Alice's adventures in... Bahrain

British long distance Pro Alice Hector (www.alicetri.com) has had arguably her best season to date in 2016, including winning her first Ironman 70.3 title in Reugen, Germany.

On Saturday, Alice will be racing at Ironman 70.3 Bahrain, the Middle East Championships, an event with a $100,000 prize purse - and a quality and deep start list to match. In the lead up to the race, Alice will be updating us on what she's been up to. Here's day one, which was largely about getting lost despite being less than a mile away from the race resort...

Day 1: Wednesday. T minus 3 days.

After a smooth but full flight (where luckily and quite by chance, I got seated beside fellow GB pro Natalie Seymour), I was at the hotel by just after midnight and asleep by 2 am. Oh well - I guess I was excited, and definitely still on UK time.

I awoke late; confused and alone in a foreign land. My partner and one-man paparazzi crew Darren (thatcameraman.com) isn't due to get here until late Thursday and he loves strategy and planning. For me, one could say that is not my forte. It was a day of finding my feet. It's just a shame my feet seem to take twice as long to find as other people's. No stress. I'm used to it by now!

I found my way to the race resort eventually. It's only 1.5k away but I took the wrong road and ended up cycling through 'downtown' Bahrain. Interesting. Not wholly recommended as it was largely gridlocked with vociferous vehicles, but the locals are probably not used to strange ladies/foolish buffoons on fast bicycles, so rather than mow me down in their cars London-style, I think I surprised them enough into being quite accommodating.

A 30 min swim in the hotel pool (10 metres long - 6 strokes - you make the best of it) and rolling around on a rounders ball (release-work) filled the rest of my day.

(Slight exaggeration has been applied for the benefit of this MEME...)

Today was for mistakes/'learning'. Tomorrow I will be organised. We have the pro race brief at 3pm and I'll do some more mini sessions. Everything's feeling a bit tired and 'gluey' at the moment - coming out a few days early was to allow for this after a pretty long flight - so I need to keep on top of mobility work and make sure I don't do too much aerobic stuff now. The work is done, and I'm certainly 'winter fit'. How that translates to racing at this time of year remains to be seen...