Racing for Team Egypt in 2013!

Welcome to my triathlon pages! This blog will be about my quest to reaching my triathlon dreams, as well as try to get feedback from anyone who feels like it. It will mainly include everything that has to do with the parts of my life that revolve around triathlon, starting with training, down to nutrition, recovery, objectives along the way and, of course, racing.

After I have stopped triathlon training for many years, I have decided during the summer of 2011 to get back into it. My first goal (after losing 20kgs of weight) was to train towards the Nice Ironman*, which was going to be held in June 2012. 14 weeks down my training, my bones started to give me the message that I should stop! It seemed to be that my body just didn’t like it when I ran beyond half-marathon distance. So, after stopping to recover for a couple of weeks, I have decided that I was going to resume training, but this time for Olympic distance**.

I had 2 goals in mind, one being the London Triathlon in September 2012, but, before getting there, I had another goal, which was the Chester Triathlon in July, which was a qualifying race to the World Championships. I trained, got back into shape, but I didn’t prepare properly for race strategy, and my cycling training was not up to scratch. Moreover, my nutrition needed more attention, and recovery needed much more attention, which at my age is a very important factor!

So, after a disappointing Chester Triathlon, which I finished in just over 3 hours (excruciating cramps for more than half the race), I started tweaking a few bits of my training and sports nutrition, with the aim of doing well at the London Triathlon, at least to beat my personal best of 02:43. I was ready for London, but lady luck wasn’t on my side that day and I wasn’t even able to make to the start line on time, getting stuck in traffic for 4 hours!

Now, I have a wholly new goal: 2013 will be the start of my participating in World Championship races, hopefully racing for Team Egypt!

I have redesigned my whole training programme with very specific goals, the first of which, and most important for now, is achieving sub 02:30 by the third week in March 2013. My next post will be about the exact targets, how I have developed my training programme, my progress, and what I am trying to do exactly to achieve those and some bigger goals.

Afterwards, my posts will mainly be updates about progress and other relevant things I find interesting along the way.

My road to the World Championships has officially begun!

* The Nice Ironman: 3.86km swim, 180km cycle, 42.2km run

** Olympic Distance Triathlon: 1.5km swim, 40km cycle, 10km run