Start time: 5.20am
Temperature at start: 33C
Temperature at finish: 34.5C
Current temperature: 38C
Distance and time: 12.89km (exactly eight miles) in 1hr 35min 22secs
Distance covered this week: 25.9km.
This week's orange pic is courtesy of my oldest chum, well, old, in the sense that we have known each other 25 years, she is actually younger than me by a whole month. It is an orange fox. Thanks for that, buddy.
The day's inspirational running song, well, it has to be the theme from the film 8-mile by Eminem:
I must confess I don't actually own this song or have it on my iPod because I find the music of Mr 'Nem a little bit shouty and nasty for my delicate ears, particularly before 6am. But, I may consider getting it because it has the old useful persistent beat to keep the legs going and, ahem, "encouraging" just get the heck on with it lyrics.
The run, starting near our abode in Downtown Dubai, actually took place yesterday but I had to do some actual work, (I know, on a Saturday, the cheek of it), hence writing this the following day.
The earlier start helped with the heat, but, we tried a new route and as him indoors is usually 500m ahead of me, and I have no sense of direction whatsoever, I did get slightly lost at the point where I had to come back across Financial Centre Road after doing a loop of the Emirates Towers. This will mean nothing to those of you not familiar with the vagaries of the Downtown Dubai one-way system, but I nearly ended up running up a flyover to the upper level of The Dubai Mall. Oops. This was in part due to the fact that Downtown continues be, in parts, a spaghetti junction of roads that mysteriously come to an end with no warning due to the fact that the place is half-built, and, in part due to the fact that around 6am on a Friday when three or four kilometres into a run isn't my most intelligent of times.
Anyway, I got round most of the rest of it fine, although, I did have to stop at the Boulevard Cafe at the Al Manzil Hotel, (if you haven't been there, go for breakfast and try the Eggs Benedict) and ask the man who was preparing the tables to fill my water bottle. Oh, and there were the times I was just walking along, thinking: "Where the hell am I?" and 300m where I was despairing a bit due to the sheer depressingly ugly un-built wasteland hell that is the back parts of Downtown. Apart from those instances, I succeeded in running most of the way.
I am slightly terrified that on the day I will have to run an additional 5.1 miles on top of yesterday's distance considering it was quite exhausting enough for me. But, now that I have managed to get through more than half the distance, I am starting to feel a bit reassured that I will actually be able to make it all the way round without a) crying, b) having to walk a lot of it or c) coming so far behind everyone else that the race organisers have gone home by the time I finish.
None of this will make any sense to you if you don't know that him indoors and I are doing a half marathon for Myeloma UK on October 18th, but you can read a bit more and sponsor us here.
Temperature at start: 33C
Temperature at finish: 34.5C
Current temperature: 38C
Distance and time: 12.89km (exactly eight miles) in 1hr 35min 22secs
Distance covered this week: 25.9km.
This week's orange pic is courtesy of my oldest chum, well, old, in the sense that we have known each other 25 years, she is actually younger than me by a whole month. It is an orange fox. Thanks for that, buddy.
The day's inspirational running song, well, it has to be the theme from the film 8-mile by Eminem:
The run, starting near our abode in Downtown Dubai, actually took place yesterday but I had to do some actual work, (I know, on a Saturday, the cheek of it), hence writing this the following day.
The earlier start helped with the heat, but, we tried a new route and as him indoors is usually 500m ahead of me, and I have no sense of direction whatsoever, I did get slightly lost at the point where I had to come back across Financial Centre Road after doing a loop of the Emirates Towers. This will mean nothing to those of you not familiar with the vagaries of the Downtown Dubai one-way system, but I nearly ended up running up a flyover to the upper level of The Dubai Mall. Oops. This was in part due to the fact that Downtown continues be, in parts, a spaghetti junction of roads that mysteriously come to an end with no warning due to the fact that the place is half-built, and, in part due to the fact that around 6am on a Friday when three or four kilometres into a run isn't my most intelligent of times.
Anyway, I got round most of the rest of it fine, although, I did have to stop at the Boulevard Cafe at the Al Manzil Hotel, (if you haven't been there, go for breakfast and try the Eggs Benedict) and ask the man who was preparing the tables to fill my water bottle. Oh, and there were the times I was just walking along, thinking: "Where the hell am I?" and 300m where I was despairing a bit due to the sheer depressingly ugly un-built wasteland hell that is the back parts of Downtown. Apart from those instances, I succeeded in running most of the way.
I am slightly terrified that on the day I will have to run an additional 5.1 miles on top of yesterday's distance considering it was quite exhausting enough for me. But, now that I have managed to get through more than half the distance, I am starting to feel a bit reassured that I will actually be able to make it all the way round without a) crying, b) having to walk a lot of it or c) coming so far behind everyone else that the race organisers have gone home by the time I finish.
None of this will make any sense to you if you don't know that him indoors and I are doing a half marathon for Myeloma UK on October 18th, but you can read a bit more and sponsor us here.
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