Another RAK half marathon – 2017

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Yesterday the RAK half marathon impressively lived up to being the world’s fastest half marathon. Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya set a new world record for the women’s half marathon, in 65:06. I heard she was hunched over after the finish looking like she was about to vomit. No history books will mention that.

The weather conditions were absolutely perfect for running. Even before the race the announcer said there are no excuses for not running a personal best time today. I objected to the people around me, “This guy clearly doesn’t know me!”

I started the day with a thought that 1:40 would be a decent finish time, given the training I’ve done. In the end, I finished in a fair 1:39:59 .. And this time was with one toilet stop. If it wasn’t for that huge wee, I may have also finished the run in around 1hr and 5 minutes.

Soon after the start I was alongside one of Dubai Creek Striders’s most charismatic characters, and wellness gurus.  A lot of his recent social media posts have been relating the ill-effects of sugar on us. I facetiously told him to “Leave my sugar alone” .. then nervously overtook him – with an immediate worry that he’s probably right, and my diet will be my demise in this race and he and the rest of the group would overtake me with much cheer.

A single glimpse of something can lead me to think about it for huge stretches of time. Along the way I passed a guy wearing an Iron Man body suit. I pondered, at what point in a race would I deploy the jets. I don’t know how many kilometres I had completed at that point, but I was pretty sure I’d put on the jets right there and then.

That was a more enjoyable thought than when I passed a shirt slogan, “There is no finish line”.  I know their marketing folks are inspiring an ongoing lifestyle, and promoting a continuing journey of fitness. I know that now. At the time, I just muttered “Bugger”.

One distance milestone I do remember was passing the 12km marker. I remember this because the lady next to me said out loud “Single figures”. She didn’t seem to be running with anybody else. So maybe she was talking to us. I thought about it, then thought about it some more. It could have been 5 seconds later I figured it out, and apologetically verified back to her “Ah, [single figures] kilometres remaining!”

I wore the race shirt they provided us. Lots do. Why not, it’s the newest in my wardrobe. At one point I noticed a guy to my right was wearing not only the shirt, but also the same Nike “look-at-me” running shorts I had. He may have seen me looking him up and down, so I shared that we could be twins. He thankfully laughed. Then we both decided to split up before the camera people just ahead could take a cute picture of us together.

It was funny to hear Kat, the default voice of the Runkeeper app, coming from someone else’s smart phone. The guy was getting a comprehensive update on his time, distance, average pace, and I was curious if bladder levels would one day become part of the story. I told the guy I thought the Runkeeper lady only talked to me. But he was quick to explain. That app is important company he has during his away-time running.  It gets him through the many times he’s in the bad books for being anti-social, having to go to bed early & run in the mornings. Then he put up his hands and shrugged, “What else can we do when we love such a crazy pastime as running?” I agreed and wished him a lovely run.

In the final 4-5kms I maintained a pace between slouching off and feeling like I was about to vomit. After giving High 5s to my family (who was leaning inappropriately out over the fence) with 200 metres remaining, I sprinted to cross the finish line – with one second to spare.

I look forward to doing it again next year.

Yet another Striders half – 09 Dec 2016

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Yesterday I ran my seventh straight Johnson Arabia Dubai Creek Striders Half Marathon.

It’s clearly a race I don’t want to miss.

Every year the event gets bigger and better.

As I began running with the large community of Dubai runners I wondered, what colour would you need to wear these days to stand out?
Fluororescent colours have returned to fashion.  And there were running kits of every other colour and shade. I noticed even past running shirts from obscure events are rarely alone. It was interesting to see us running as a full palate of running regalia.

This year I wasn’t aiming for a quick time, preferring to run conservatively as a training session for next month’s full marathon.  In fact, I was quite nervous about what pace I should stick to.  Each time I decided to pass somebody, it was only after  I had quite an internal debate. On one occasion I wondered if I could pass the guy in front, then I looked up and was surprised to read on his shirt “Unlikely”. Was it an omen?  It turned out the shirt is from the Unlikely Runners group. I love that honesty in marketing.

A little later I caught up with the pace runners for people aiming to finish in less than 1:45. I checked in with the leader whom I knew.  I had to ask, if I ran ahead and they later catch up to me, are they then required to carry me? Nope. They were quite clear, they’d kick me up the butt.

With that motivation, I gradually ran off (with a slight worry).

I realised also, countries and nationalities become irrelevant during running events. At a running event there are merely runners, and supporters. For anybody running, I sympathise with their effort, and have a deep, specific respect for them. And for anyone there that isn’t running, they’re supporting and I appreciate them fully.

Addendum: Scrap the thought that nations become irrelevant. It turns out, I was the 1st Australian to finish for my age category. I left a massive contingent of 8 people in my dust. HA!

Once again I chose to listen to music while running.  And again, I had an issue. Selecting my “Run Calm” playlist from my running tracker, only played the songs I had locally-stored on my phone. What happened to the huge & brilliant selection I have curated in the cloud?

When you’re listening to music during an activity, it has less than your full concentration.  SO I guess it took a few run-throughs for me to notice my phone was playing only four different songs.

My four locally-saved songs from a complete playlist
Exhibit A: My playlist

I tried talking reasonably with Siri to skip and change play lists, but that just freaked out the people running alongside me.

I decided to continue through it. For some reason, repeating music seemed better than none.
In fact, bopping along a few times to a song like Even Flow by Pearl Jam seemed quite helpful. When I couldn’t quite understand the lyric
“Moths are all like butterflies,
He don’t know, so he chases them away”

it seemed helpful that I could listen more intently to it in a few minutes.
I later researched the lyrics, They’re actually,

Even flow, thoughts arrive like butterflies,
He don't know, so he chases them away

How many more kilometres of this song looping would I need to run to get those lyrics?

As a song finished, I was able to hear a clicking sound at a regular tempo, though not quite in sync with my running steps. I immediately figured it was one of those people with a sophisticated watch beeping far too often at a regular pace to help the runner keep their steps or heart beats in time. These are so annoying to everybody else around. I look over to the person running beside me and roll my eyes – communicating, “Oh dear, we’ve got one of them with us”. But then as the volume of my next song increased, the sound of the clicking reduced.  Oops. The sound was always there and it was quite clearly the noise from my headphone cable hitting my race number bib.

As I was getting into the final quarter of the race, I considered upping the tempo to finish strong.

I used to have an extra gear to finish fast and overtake pretty much anyone in the vicinity. Now I feel more like a taxi driver asking for directions.

I finished more steadily in 1:41.14, which was two minutes slower than the same race last year. In the scheme of things, that’s quite reasonable.

The next stage of the event was the Breakfast Buffet.  Here I feel I may have had a personal best.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of accomplishment after a 21.1km race; then replacing double the calories that were burned.

The only complaint with breakfast was that at our table I was sitting with an impressively overflowing plate of bacon and pork sausages, while a humorless Dutch couple sat next to us to share a tiny box of cornflakes & milk. I think they should be banned next year from participating.

The prize-giving went through with very few surprises.  The regular male open winner was from Uganda,  and the women’s open winner from Finland is becoming a regular. I wonder if I was the only person who was imaging what would happen if these running freaks from two different continents had babies together.

Again, it was a hugely enjoyable event to kick off the start of the running season. I look forward to next year.