And ever since then ... I was running

Dubai Half Marathon



This past weekend I ran in the Dubai Creek Striders 1/2 marathon. It was a great weekend for a number of reasons. The main one being that I got to run in my first major race while living over seas. We got T-Shirts, racing numbers and everything. The race itself went along the Dubai Creek which comes from the Arabian Gulf. Even though it was a major race (400 runners) it wasn’t what I was used to. Mainly because none of the roads were blocked off for the runners. They had volunteers along the route giving out water and police officers helping with traffic but all in all we weren’t shielded from any of the interruptions that you would have on a training run. The race wove us through a city park, the docks which were pretty active, through an underwater tunnel that was under construction and my favorite the local souqs (open air markets). The starting instructions were different then I had ever heard of. They made mention of the bridge should be down, watch out for the fishermen, when going through the tunnel mind the scaffolding and try not getting lost in the souqs.



My time was about 40 minutes slower then what I ran in high school and college but I was just happy that I finished. After 10 miles I had to walk some but the way I reasoned it, if I didn’t walk then I probably wouldn’t have finished. So I finally made it to the finish line doing my best to not start dry heaving in front of everybody and collapsed after I crossed in a staggering time of two hours and fifteen minutes.



One of the cooler parts of the run was that seven other members my virtual running club actually fabricated at the same time. They all finished the race as well which was nice seeing that we had started training sometime in September. I got a group shot of seven of us that I tried to get into the local newspaper. Unfortunately they were not as excited about eight expats flying to Dubai and running in a circle as I thought they would.



One of best parts of the weekend was after the race during breakfast. They had a breakfast buffet for everybody which included pork bacon. Just for future reference, anytime you work out for two hours, a pile of bacon is probably not the best thing to eat. Oh well, it felt good going down. After that we had the prize drawings where I missed out on the $20 at the local sports shop and got the GPS watch instead http://www.garmin.com/products/forerunner201/. Somebody else was supposed to get it but since he wasn’t there I got it. I had said a prayer asking for it while at the same time feeling ridiculous. Well 20 minutes later they called my name for it. I kept on asking myself ”Why would God bless me with this cool toy?” Was there some eternal purpose that GPS has in my future :) I reasoned that it was just God telling me, you have your doubts some time and you shouldn’t. I’m always here. There has been a number of times when God has answered my prayers in such a quick and odds defying way that I felt an extra close connection. So what did I get, God’s in the room and I shouldn’t forget it.



Dubai vs Doha



The race was in Dubai which is in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Dubai to Doha is like Austin to College Station in culture and Dallas to Austin in size. I kept on trying to put the difference into words and I finally figured it out. Doha is an Arabic city with large pockets of western and asian culture. Dubai is a western city with pockets of Arabic culture. You don’t see a mosque on every corner, you barely every here the prayer call and a lot of the restaurants had English only menus as apposed to the bilingual ones you get here. I’m not saying it’s better or worse but it is a city that I hope Doha doesn’t fully emulate. I have my gripes about my home town but in reality I’ve started to like this culture more then I thought I would.



So that’s my happy weekend. Hope all is well with everybody.