Observant readers will have realised that the East coast to which I have referred in the last few posts is not in the UK. Geographically it is probably closer to the Eastbourne that Captain Daren has sailed off so comprehensively.
As I boomeranged back to the UK from my time away, I managed to catch up with Kim in Dubai for a few days where, again, I engaged in no running at all. This time the reason was more practical than sheer laziness… it was 85 degrees outside.
If that doesn’t sound too bad, then I should point out that this was the temperature at night… the days were around 101. We managed one two-mile evening walk along the beach and one daytime walk of a similar distance where we periodically dived into any buildings with aircon (on both occasions we ended up in need of wringing out) and I kid you not… this is no place to run!
That’s not strictly true. Christine, one of my LBS buddies who lives there, runs quite frequently… at 4.30 in the morning! We did see one or two other runners, one of whom was risking more than sunstroke by running in the midday sun in what looked like a tennis dress. Dubai is positively relaxed for an Arab state, but the showing of knees and shoulders by ladies is still not encouraged and this tennis skirt was skimpier still.
Russell, our excellent host was… well, a truly excellent host. Where we had discovered the heat, the construction and the ubiquitous sand for ourselves, he showed us the cool, the finished and the green.
Of course, wafting us around in the leathered luxury of his air-conditioned Discovery was always going to frame the city in a different way to our earlier oven-mark-9 bipeding!
So, having not run for around a month, it was purely by chance that I returned to the UK too late to join with the guys in running a relay race along the South Downs yesterday… sorry guys! To be fair, I did think of them periodically as I dodged the heat of the afternoon sun, although moral wasn’t the support that they apparently had in mind!
I watered the garden in the hope that the the semi-concrete surface would soften sufficiently to soak up some of the rain that had been forecast for last night… if I had known how torrential the rain was going to be I probably wouldn’t have bothered but the fickle weather is just one of the reasons that I’m glad to be home!
