Bike rides, guinea pigs, drinks and weddings

Busy weekend coming up, folks.

Firstly, I have my first swimming gala in, oooooh, around 14 years! The snappily titled H.H UAE Presidents Championship is the first meet to be held at the equally tongue-tripping Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Sports Complex. The HbMbRSC, as I like to call it, will be the venue for the FINA World Short Course Champs in December, so this is effectively a dry-run (but with water, one hopes) for that with all us UAE-based maters swimmers acting as guinea pigs.

Will it look anything like this artist's impression..?

 Anyways, I’ll be swimming 200IM, 50 free, 50 fly and 100 fly, as well as 100 back and 200 free in the relays – two sessions on Friday and another on Saturday morning. Should be fun, at least…

Also, one of my very best mates, Joe, is over here for work at the moment. Another keen relative newbie biker, we’re going to try to get a couple of long rides in over the next couple of weekends. That means joining the Cycle Challenge Friday crew at 6.30 tomorrow morning and aiming for the full 80kms that they’ll be doing. As I have to be at the pool (very nearby, which is a stroke of luck) by 9.30 latest (and the Friday crew is a nice and leisurely pace), we’ll just have to see how far we get…either turn around early or go out the full distance and break away up front for a quicker ride back in. Should make for a slightly unconventional warm-up for the swim meet, anyway.

Also, socially torn tomorrow night…a good mate, Pete, is celebrating his 25^th birthday (young whippersnapper) but, as that’s likely to get massively out of hand and debauched, I’m heading to my colleagues wedding party at the Yacht Club. Going to try to keep it tight and relatively well-behaved, as I’d like to either get a bit of the Bab Al Shams ride in before Saturday’s swim meet starts, or head down to Ghantoot for an hour to watch Crowie put the Tri2Aspire guys through their paces.

Most importantly, there’s a Everton v Blackpool game that’ll need watching…

Although it can get a bit manic and, often, these events throw scheduled training plans all off kilter, I’m loving this time of year – every weekend is likely to be similar between now and Christmas. I just try to think of it all as fun and different racing (swim meet = sprint training, going straight from the bike ride = brick session…) and, after all, what’s the point of all this training if you don’t get to race now and then?