Just Keep TRI-ing

12 May 2017 Dukhan triathlon is always popular and the one that can't be missed by any triathletes in Qatar. The venue is amazing and always well organised. I was so looking forward for this race because it will be my first race with my new club MAD Triathlon. The race 3 of the series was originally scheduled in March. However it had to be postponed due to the crazy weather to May. It was very windy and the organiser did not want to take any risk on the health and safety of the participants which is fair to me. The problem now is the heat in May. Swim I have worked on my swim quite a bit with coach Isora for several months now and I am starting to see some improvements. Being the last race of the season, there were about 200 athletes lining up the beach at the start of the swim. Big for an event in Qatar. I positioned myself on the second row straight opposite the buoy. It was a normal chaos at the start but I somehow did not panic...

Sprint Distance  Started the day with a bad swim. I forgot how to swim in a wetsuit since it was my first wetsuit swim since April. I also had major sighting problem and ended swimming 200m longer than I should.  My pace was 2:12/100m. I knew the swim was bad but I didn't expect it to be that horrible. As a comparison I swam much faster in Oman and the last DWS Triathlon. Both sub 2:00 and non wetsuit. I was beaten by pretty much everyone including those who usually swim much slower than me.  I tried to recover on the bike but I can't seem to produce enough power to ride close to my FTP especially in headwinds.   I guess my race was over 10 km into the bike. There's no point pushing myself to the limit and risk getting injured one week before IM70.3 Bahrain. I backed off and continued the race without any urgency and just enjoying what's left of the race. The run was just a protocol. I took the opportunity to focus on correcting my form foot strike. I hope I can repl...