Here's a link to their website in case you have a burnign urge to see it in all it's grafic detail !
http://www.abudhabitriathlon.com/
Everyone is setting off in waves depending on which race you're doing and some arbitrary way of giving out coloured swimming hats, which I’m sure will make some sense to someone somewhere. I still don’t know what wave I’m in, although I do now know roughly what time we are off and for once it’s going to be relatively civilised, around 9 I think. I’ll know more tomorrow as I have to take all my kit, including my bike, down to the race venue (nearly 2 hours away) and collect my race number and my coloured hat, as well as different coloured bags to put my different bits of kit in (white for pre-race, and therefore I assume swim, red for bike and blue for run). I hope to God I don’t forget anything tomorrow, or put it in the wrong bag – otherwise I think I might be up sh1t creek etc.
One of the problems of being able to get up at a reasonable time and not panic drive all the way there in the morning, is that I will undoubtedly be racing when the sun is at its full force. Usually we start at about 7 and it’s all over by 9.30 and the sun has barely raised its head. I’m going to need sun cream – and guess what I can’t find………. Another thing to go on the shopping list for after I’ve dropped my kit off ! I’m just going to have to make sure I get plenty on before I set off on the bike!So that’s my weekend in a nutshell. Today I cooked one of the best curries I think I’ve ever produced, went to the gym and did a little light x-trainer and a fair bit of stretching, ate my curry whilst watching a film on the laptop (Prince of Persia – quite good I thought……), and now I’m typing this. I think a little Tai Chi before bed, with possibly a little tennis ball massage, and then sleep until I wake up (and then roll over and try and get back to sleep again !)
I have all day to get to the registration and transition points to get stuff and drop stuff off, but I will probably try and get there for one of the race briefings at 1 (I think). Most of my kit is laid out ready to be packed and then unpacked and packed again (confused – I bloody well am). I believe that this is normal for all the major events so I might as well get used to it.I’m not planning to do anything remotely physical tomorrow unless you count wandering around a shopping centre for a few bits and pieces and making some flapjacks for breakfast as physical ? As an aside, I’ve found a good looking receipt for malt loaf, now all I’ve got to do is find some malt extract….. still, it’ll give me something to do that doesn’t involve suduko or sweating, and might get me off my arse for some of the day (cause I have about 10 hours of driving to do in the next two days. Next year I’m booking a hotel and I don’t care what the cost is !)
Then on Saturday it’ll be up at about 5.30, into the car, breakfast on the hoof and a sensible drive to the race. Hopefully I will understand where to park by then, and what to do with the white bag, and what I should and shouldn’t be wearing, and then get my numbers marked (in the highly un-scientific way – by drawing on your shoulders and legs with a permanent marker. It’s a sort of “badge of honour” for the next week – you can see everyone staring at you in the pool and in the gym, wondering what you’ve been doing, or better still, knowing what you’ve been doing, but not knowing that I only did the little race !
I guess I can tell you the grand plan now (as far as it extends anyway). As you know I’m also doing this mental 12hr bike race at the end of March, then I have an Olympic distance mid-April and then the season finishes here until just before Christmas. So the plan is to go into training ready for a Half-Ironman sometime around Christmas, somewhere……… The nearest one’s to here are Taiwan, The Philippines, or Thailand (there’s one in the Maldives that I quite fancy but I might have to take the family with me for that one………) and then back here for the Long course in AD this time next year and then meet up with Psycho somewhere in July to do our first Ironman……….. I’m sure there will be lots of things in between, including at least one half-marathon and maybe even the Dubai Marathon in February. Still, there’s got to be some kind of plan hasn’t there ?No idea what I’m going to do for the rest of Saturday (apart from crawl home and possibly into the sauna at the Tilal……. I might have a glass of wine though, all things being equal !)
I’ve semi-promised Julian that I’ll go to Dubai soon for some drunken debauchery at some point in the near future, and I need a few things from the big shiny city, and I reckon I deserves a few days off (with minimal running around the marina and sessions in the gym………) so I might do that next weekend.I don’t know what else to tell you really. Work is going OK, Mrs G is slowly taking my past life to the tip and the charity shop as she works though the mammoth task of working out what to bring with her (apart from the children obviously) when she comes to live out here, what to put into storage somewhere and what to get rid of in one form or another. The forms are in for the schools out here(I can’t remember if I’ve told you all this before, and I’m too lazy to go back and look….) and generally everything seems to be in tickerty boo land – I’m just waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel to be the train coming the other way…… everything seems to be good at the moment, or as they say in the movies “it’s quiet…….too quiet” just before all hell breaks loose !
Right, as I suggested earlier, I’m off to do a little Tai Chi and then to bed, before the urge for a glass of wine gets too much and I can’t resist any longer.
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