

Images from GLOW in Eindhoven

But this isn’t some fancy-Dan (or fancy-Dam…groan!) travel blog or expat relocation guide, is it? It is, or at least it tries to be, about triathlon. So, how’s that going?

Well, we live in a great place as far as training goes. Firstly, we’re between a few parks, all of which have run tracks around or through them. I can do a lap or two for short runs while they can be combined (usually by following a canal or two) to create longer runs. There’s even an official 22km trail through three of the parks, while the nearby Amsterdam Woods (I’ve not been there yet) has 12, 15 and 21km trails through it. I’ve also tried a city run and a run down the Amstel river – after the same one or two loops of Dubai, this feels like an embarrassment of riches. Especially when the backdrop is misty parks, canals with ducks, geese and herons perched nearby, and woodlands with a thick carpet of autumn leaves underfoot.

The Vondelpark has a nice 3.5km run loop

Came across these dudes while running along the nearby Nieuwe Meer (the lake is pictured below) 

The local 22km loop - we basically live right in the centre of this

Running has been the main focus just to keep a little fit for the time being. I’ve ridden twice – once a couple of weekends back while visiting my fried Joe in Spain, we headed out and did a nice 90km jaunt through the hills of Andalucia, stopping only to experience the ‘traditional delicacies’ of the world’s worst tapas restaurant. And then, last week, I tried a ride here with Hamish, who also recently moved to Amsterdam.

At this point, I should explain that I only began the whole riding/triathlon thing in Dubai so cold conditions have never really featured too heavily. Expecting it to be cold out, I dressed in my warmest cycling gear – the sort of thing I’d wear for a cold winter morning in Dubai. Turns out that there’s quite a difference between a cold Dubai winter morning and a cold Amsterdam winter afternoon… we only made 45km in the end as the heavens opened and sent a downpour; I, of course, had absolutely no waterproof clothing on.  To cut a long story short, I had to get a neighbour to let me into the apartment as I couldn’t use the keys, so cold were my hands, and it took me 25 minutes of being inside before they thawed enough to take my gloves or shoes off.

Anyway, never one to need telling twice, I remedied that situation by immediately going online and buying proper winter cycling gear. Of course, I haven’t ridden since!

My favourite place for training is called Sloterpark. It has a +6km mainly woodland run track around a giant lake. Being around 1.5km from the apartment, this makes a perfect 10km run. Better still, on the far side of the lake – around 10 mins bike away – is a giant sports centre with a 50m swim pool. This is home to the De Dolfijn Masters and Tri Clubs. It’s also where my awesome gym is located. Just over the road is the running track where the tri club holds weekly track workouts. During the summer, you can do open water swims in the lake. Oh, and there’s a pretty good annual triathlon in this area too. I love having all of this so close to hand.

Running in the Sloterpark

Canalside path leading from home to Sloterpark 

The lake at Sloterpark

Triathlon is a pretty expensive sport, but it’s much more accessible here in Europe. De Dolfijn Tri, for example, costs €365 a year, which can be paid in monthly instalments (and includes an annual race licence).  This basically means that €7 per week gives me 5 coached swim sessions, a coached track run per week, a couple of bike rides per week between April and September, plus all the other social and support benefits of being in a club.

There’s another bike and tri group called Cylodam – which is maybe a bit less formal but bit more social – and their fees are just €25 per year, so I’m joining both; I love the social element of training and triathlon, while also needing as much variety as possible in my training, so the more options for rides or runs I have the better, is how I see it.  

So, basically, I’m back in training now. Not tri training per se (or at least, not in the way I've done it in Dubai), but training to maximise the potential for 2013 being my best season yet. What does that mean exactly? Well, I’ll get into that next time.

Things I won't miss about Dubai triathlon!

Having waxed lyrical about what I'm going to miss about Dubai in a blog post that critics have described as "emotional"*, "heartwrenching"* and "Hemigwayesque is its absolute desire to discover the truth of the human condition"*, it's now time to tell you all what I'm not going to miss. I am, after all, a British journalist and, therefore, only build something up so I can revel in knocking it back down... a career on The Daily Mail surely awaits!

*None of these things were actually said out loud by anyone but could have been Tweeted by someone somewhere once, after all, who's to say..?

So... adopting my best transatlantic 'ray-dee-oh deee-jay' voice, here we go with the top five... (da da daah, da da daah, daaa, daa, daaah...)

5. The races. Not a dig at race organisers at all, they are marvellous and lovely people without whom we’d just be a bunch of idiots who train a lot, but my god are the triathlons in Dubai boring! There are two problems, as I see it. One: due to the whole traffic thing etc, they're always in the middle of nowhere on some godforsaken stretch of road that makes an hour on the turbo trainer seem like a riveting 60 minutes of scenic exploration. Two: as locations are limited, the race calendar is made up of these races being repeated many times over. 

4. The drivers. A few times, I ventured out on to real actual roads on my bike – usually hitting Al Wasl and the Beach Road early morning, but even bravely (OK, stupidly) attempting to commute to work by bike for some time… I still have not quite managed to fully unclench my sphincter. Sweet eight pound six ounce newborn baby Jesus, that is some scary stuff. I was only hit (very lightly) once on the bike, when an Indian driver attempted some sort of clever dummy, by indicating and looking one way, then turning the other – really tearing up the rule book with that sort of driving – but there were some close calls, in Nad Al Sheba especially, where the driving resembles a bunch of monkeys let loose on high speed bumper cars. Amazingly I was 'bumped' twice while out running in Dubai - don't want to make any general sweeping generalisations but both times it was by Arab women wearing full abayas, in heavily blacked-out windowed vehicles, at night... giving them the sort of range of vision that Stevie Wonder has of his keyboard.

3. The laps and laps and laps and laps. Granted, over the past few years the number of options for cycling in Dubai have increased but it still boils down to going around and around and around the same few places – whether that’s lots of laps of the NAS cycle path, the autodrome or Ghantoot, or a few less laps of Nad Al Sheba, Longtoot or Al Qudra. On the plus side, it certainly builds some mental fortitude!

2. The heat. An obvious one but there it is… put simply, my body does not operate well in the heat – so running when my body is so soaked with sweat that my trainer makes a squelching noise every time it hits the ground, and my tingling skin feels like it might explode into a human fireball at any moment is not really my idea of fun. Just as cycling into a fan oven for several hours is, in my mind, more akin to torture than anything edifying or enjoyable.

1. The early mornings. Number one, with a bullet! I’m not adverse to an early morning and I’m certainly not the kind of person who loves to sleep in all day but, still, 2.30am-6am is a time window during which - even by the extraordinary set of rules that triathletes live their lives by - everyone should be asleep. It is most definitely not a time at which humans should be up and riding. It is not the ideal hour for hitting the sea for a choppy dawn swim session.  And it is not a time slot that should be reserved for driving to Hatta. 

OK, rant over. Annnnnd breathe...

Bye, bye, I’ll Miss Emirati Tri

(see what I did with that title, eh?)

OK, OK, OK… so it’s been a while. And for that I offer up my deepest, sincerest condolences, yadda yadda yadda… Actually, what do you want from me? I’ve been damn busy. ‘How busy?’ you may ask. Lots of work on? Too much training? Few personal commitments?

Actually, I’ve been rounding up my life in the UAE (easier said than done), saying my goodbyes and have been a tad preoccupied with moving to the Netherlands, I’ll have you know. But now I’m there, and have been living in Amsterdam for one week exactly, I’m writing the blog I should have written a couple of weeks ago.

First up, let me say that the time was right and, even before I got here, I’ve been super-psyched about my move. Now I’m here, despite having to increase the overall size of my wardrobe by several thousand percent (coats, scarves and gloves are essentials for life in this here Netherlands, people!), I’m even more excited. But that doesn’t mean that there’s not some sadness attached to leaving Dubai.

There’s sadness attached to the place – I was lucky enough to leave while I still feel a lot of fondness towards Dubai and the UAE, rather than so many who are ‘just reeeeally over the whole thing, you know, man?’  when they make the move away. There’s sadness attached to the job – I think I had one of the best jobs in the world at Explorer – and the people. But what I’m going to miss, more than anything else, can be summed up in one word: triathlon.

Let’s take a pictorial journey through my time in Dubai…

2008: 93kgs and already many, many kilos lighter than at the same point the year before, I tackle my first triathlon in gym clothes, wearing a borrowed kids’ helmet and riding a borrowed bike. Sprint triathlon time: 1hr46.

2010: 85kgs and with a marathon and several triathlons under my belt, with a proper bike helmet and on my very own tri bike, I register a time of 1.17 for a sprint tri.

2012: 79kgs (going into the race…70kgs finishing it!) I complete my second Ironman. I now have many, many swim, bike, run and tri races under my belt and can cover the sprint distance in around 1.03.

What many will see there is either a dude who got himself into some sort of decent shape or a blogger who’s feeling a mite proud of himself. I’d disagree. When I look at those photos now I think of experiences (climbing Kilimanjaro, racing Ironmans, cycling tours across Thailand and Laos or Europe), I think of achievements, I think of a guy who’s happier in life and better at his job, and  I think of someone who wouldn’t have had the balls or ability to make the move I’ve just made before my tri adventure began. But, most of all, I think of all the friends I’ve made along the way.

The Middle East and endurance sport may not seem to be a match made in heaven but for me it most definitely was. So, when I look back on my time in Dubai, what I’ll always remember and be grateful for is that it gave me one of the things I love most and makes me happiest in the world.

And it taught me one thing. Wherever you are in the world, never let location be your limiter or your barrier. Get out there and make it count! While everyone else in Amsterdam is bemoaning the cold snap and the rain, I’m wrapped up and ready for action – after jogging around and around and around at Safa or Dubai Marina in 45 degree C, hitting the canal-side trails, parks and woods of Holland in the cold is a breeze.

As rubbish and silly a dedication as it may be, this blog serves as a huge thanks to everyone at Tri2Aspire, Dubai Masters, Cycle Safe, Tri Dubai, ABRaS etc etc… thanks for pushing me harder, faster and further, and for teaching me that pushing harder, faster and further is the greatest feeling in the whole, wide, lovely, great world.