Its past mid July now and the reality of the race we are about to take on is slowly hitting home!! All the emails sent out by the organisers and others related to the race suggest an Epic, harder then ever..climb, climb, climb and technical race….oh yes and once again CLIMB!!
I was a bit taken by all the warnings and decided I will spend a few weekends at the infamous Jebel Hafeet mountain in Al Ain, central UAE on the Oman border. There is a great hotel at the top of the mountain with rates reduced through the summer as not too many people venture out there in the 50 degree Celsius scorching summer…let alone any cyclists!! But, avoiding all weather forecasts and getting up to start riding at 3.30am does the trick!
This week is my last hard(ish) training week where after I will start tapering down to let the body recover fully before the race starts on 10 August. I will be doing the standard 2 to 3 sessions during the week in the evenings and then the long Friday ride (120/130k) with the Dubai Roadsters with a double Hafeet Climb planned for very early on Saturday morning. Hopefully the Hafeet climbs will give me the strength needed for the long Rocky climbs….as they say…’we will have to wait and see’!!
Funny incident last weekend at Hafeet…I asked a local Arab guy to take a video clip of me while riding. He was very friendly and more than willing to do it……I got going on the bike and he followed me in his car. Then I heard the music pumping out from his car…it was Celine Dion, some ‘Alive’ song! I had a good laugh when I watched the clip afterwards, here was this friendly Arab taken a video of me on Hafeet as the sun was just rising with Celine Dion being the theme song!! I was thinking this is mega cheesy!! My friends are never seeing this clip!!
Our charity page www.justgiving.com/rockies2008 received some donations during the last 2 months which is great but we are still way off our target!! I know some of you might think you want to see us finish the race first..well..thats fine as we surely plan to finish which means you should seriously think about your donation!! Our target of £1000 is nothing compared to what all of us spend on our daily luxuries, lets get stuck in please, just another 3 weeks left!!
Will be sending regular updates through these final weeks, which will be more to do with the logistics behind the travel and what to take with etc….that seems like quite a task in itself, never mind riding our bikes for 7 days!!
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