Latest News: Abu Dhabi Race Report (English)

Since we got to Abu Dhabi everything was quite different from last year, the Airport that was already beautiful, now was under construction "renovation" I don't understand why.... We also arrived extremely tired after a 33hr flight from Kona-San Francisco-Frankfurt-Abu Dhabi. And the weather was surprisingly cold! That made me remind that I left my wetsuit in Hawaii, very dumb thing to do, I don't know why but since last year the thing that I remembered the most of this race was the extreme heat, so I just bothered to find out if the race would aloud the use of speedsuits, they didn't just like a WTC event, so I decided to race with a Red/Black Kiwami Amphibian instead of my usual Kiwami Konami White Trisuit
The week was pretty crazy, we both were trying to recover from the awful long trip, swollen legs (I forgot also my compression socks) and specially the Jet Lag! I think I jinxed myself when I told Cory and Alyssa "Oh 33hrs of flight, we can handle that, we are used to it" ha ha ha! The whole trip I had to eat every word I said! Just like Justin Bieber song..... Never say Never! ha ha ha!

The weather kept changing drastically every day, it's incredible how this is possible in the Desert. The only thing that kept rising was the water temperature, when we arrived it was 21 degrees celsius, but it kept rising 1/2 a degree every day, so I had a pretty good chance of being safe without a wetsuit.
Friday came and the water was 23 degrees exactly but the organizers decided that it was going to be wetsuit legal...duh.. I thought that saturday the water would be above 23 degrees.

Race day came, 5am at transition and there was Belinda Granger with a wetsuit for me, thanks BG! I was resigned to loose some minutes but now I had a wetsuit! Cool!
When the gun went off I found myself leading the swim, when I got to the first turn buoy I noticed that we were 5 guys that had separated around 3 meters from the group, so I decided to save some energy and follow some feet, we stayed together for the rest of the 3k swim and started the bike together.

in the first few kilometers still in Abu Dhabi we left behind a couple of guys, and other left me and a guy with an AVIA Uniform, he left pretty fast, maybe too fast and I thought he will sooner or later would blow up....
As soon as I got out of the city into the Desert road the wind made it's great appearance!! I knew it was going to be a tough one this time, so the beautiful road from last year now seemed very, very scary. Then I thought that I shouldn't have this negative thoughts so early in the race, so I tried to focus and do my thing. Which was not that easy, the wind kept on coming strong, you could see waves of sand in the tarmac, what made me feel better is that the first 45kms I passed them in 1:19 (34.1km/h) and also I passed the guy in the Avia Uniform. I knew I was going strong even with the wind, I felt good and even better in the second 45kms which I passed in 1:13 (36.9km/h) Pretty good for the conditions, so the first 90k were down in 2:32, I felt I could finish at that pace without a problem, but that problem came at km 130.....

I started feeling crappy, I think it was the Gatorade they gave me a couple of times when I asked for water, in the 3rd 45k my pace dropped to 1:22 (32.9km/h) the only good thing was to see the Guy who left us at the beginning, he was pedaling squares! I felt for him, but I also felt for me, because the guy from AVIA passed me too.... I felt better after drinking some Coke and water and I got to the 180km mark in 5:15.

Then all went to Sh#$%^ I felt terrible, tired and started cramping every time I went out of the saddle, and I couldn't stand the aero position anymore, my back was killing me. So the last 20kms I tried to recover for the run, I dropped my pace a lot, but I worked, I arrived to Transition feeling good and strong for my 20k run.
Now I know I should have visualized my race like I do every time, but this time I didn't..... maybe if I did I would have noticed that I needed to get to Transition with my bike shoes "ON" and not barefoot, last year it was pretty hot, the problem with this year was that it was EXTREMELY HOT! Just like a frying pan! My head didn't worked as I was running over the blue hot tiles I was just thinking in getting to the tent, I didn't even thought about stopping in my track and put on my shoes.... Bad mistake!

I started the run feeling good, my pace was fast (6:30min/mile) and I was not pushing that hard, but after 2k I felt a sharp pain in both feet, it was like electric shocks, I said to myself "come on, suck it up" but after 3kms it was just impossible, my primal instinct was taking over and changing my foot landing position, I couldn't do anything, and the pain was excruciating! I thought I was developing blisters from the burned feet, so I thought in sitting down and puncture the blisters to let the water out, but there was no water yet! It was more like the outside skin was separated from the inside skin, that's why I felt that my feet were sliding inside my shoes.

I sat down for a while trying to find a way to continue, but when I stood up to try to run, I couldn't even walk! I was forced to DNF a Triathlon Race for the first time in my life. They took me in a car to the finish line to find out that Dirk got 3rd place! I was happy for him but pissed off with me. After a couple of hrs I remembered that I do this because I like it, that it's all about the Journey not the Destination, so I felt better the same day after a nice shower.
The rest of the trip was pretty good actually, we went to Dubai and also to a 4x4 Safari in the Desert, it was excellent.