Beyond 100 Marathons

There was only minimal time to muse on the travails of the Muscat Marathon before attention shifted to my fourth running of the Dubai Marathon.   Thanks to the Marathon being sponsored by my employer’s parent company – Dubai Holding – I would not be required to pay the race entrance fee, nor go and collect my runner’s pack (which would instead be delivered to my desk by a colleague).   Both of which were significant plus points.   I managed to get back into my usual training regime on the Sunday morning, two days after finishing the Muscat Marathon, and excitement started to build with a vengeance on Monday afternoon when I headed over to The Al Jalila Foundation in Dubai Healthcare City to film a promotional video about my 116 th marathon ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0OyrEILds0 ), which I was running for The Al Jalila Foundation ( https://www.hopasports.com/en/nicholas.turner ).   I am far from a natural in front of the camera but, after one false start, m...

The start of my 2019 running year carried on where 2018 had finished, with a reasonably heavy schedule.   The “winter” mornings in Dubai are cool (around 15 degrees) and dark (until around 7am), the former being great for running, the latter presenting a bit of a challenge to get out of bed.   However, by the time the Muscat Marathon was on the horizon I had managed to haul myself out of bed every day (the early bird may not catch the worm, but does catch some nice views of Dubai - see below) and was averaging just over 10 kilometers a day for the year – 179 kilometers in the 17 days of 2019 – and feeling relatively confident about my third running of the event.   Overseas’ events have become a lot easier and less chaotic with Gill’s organizational skills and flights, visas and hotels were all sorted well in advance of the marathon weekend.   The slight dampener on travel arrangements was that we were flying with Fly Dubai, rather than Emirates, which mean...

Having completed my 100 th marathon in 2017, 2018 as a running year was always likely to suffer by comparison, and so it proved (after the Lord Mayor’s Show and all that)… In terms of organized events, a total of seven marathons (including one ultra) was the lowest number I had managed since 2011, the year of the nearly doomed Coast to Coast Challenge – see ‘How Not to Run 100 Marathons’ (just after Chapter 12) - https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Not-Run-100-Marathons/dp/0244412073/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1538561380&sr=8-2&keywords=nicholas+turner+how+not+to+run .   On the flipside, 2018 was a spectacular year for general living and holidays with Gill.   I’m yet to consider in any detail whether there is a direct correlation between these two matters.   I have run just under 2,900 kilometres during the calendar year (an average of just under 8 kilometers per day).   An increase from 2017, but well below the levels I reached in each of the four years fro...

“Twas the day before Christmas, when all through the house Only one creature was stirring, a big, fat, man mouse…” It is hard to explain what possesses a man to set a 5am alarm on Christmas Eve and scrape the frost from the car before embarking on a 2 hour 15 minute drive from the Peak District to Bletchley for the Enigma Christmas Cracker Marathon.  I put it at least partially down to wanting to erase the Ghost of Marathon Past, being the recent eight hour ultra marathon ordeal in the Dubai desert.   Bletchley is famously where the German’s Enigma code was cracked during World War II, a not insignificant event in determining the outcome of the war.   On arrival, I had my own code to crack, as I was travelling old school, with printed AA Route Planner directions, rather than a sat nav.   As a result of having missed a direction or taken a wrong turn at one of the countless roundabouts, I was somewhat lost on arrival in Milton Keynes and forced...

Despite the usual feeling at the end of the Abu Dhabi Marathon on Friday morning (7 December) – i.e. that I may never again be able to run - by Sunday morning I had recovered sufficiently to return to my usual morning routine of a 10 kilometre-ish run before work.   This gave me some confidence that I would be physically able to tackle the 50 kilometer Al Marmoom Ultra Marathon which I had signed for on Saturday, 15 December.   Giving me less confidence was the mandatory kit list which I was required to obtain to enable me entry into said Ultra Marathon.   This included: an up to date ECG (electrocardiogram) scan, doctor’s certificate confirming fitness to participate, anti-venom pump, evidence of accident/repatriation insurance, signaling mirror, headlamp, sahara cap, whistle and aluminum survival sheet.   It sounded like the sort of list one might receive when heading off for a fun family holiday with Bear Grylls (as it turned out, my whistle was a Bear Grylls’ end...