Dubai marathon weekend!!!

It so happens that, oddly, living here I rarely take pictures. So when a guest comes and take a LOT of pictures, I either steal them, he he,  or get in the mood of taking them myself! So as I have actually NOT posted too many Dubai pictures, here are some from our weekend of fun (well, running the marathon and then having fun!)

This is the view from near my apartment of the Burj Kalifa (shall I mention how's it's the world's tallest building, hehehe)

Surprisngly, just outside my apt building, literally a min walk, is this farm with camels! And how coincidental that Cafe2Go, a Cafe that specializes in camel's milk, is just next to it, ha ha. 

Index Towers - just wanted to point this out as it is just behind my building, 80 floors, and... where I practiced my stair climbing. REALLY helped during the marathon to have those glutes strong!

Ed and I by the fountains just outside Dubai Mall having our carbo-loading 2 nights before the marathon

Randomly, an old friend from my Oak Park Runners Club, Fred, just happened to be in town, so he helped us in our carbo loading :-) 

                                               

Ahh... pre-marathon packet pick-up. That's when the jitters begin (and also looking at the awfully boring route!)

My BFF fellow Dubai Creek Striders pre-marathon: Lyn-Si, Steph, Jez, and myself

Annd.... post marathon! Lyn-Si and I both got best times, Lal ran his first marathon and so a personal best. Even more glorious is, as you can see, he is quite an elite runner, but didn't train properly, and Lyn-Si and I beat him! hahahah! The picture is: Dee, Lyn-Si, Jez, myself, and Lal :-) 

Chicago represent!!! Ed and I after the marathon!

Anil, OMG, my colleague, was AWESOME and came to stretch me out after the run. Was able to walk normally after that!!

Our Dubai Creek Striders post-run social event. Just enough time to get home from the marathon, clean up, then off we went! But nice BBQ and ate a good amount of protein! 

And.... just a few hours after the social, got all dolled up for a night out in town. Still on a marathon high from my good performance! 

View from At.Mosphere Lounge at the Burj Kalifa (123rd floor!)

Drinks at At.Mosphere Lounge, Burj Kalifa

The day after the marathon - went from the World's Tallest Building to the World's Most Luxurious (7 star!) hotel - the Burj Al Arab

Burj Al Arab!

All the pillars behind me are made of gold! -The Burj Al Arab

Inside the Burj Al Arab

OMG, sounds weird and I was skeptical, but this avocado soup was to die for, delicious!!!! The Burj Al Arab sure knows how to do it right! This is at Babal Yams Restaurant, "casual" dining (but ha! Sure was expensive!)

View from our lunch table. Sweet. (Palm in the background)

Beds at the Burj Al Arab

More bling bling inside the Burj Al Arab

Hahah, a gold plated, no joke, "Caution Wet Floor". Ohhh... Dubai :-) 

More Burj Al Arab pics

And.... more inside Burj Al Arab pics - I know, I'm obsessed!

Private beach area and Cafe for Burj Al Arab guests :-) 

And.... another pic of Burj Al Arab

After 3+ months of being dairy free, had my first cappuccino. Mmmm...

Thought this was a particularly nice angle of the Burj Al Arab

My fave hotel, Jumeirah Beach Hotel

Night time view of the Burj Al Arab

And... my first wine in forever too :-)

 Ta da.... fitness center (on the left), part of Jumeirah Beach Hotel

Sooo... there you have it! Dubai at it's best. Ed called it "Vegas Meets Shaumburg." My dad called it "Vegas on Steroids." hahah. Sometimes we get spoiled living here, but sometimes it takes a guests that is awed by everything to appreciate this city I live in!!! 

As a warning, the next blog will be an overly detailed blog about the marathon, so hopefully these pictures will do the next text-savy blog! (coming soon!)

Dubai marathon report to Oak Park Runners Club

Ahhhh.... 3 months of intense training, and just like that, it's over. I will be writing an overly detailed report about ALL aspects of training, the race, and the recovery very soon, but 2 things first:

1. A recap - VICTORY! Shockingly, even to myself, I not only BEAT my best time (which, mind you, was in my early 20's, more than 10 years ago!) with a 3:38:01, which I NEVER even dreamed I could do,  but the time was good enough to qualify for Boston, again, a dream come true. AND best yet, I ran a solid race where I negative split.. .meaning my 2nd half was faster than the 1st half. Okay, okay, I'll be honest, it was within 20 seconds, but really, most people go minutes and minutes over, so even coming that close is a negative split enough for me!!!!

2. Below is an article I wrote for my Oak Park Runners Club, with some pics, that they asked me to do. Kinda general stuff, but just to fill some void before I write my novel of everything about the marathon. Want to write it as detailed as possible because when I train for the Boston marathon (hopefully will smoothly get in!), want to know everything that I did because it worked!!!!

Soo... stay tuned, more to come!!!

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10+ Year Marathon Comeback – The 2014 Dubai Marathon

Here I am in 2014, a good 10+ years after my PW at the London Marathon. I had run several back to back marathons in a short period of time, but by the time the 4^th rolled around, I realized I was NOT having fun anymore and was just tired of running. The PW marked the finale decision of putting a hiatus to marathon running. The next 10 years passed with me getting into triathlons (including two ½ ironmen races) and probably more than a dozen ½ marathons, which I particularly enjoy. Did I miss or even have to run the desire to run a marathon – not a chance!

Flash forward 10 years, and I find myself living in Dubai and a part of a massive running group that is known as an “endurance club” and caters group runs towards the Dubai Marathon. Last year I didn’t hear the end of it that I didn’t run it, despite my excuses of being home in Chicago for a bulk of the “peak” training. After my friend came all the way out here to run it in 2013, I then made the decision that it was time, the hours of training preparations and the pain of running the marathon were vague at best and when another Chicago friend decided he would come out for a visit and to run it too, 10 years after his last marathon, I was sold.  But then… umm… now what?

Here are a few things about my training for the Dubai Marathon, the 10 year gap, and everything in between that worked for me:

• -The importance of running groups: My first marathon I trained by myself, and…. It was NOT fun and I didn’t enjoy the training whatsoever. Then I discovered the good ‘ol Oak Park Runners Club and that changed everything – met great like-minded athletes, challenged myself more than I would normally, and FINALLY was able to incessantly talk about running stuff without having non-running friends roll their eyes at me. Nowadays the Dubai Creek Striders is serving that purpose, but of course I always have OPRC at heart. Fortunately majority of the people in this group were training for the Dubai marathon, so the runs were all catered towards the marathon - this included interval training, which I now swear by, and also the progressive longer runs. Running groups has also brought me a great group of friends and was a key to helping with my adjustment as an expat here.
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• Dee, Lyn-Si, Jez, myself, and Lal post marathon

·         -Cross and strength training: When I first started running marathons in the early 2000’s, I ran. And ran. And ran. Just felt I had NO time for other sports or activities and thought, when you train for a marathon, the more hours on your feet the better, right? Around that time, I was doing a volunteer stint at a physical therapy clinic in preparation for starting grad school in physical therapy, and talking with a therapist about running, and he asked me, “Sooo, what do you do for strength training?” I then let out a nice chuckle and said, “Strength training? Bah! Who needs that? I’m running!” Ahhh….. how foolish I was. Professionally and personally, I can’t say enough about the importance of strength training and cross training. Back then I’m sure it was talked about, I just ignored it, but I feel now it is much more acknowledged and respected than before. Soo… now that I am older and wiser and have 6+ years of PT experience and being an athlete myself, this time around I lessened my running to 3-4 days a week and incorporate strength training and cross-training of swimming, spinning, and yoga. Each of those helped in their own ways and also made the running more enjoyable because I wasn’t bored from it!

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-     -The beauty of sleep and eating before long runs: I was like many of us in our 20’s that could get away with minimal sleep and be full steam ahead – for school, work, running, anything! I would stay up late, wake up at the last possible minute, do a long run on an empty stomach, and be fine for the rest of the day. Ohh… how things change. Now if I don’t get at least 6 ½ to 7 hours a sleep at night, not only am I cranky, but also not functioning and my performance is meager at best. The week before marathon I made a point to get between 7-8 hours of sleep so was well rested for the big race. I also now abide by the eating breakfast before running, which entails getting up even earlier to have time for digestion and hence going to bed even earlier - something that wouldn’t have crossed my mind a decade ago. These two things have made an enormous difference for me in both my physical and mental stamina.

·         -Outside conditions: While my friend was suffering from the worst Chicago winter seen in almost 2 decades for his training prep, “Chi-beria,” Dubai was having a particularly “cool” winter. The temperatures in the mornings got down to the 40’s, up to the 60’s and 70’s during the day, and then back down to the 50’s in the evenings. This is what some may call “perfect” running weather, but for us spoiled with heat most year around, we coined the term “Dubai-eria” because we had to revert from tank tops to t-shirts (still shorts though) – gasp! Hahaha.  

·         -Oak Park comes to Dubai: Just a few days before the marathon, I got a message from long-time OPRC runner Fred Fedewa (who has moved but keeps in the loop with OPRC) that he was coming to Dubai for a business trip! Fred met me and my friend out for our carbo-loading in front of the grand fountain display in front of the Dubai Mall and Burj Kalifa, the world’s tallest building. We compared stories of comebacks as Fred had taken a 23 year gap between marathons, so my measly 10 year comeback was nothing. Fred had some great running stories and was super motivating, which I really appreciated the positive energy. He was also awesome enough to wear his Oak Park Runners Club t-shirt!

·      -  Gizmos: As you can imagine, technology has advanced 10-fold in the last decade, particularly with Garmin and other GPS watches. Nowadays you have everything from pacing, elevation, calories, cadence, proposed recovery time, and even I ran with someone that had her kids’ voice recording on her phone that offered words of encouragement every mile or so. What?!?! Although I definitely see how these things are beneficial and can make trainings much more efficient, call me old-fashioned, but I like to go old school with haphazardly using my cheap $40 TIMEX Ironman Target watch and just running how I feel. I also have the vivid memory of my last 2 marathons (including my PW) that I got so intense and put so much pressure on myself on watching my splits that when I was off, I just started mentally checking out. I also didn’t adjust well to being off pace of being too slow or too fast and then having to run either slower or faster to lose or gain time when I maybe felt the opposite. So here we are 10+ years later and during my training, enough people had the beeping and buzzing of the Garmin’s that I really didn’t need anything. After awhile, I was able to gauge my pace fairly accurately without any help from gizmos. Come marathon I did exactly that… used my TIMEX watch, started it at the start, but because I used it so rarely, I accidently pressed “stop” instead of “reset”  at the 10km mark and that was that. Oops. The course was marked in kilometers, and I gave myself 0-10km, 10-21km, 21-30km, 30k-42km pace goals, basically starting off slow, which I did, going into what I called ‘cruise control’ mode, and then finishing strong, which I did. My last leg was the 2^nd fastest split and my 1^st leg the slowest. It was spot on how I felt – NO “pressure” from watches and felt strong the whole way.

Soo there you have it. More than a decade later, not only get a PR of 3:38:01, which I never dreamed I could do, I got a negative split, AND qualified for Boston (I’m hoping to be Boston bound in 2015!).

My advice is challenge yourself, try the old-fashioned way of running based on how you feel, you may be surprised!!

Happy running!

From Chicago to Dubai! Ed and I after the marathon (hmph, he looks more fresh than I do, but then again, he ran a 3:59:58 and I ran a 3:38:01, hehe)

Anil stretching me after the marathon - painful, but felt so good afterwards and was able to walk somewhat normally! 

Happy New Year from Dubai!!!

Below is an email I wrote to friends and family after the New Year.... just wanted to add it in here and also wish everyone a Happy 2014! .....

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Dear Family and Friends,

HAPPY NEW YEAR from Dubai!!

Dubai, not surprisingly, brought in the New Year with a big bang, and it was amazing to be here for it!. We set the Guinness Book of World Record for the World's Largest Fireworks Display with over 400,000 fireworks used in 6 minutes!! It started with a spectacular display of fireworks off the the world's tallest building, the Burj Kalifa, followed by fireworks from one of the world's most luxurious hotels, the Burj Al Arab, THEN fireworks from our 2 man-made islands, the World and The Palm! Crazy! I was fortunate to celebrate with friends on the 55th floor at one of the tallest residential buildings in Dubai, which I have to mention is a 5 minute walk from me (yay!), and had a spot-on view of all of the Burj Kalifa and of this enormous display! It was truly awesome and a great way to start the new year!!! (BTW, I confess I cheated with a professional picture above!)

2013 marked a full 2nd here, and it was yet another action packed year with, no surprise, travel adventures being a big highlight :-)  Started with what was probably one of the biggest and most beautiful weddings I have ever been to, in New Delhi, India. This next led me to Bhutan, Land of the Thunder Dragon, a magical small Himalayan country that prides themselves on honoring the happiness of their people with a Gross Happiness Index over Gross Domestic Product. How great is that??? Then came a nice R&R vacation to the Maldives, which can be described in just one world - Paradise. Finally, I fulfilled a dream to successfully climb and summit Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania! After the intense climb, did an amazing safari adventure through Serengeti, Ngorogoro Crater and the big National Parks to see wildlife. I finally concluded with the beautiful island off of Tanzania - Zanzibar. A trip of a lifetime!!

Although 2014 is just starting, I have some exciting plans already in the works - from athletic endeavors to more exciting travels to career growth opportunities, so it will be a busy year ahead! 

I wish all of you a healthy and happy New Year and best wishes in 2014! As always, please be in touch! I always love to hear from you and get life updates as well :-)  It doesn't look so favorable that I will be coming back to the USA this year :-(, so please come and visit!

All the best in 2014!