Well…it has been a long time since I wrote
anything here…but it was definitely not because there was nothing happening!!
It was exactly the opposite. There were way too many things to do, that I just
didn’t have time to tell you about it. OK…enough excuses J
First of all, for the last year I was studying an online
course of Project management with the University of California. I had to do
homeworks, projects, reading assignments and online discussions with other
students, all of which was taking me around 10 hours a week. I had to pass six
courses of two or three months in duration, which basically meant that once I
finished one, another started and once I even had two courses running in the
same time.
It took me a lot of time, but now it’s finished. And it was
well worth it! I could probably say that it was one of the most useful and
applicable education I’ve done. I just need to get the final certificate from
them, which got probably lost in an envelope somewhere between USA and Qatar J
Then there was my kiteboarding instructor
career! Since January I spend almost all weekends teaching my friends and their
friends how to kiteboard. Usually I have two to three students a day for two
hour sessions, so I’m enough busy to almost not have time to kite myself!! On
the top of that I made contact with my friend Mostafa from Dubai, we started to
cooperate and I’m now promoting and selling RRD kite equipment in Qatar, which
is excellent, because like this I can see many new happy kiters flying shiny
new RRD kites…including myself J So you can imagine that there is much more than
just tutor for two hours and leave…helping people with their new gear, giving
advice after the training is finished and trying to watch the students that
they are safe and having fun. Sometimes I spent 10 hours on the beach and don’t
out to ride at all! But I like to do this, I like to do it this way...so no
problem J
And of course into all this there was training
and going to all the races and competitions possible in the region. I was not
doing as much training as I wished, because of I was suffering some knee pain
for like half year and because of the obvious lack of time, but I never missed
a race in anything around Qatar J And to my surprise even without much training I was still able to keep pace
with the best. I guess that “The race is the best training” is true…and there
was some racing to be done!
It started when it was still too hot with a 20k
MTB race in Lusail. I smartly forgot to bring the camel bag, so the dehydration
(a bottle next to track obviously didn’t help much) and humid heat meant that I
couldn’t compete with Davy and ended up second. Not even my new 29er bike
helped. Fair start anyway!
Next race of the MTB season was technical 20k in
Duhail. I finally got the puncture proof tubeless tires…I was confident. But
only until the third lap when I got 5mm rip in the tire! “Man…such a bad luck!
If I put a spare tube I will be dirty from the sealant and the race is lost
anyway” I thought, pumped the tire again to try to seal it and then retired
from the race from the first place, because it didn’t work. Jonathan finished
first unchallenged, but Davy got a wire stuck in his wheel and retired too and
Ondrej got two punctures and ran the last kilometer to the finish pushing the
bike! Could have been easily third. There is something on the Japanese “Never
give up!
But then I got luckier and won the second Duhail 20k race, Duhail
three hour endurance race, Zikreet Run&Roll (30km bike and 10k run in the
desert) and 40km Inland Sea dune and desert bike traverse. King of the Qatar
MTB season? Probably…although nobody said there would be any J
There was also a triathlon-ish serie of races and couple of individual ones. But road cycling and swimming is definitely not my strong discipline, so no trophies this time! Aspire Friday morning serie of five aquathlons (500m swim and 5k run) just showed me that I cannot catch up on the run those 3 minutes I lose on the swim, so I was finishing around 7th place. There are definitely many good triathletes and swimmers in Qatar.
No
better luck I had in the Al Khor sprint triathlon where I went the wrong way. The
best was Dukhan duathlon where after the initial 3k run I was leading until the
second half of the 25k road bike section, where a guy with tri-special bike and
aero helmet flew by and disappeared and I just couldn’t find enough energy to
try to run him down in the last 3k run. Second then…not bad though J But the helplessness I felt when the guy with such
ease overtook me and took the race didn’t keep my mind still. So I decided to
buy a cheapest carbon triathlon road bike and see if it was just because of the
equipment! And I will be able to participate in all the road bike races the
next season too J Woohoo!!
And then there were the three most special races
of the season. Dubai International Marathon in January was the most painful.
Like every year my company signed up whoever wanted to participate and for the
second time I was running the full 42k marathon distance. Problem was that that
I was not training for couple of months because of the knee. So I armed myself
with trance musical distraction, ordered to run fast that my muscles start to
hurt earlier and more than the knee and I hoped to finish.
And everything went
as planned. First 25k was pleasure running to the beats, then the tiredness and
muscle pain came and I was finishing barely walking with legs on fire. Little knee
pain was overridden! Kilometer before the finish I checked the watch and
realized to my great surprise that I’m almost same fast as the last year. So I
roared and put my stone legs into the last elephant sprint. 1k and one elephant
roar later it was over. 3:23:39 was one minute faster that last
time. Which meant only one thing…if I can be faster without training now, what
about the next year with some J
Abu Dhabi International Triathlon was the toughest one. I’m
sure you’ve heard about The Ironman. This race was almost the same. 3km of
swimming in the sea, 200km of cycling on the road and 20km of running in the
streets. When Davy signed up and pulled Ondrej into and when Jaro was doing it,
I had basically no chance than to try it also! No matter than I never swam that
long and never ridden even close to 200km, not mentioning that I don’t have a
road bike. Challenges have to be accepted! And at the end Davy didn’t get
holidays, Ondrej got sick, so I went from Qatar alone!
So I rented a road bike, mounted aero bars, put
on my kiteboarding wetsuit and jumped into the sea. I didn’t have my own
goggles, so the borrowed ones got foggy immediately, but even then I finished the swim in
one hour. Then I jumped on the bike. I didn’t know how to pace 200k and I
wanted to save the knee, so I started rather slowly. I didn’t have any special
goal apart from finishing the race below 11 hours, so I could J. But after the first quite easy 80k lap I speeded up
and continued like that until the next transition where I almost fell of the
bike! Sitting 6 hours on the bike and then try to walk again if harder than I
though. And even harder was to run after that. I just couldn’t! I think I
walked the first kilometer eating, drinking and hoping to recover and gain some
energy…which never came. I was really struggling and even seeing Jaro 200m in
front of me didn’t give that extra push.
But still…after the long almost 2 hours of slow
running and 9 hours 23 minutes of moving I was there, in the finish. The feeling
of accomplishment set me finally free, nothing especially hurt…I felt great!
But just until I saw the overall results. 9:23:41 is a good time, but nothing
special I thought. But that I would be deep in the second half of the field, I
didn’t expect at all! Even if I’m one full hour faster I would still be just an average
triathlete! Demotivating? A bit, but still…triathlon is fun and you can always
race against yourself. So I’ll be back J
The last and the easiest race was The Doha Torch staircase
run. Just run up the emergency staircase up the 51st floor and you
are done. Piece of cake I though and sprinted up. In the fifth floor I was so tired
and breathing hard that I stop for a second and thought “I cannot do it like
this and if I don’t I will definitely not post a good time!” But then I just
continued walking every second step and pulling the handrail as fast as I could
anyway. The way up was surprisingly quick and on the top I felt my arms hurting
more than my legs. “Good exercise” I sighted catching up breath and went
downstairs to get the time. To my big surprise 8 minutes and 8 seconds were
enough for third place! I lost 5 seconds on the second guy and 20 for the
winner. Handrail magic J It was great feeling being on the podium and in the newspaper afterwards...and a
dinner for two in the Tower restaurant was just a perfect cherry on top.
I guess that was my last excuse why I was not writing
anything for last six months, but because I always wanted to, I promise that
more will be coming and I will make time to tell you about it in my happily
busy Qatar life J
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