Dubai Triathlon Club Olympic Distance Triathlon

Another Friday, and other triathlon. This time it was the DTC Olympic distance triathlon. That’s a 1500 metre swim, 40 km bike, and a 10 km run. Once again, Team Tri2Aspire were up for it. It seemed every other triathlete on the course was in our team colours, a great turnout. As usual, I wimped out of doing the whole thing, and was able to find two willing accomplices, Jamie Atherton and Chris Sellar, to join the team event. These are two of the stars of the team. Jamie has previously represented Great Britain in his age group, but suffered a career threatening neck injury two months ago while swimming. This was his return to competition, and we wanted to make it a good one for him. Chris is also a fabulous athlete, having won the 2008 DTC Half Ironman triathlon in appalling conditions with a really gutsy run. Having recently become a dad (congratulations Chris!), he was happy to find an event which fitted into his new schedule of nappy changing and getting woken up at odd hours.

As last week, we were able to line up with former world Ironman champion Faris Sultan. As usual, the start line was the last most of us saw of him. If you were lucky, you heard the turbo whine as he passed you. A deeply impressive thing to watch.

Once again the weather gremlins struck a DTC event. This time there was a 20 knot wind blowing off the sea. There were two potentially strong teams in the team event, and we exited the water with a 10 minute deficit on the first of them. The bike leg was tough with the wind, but, unlike the much feared ‘Ghantoot wind’, it was steady, cool, and predictable, so hard work but not too challenging. Like all windy events, it seemed to go on forever, so I was surprised to check my lap split to find I was lapping at 18 minutes, getting in in a shade under 56 minutes, and leaving Chris with a 2½ minute deficit to make up on the run section. Like the star he is, Chris made it up by 5 km, and we came in to win by almost 2 minutes (results here). Which makes a hatrick for Team Tri2Aspire in this years team triathlons.