Finally the Qatar’s local racing season started! And looking
at my calendar, it will be a super busy one, with races practically every
Friday and sometimes also on Saturday! There will be plenty of MTB or road
races and time trials organized by western expat Qatar Chain Reaction and
Filipino Padyak Qatar.
There will be a few triathlons organized by newly
established Tri Club Doha or Dukhan Triathlon. There will be a series of five
Aquathlons organized by Aspire, couple of 10k runs, 15k run or the inaugural
Doha marathon!! And I’m not mentioning many other fun and charity events. Just
too many events to do and one will have to start being picky J And if somehow
there is a blank weekend, there will be always something in UAE…like a 20+20
Desert Stinker trail run.
But the first one of them, QCR 3h MTB endurance race, was a
no brainer, because it was first and MTB is on the top of my priority list,
although triathlon is getting a lot of my attention lately!
Duhail off road 5k track full of technical perks, climbs,
descends, fast and slow section, got improved last year so now it is even more
fun and challenging and definitely one of the best MTB grounds in the country.
Around 30 racers lined up for the start of the
three hour category with another 70 starting one hour later for the half
distance. This made the race the biggest MTB event ever. The siren sounded
everyone shoot off towards three hours of rounding around the track. Who
completes most laps wins. Simple as that J I
won both of the previous editions of this event so I was confident. Not as much
as usually, because I could feel the lack of proper training over the summer,
but I hoped everyone would be in the same position. Wrong assumption!!
Julien, Jock, Jonathan and others started like it was a 5k
sprint and I had to work hard to get back to the front pack from my lazy start.
After 500m one of the first guys got puncture and angrily threw his bike on the
ground in frustration. “ Gonna be a tough race” I thought forcing myself not to
chase full speed the leader and watch also the sharp stones on the ground. “One
puncture and I’m done” I reminded myself, but kind of trusted my tubeless
tires!
Jock and Jonathan went ahead full speed and me
with Julien were on the hunt. The tempo was just too fast and my heart rate was
at 180 straight from the start. “I can’t keep up like this the whole race” I
started panicking! Jonathan realized this in the middle of the second lap,
slowed down and we passed him. At the beginning the third lap we finally caught
Jock and I was hoping that the pace will slow down and we will relax. No way!!
Jock and Julien started to race each other and I realized that I just cannot
keep up if I want to finish the race and started to slow down letting them go L My dream about a triple was fading away!
So I started to cruise on my own, still decent speed faster
than the rest of the field, but trying to recover and watch my back. In the
middle of the fourth lap Jock got a puncture or some mechanical problem he
couldn’t solve and had to retire from the race. Then I was second, but felt
like I was continuously slowing down.
It was true because one lap later Jonathan closed on me,
passed me and I had to try to stick to his tail. It was hard, but I didn’t want
to give up so easily. Unfortunately for him his new rohloff rear wheel spokes
loosened and broke, so by the end of that lap his chase was over. And I was
still second with no one in sight ahead nor behind.
From that time I really started to cruise and suffer. Lack
of training and my weak shape showed up in full strength and had to work hard
every lap to complete it. During the eight round Julien lapped me like a
bullet! He was still flying like at the start! Road bike time trial couple of
weeks back should have warned me that those roadies maybe don’t have the
technique on the mountain bike, but they have the muscle…which counts even more
that skill I’m afraid!
The last laps I had to even stop and rest my
toes because of serious pain, but there was no one behind me even after 3
minutes of rest. I lined up next the Filipino weekend warriors doing the half
distance and we cruised together. They are definitely getting better every
year, but it was me who was that terribly slow! Frustrating, sad and worrying!
I finished second with 12 laps in 3 hours and 20 minutes
(they made me do one more lap because I finished 11 in 2:57!! Last year I did
14 in the same time. But the biggest worry was my shape for the upcoming MTB
Championship series organized by Padyak where they are promising huge support,
prestige and prize money…and you want to be part of an event like this and you
want to be visible in the event like this! We’ll see how bad it really is…still
more than a month to go J
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