Triathlon Training in Dubai

Clearly, here in Dubai we don’t have the wealth of facilities or groups that tri freaks in big cities in Europe, Australia or the US have access to, but, for a new little city in the desert, we actually don’t do too badly. here's a run down on what's available to the Dubai triathlete in search of training.

Swim

Easy. There’s really only one masters’ swim programme – Dubai Masters Swimming Club – so, fortunately, it’s a good one. Coach Seth puts us through our paces between six and eight times a week (every evening between 7pm and 8pm, and Saturday mornings at…well…I don’t know what time coz I’ve never been). There are also a couple of morning sessions during the week but, unless I’ve had to alter my programme for some reason, I rarely make these. All sorts of levels are spread across the six lanes and quite a few of the local tri crowd tend to train there too – at the upper end, we generally get through around 3200m of mainly threshold work during our hour-long sessions.

Bike

The biggest Dubai bike shop, Wolfi’s, organises a weekly Friday (remember, Friday is our Saturday!) morning ride with the Dubai Roadsters, offering 80km, 100km and 140km. For a relative beginner – like me – the pace is a little fierce. Fortunately, there’s also the Cycle Challenge crew who are organising the Dubai 92km bike race in December and have been running build-up rides steadily increasing in distance. I ride with them on a Friday morning and, when possible, Saturday too, for a 60k run that is a bit faster than Friday and has the added benefit of coffee and a croissant at the lovely Bab Al Shams resort at the halfway mark.

Run

Dubai is blessed with many running clubs, with Abras, The Creek Striders and The Mirdif Milers being the main ones. Unfortunately, they all train when I’m busy doing other things and, between swim/bike/gym/work/the bootcamp I run in winter, I just can’t fit any of their sessions in, so I choose to run alone.

General

I quite like this set-up. The swimming and long weekend group rides give me a social element, and I also very much enjoy some solo training with the MP3 player blurring out tunes or podcasts, so I get that with runs and gym sessions.

There are a couple of triathlon teams in Dubai – the most notable being Tri2Aspire – but I like to think of myself as a freewheeling John Coltrane jazz spirit…ok, in reality, I feel it’s still early in my tri journey and there’s lots I can do and I enjoy being able to pick and choose what I do – if I can’t train one evening, it’s not the end of the world.

Can this approach work – guess I’ll find out tomorrow when I interview triathlon MEGASTAR Craig Alexander, who is currently in Dubai doing a training camp with Tri2Aspire. He’s self-coached, so I’ll be asking for some pointers.

I'll post some titbits from the interview here asap.