4th race in the Qtri series has been announced, on 1st March. It’s on a tourist Island which basically consists of beaches, hotels and a terrifying-looking waterslide. Sprint format with 4 lap draft-legal bike course, road bikes only again. Looks good, love this format, just need to engage brain this time and actually do some drafting rather than ride round solo.
edit - the waterslide is somewhere else my bad
the yellow lines are where I propose to place the shark nets
Looks like the set from the Meg 2
Fairly sure I managed to shift the UT Snowdonia race, haven’t received the refund yet but it is showing as cancelled on my entries.
So I’ve spent the refund wisely on the Chitriman race that Doon has done 
it’s a week after the 70.3 near Amsterdam so will maybe get some cycling in around Flanders during the week but it might have to be on the TT bike.
8 times I had to confirm I think I’m healthy enough to race, 8 bloody times!!!
Also entered the Boro half next weekend 3rd March, partly to support a local race and partly to force myself into doing a long run, I can’t imagine it will be much fun though.
Koppenburg on the tt? Loooovely! 
Sounds good though!
Cobbles will be fun 
I’ve done a couple around there on IM Maastricht on the TT bike, probably still better than Bolton or Wales 
4th and I think final race in the Qatar Tri series this morning.
It was early doors at a place called Quetifan Island. Clear blue skies but a Strong north wind brought the temp right down, 15C but felt colder.
Got pretty chilly waiting for the start. I was non-wetsuit again, as were a few other hardened North Europeans, plus one local dude in a pair of budgie smugglers. Everyone else was neoprened up.
Manage to find some feet to follow, had a good swim, and then the long run up the beach unencumbered by a wetsuit and the lack of neoprene to peel off meant I was one of the first out on the bike 
Unfortunately that didn’t last long, a shameful lack of bike power meant that young studs were soon flying past. The race was draft legal, and as a rider went past I tried to stay with them, but the course was twisty and technical and I ended up getting dropped on the corners. Longest draft was maybe 2km, better than nothing but not really what I hoped for. Need to get back on Zwift, haven’t uploaded power yet but I think it was only about 230W AP.
Mrs FT’s Trek Emonda (s) with my museum carbon wheels turned out great, the seapost didn’t fall out despite only being clamped on by a whisker, and the shifting was tolerable respite running 11 speed ultegra on a 10 speed cassette.
This is T2 looking hotter than it has any right to:
Run, still not quite recovered from the January RED madness, that definitely was not good training. Felt a bit slow and shuffly, but managed 4m08 pace although it felt slower.
The good news, least slowest fossil again, that’s 4 out of 4 in the series.
Here’s the ladies getting their Sheikly medals (no envelopes today):
It has been a hugely enjoyable series of races, starting to make some friends through it, and definitely helped keep me relatively sane in what is a bit of a weird chapter 
But hey, it’s March already, you UK guys will get your turn soon 
Fantastic effort Fruity 
Well done fruity, get back on it with Bologna and you’ll be a cycling god again 
Draft legal races are alright if you avoid the numpties that have no idea.
Oh yeah, less of the fossil please, I’m getting quite existential 
Don’t think I can post it here because it’s a vid, but someone got some nice drone footage of the beach transition
not sure if this works - link to vid on Strava
Nice work !
Fast fossil !!
Isn’t that the shark spotter drone?
Nice one, well done owd lad 
Well done Fruity 
Middlesbrough half marathon for me tomorrow, it’ll be my first race since Berlin nearly 6 months ago. Fairly flat course with a few dead turns, but pretty mindnumbing in places near the football ground and around a trading estate.
Mostly about trying to get a decent run in and seeing how I feel afterwards, still not completely convinced about the hamstring TBH but probably overthinking it a bit.
Loose plan is to set off around 4:30/K pace and see when it starts to hurt, should get under 1:40 if I don’t go stupid at the start but we’ll see.
Season starts here (hopefully!)
Good luck
Greta sends her approval for choosing a race that presumably doesn’t involve getting on a plane 
How did it go?
aaah its on strava - 1h33 
with metronomic pacing too
Haha, could have got a few more Greta points if I’d ran or cycled here
That went better than expected but conditions were good and the course is pretty fast as well. It was a bit cold for me but dry and hardly any wind, even by the river which is usually pretty bad.
After a slightly fast first 3K I settled into what felt like a reasonable rhythm, K splits were around 4:25 and I was about a minute ahead of schedule at 10k. There’s a couple of little climbs there to hurt the legs
Settled back down but around 14k I was starting to feel it and although I wasn’t watching the splits it felt like I was just about holding my pace and could see on the out and back bits that I wasn’t far off the 1:30 pacer who had started a bit in front of me.
4k to go and I was having to hang on but knew it would soon be over. With 2.1k to go I was sure I’d get around 1:34 and maybe quicker but there was a little kicker that really hurt!
I could see the finish and checked my watch and thought I might even sneak a 1:32 but somebody moved the finish line back about 40 metres
Genuinely didn’t expect 1:33:07 but the conditions helped, could have been quicker if I’d used the Alphafly’s, decided to go with the Adrenaline’s for the stability. As fruity says the pacing was pretty consistent which was pleasing.
Starting to feel it already but hopefully something to push on from, not sure how Malta half will go as it’s right at the end of the holiday and I’ll have a lot of walking in the legs. But still only a couple of minutes quicker than I ran off the bike last year so I’m not getting too carried away
Great racing and write up.
Just the odd sandbag !
Well done … up the oldies!
Good work Jeff 
Last XC race of the season for me yesterday, my 4th race out of the 5 race series. Almost definitely shouldn’t have run the 3rd race after pulling my calf a week before, doing it more damage, and since then done almost no running for 7 weeks.
Tested myself with a hard effort at parkrun and everything felt good, other than a lack a of fitness. Kind of had my arm twisted to help the B team make history of getting promoted to be in the top division.
Pretty happy with how that went given I wasn’t going full gas and fitness was well down. Generally was OK on the flat and slight hills. I’m awful down hill, and wasn’t in the mood to push it or risk anything. Found myself in no mans land towards the finish, and was taking it quite easy, however it soon became apparent there was at least one person behind closing rapidly so I kept upping the pace until the final 50m was a full on sprint. Just managed to hold him off, a much younger lad (u23) who can run a 2:06 800m I later saw on PowerOf10.
Bit of a roller coaster of a season, rather poor first result, really happy with 2 & 3 (despite the dodgy calf which re-went less than 1km in) and then just happy to be able to run in the 5th one.
Bring on November…
Well… might do the National which will now be some time in September.
