Mussandam Oman
I am embarrassed about starting my running column tonight, which was due last night, because I didn't run the Ras Al Khaimah half marathon last weekend. It was a casualty of procrastination; a fatality, even. First I didn't register in time. Then a reader wrote in offering me her registration. Then I didn't get a hotel in time. Then I didn't want to wake up at 4am and drive with the possibility of missing it.
But I also didn't want to feel mournful about being such a loser for the whole weekend, so I made up excuses. I got a cut on my foot during a pedicure the day before. Whenever it stung I felt better about missing the race. I finally read the rules and they said absolutely no wheeled vehicles (does a stroller count?). I thought iola wouldn't let us run for more than 45 minutes. They said no late starts. I was worried about finding parking.
So instead we woke at seven and arrived in Ras Al Khaimah at noon, after the race had packed up and left. We went to Carrefour (right by the start, plenty of parking) and got food for camping and a chinese thermarest. Iola got to sit in the shopping cart like a big girl. Then John worked on a story at the foodcourt while iola slept and I read my book-club book Gate of the Sun in the car. Our friend from abu dhabi Lauren and her friend Joao showed up, and then we got back on the road. We got to the Oman border around 4:30, feeling that sense of urgency that imminent twilight always brings. About 15 miles north of the border, by a town called Hana, we saw a little road go off to the left, and decided to take it to get off the main road. It turned into a dirt road, and wound down toward the coast. When we thought our little car couldn't take much more, we got out and camped in a bend in the road. We had sausages and bread and wine; iola slept; john played the guitar; we slept.
It turned out that we picked the most dramatic cliff edge to sleep next to. In the morning we walked out to the edge and looked down 300 feet and saw sea turtles swimming. If we'd followed the road down further it would have let us out onto a little beach where three other (4WD) cars were already parked, tents set up. It was also a cemetary: too rocky to bury the dead anywhere else. Several fisherman passed our camp on their way to the water. I'd been forcibly studying arabic to john in the car, so we got to use a couple words.
We kept driving to Khasab, maybe another 10 miles. That road is beautiful. We had lunch at a ramshackle turkish place with an algerian waiter and an indian translator. The men swooped iola up and brought her into the kitchen to laugh at them. She thought the guy in a checkered dishdasha and baseball cap was especially funny.
We split up with Lauren and Joao in a wadi, because I wanted to take a boat into the islands, and they wanted to explore the village. Somehow by luck we got a boat with us as the only passengers. It was like a living room on the water. We were out for three and a half hours and saw lazy dolphins, and went for a quick dip in the coral by Telegraph island, a tiny island that the british used for build a telegraph cable between Iraq and Oman way back when.
It was a five-hour drive back home, and we got in at 11pm dead tired, feeling like we'd been gone longer than two days, which is the point. It is already summer here again. That may have been our last camping trip until next December.
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John and iola on the dhow, February 21st 2009.
John wrote this last week:
Songs in A & D
Until the recent boom years, Abu Dhabi did not exactly loom large in American consciousness. If the emirate did merit a reference in pop culture, it was usually as a shorthand for windswept obscurity, roughly interchangeable with Timbuktu. But for a young Nathan Deuel, growing up in Atlanta, Georgia in the early 1980s, Abu Dhabi was not synonymous with remoteness. It was synonymous with funkiness.
A couple of my running columns have passed by, might as well post here:
Had baby, will run (yesterday)
Paula is most famous, in my mind, for running throughout her pregnancy. She ran up until a day before giving birth to her daughter. Her non-pregnancy regimen consisted of two runs per day, 100-minutes in the morning and evening, along with strength training and lifting weights. She rested every eighth day. During her pregnancy, she stuck to the morning run but cut out the evening one, substituting cycling, aquajogging and swimming instead. The baby’s growth was monitored weekly to make sure it was gaining adequate weight.
Join the club? (last week)
On the other hand, maybe I should consider the running-out-of-doors option. A couple of years ago, when I lived in Lucknow, India, I remember taking cycle rickshaws around the city in 50°C weather. The rickshaw drivers prided themselves on not drinking water because, as one of them told me, it makes them sweat. Now that is hard core: the human capacity for endurance is amazing, no matter how wimpy I feel out in the sun.
Marathon moves (week before last)
The study on depression and running was published in August, but I was preoccupied and didn’t see it. I have always believed in the intuitive and seemingly correct research that showed a strong correlation between exercise and positive mood. There is, in fact, a strong correlation between exercise and happiness, but apparently, one doesn’t cause the other. The study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, tested causality by observing patterns of exercise, anxiety and depression in identical twins and siblings. The researchers found that if one twin exercised more, the other twin tended to have fewer anxious and depressive symptoms even if he or she didn’t typically exercise. So something genetic may be working behind the scenes, motivating the will to exercise and boosting mood levels at the same time.
But I also didn't want to feel mournful about being such a loser for the whole weekend, so I made up excuses. I got a cut on my foot during a pedicure the day before. Whenever it stung I felt better about missing the race. I finally read the rules and they said absolutely no wheeled vehicles (does a stroller count?). I thought iola wouldn't let us run for more than 45 minutes. They said no late starts. I was worried about finding parking.
So instead we woke at seven and arrived in Ras Al Khaimah at noon, after the race had packed up and left. We went to Carrefour (right by the start, plenty of parking) and got food for camping and a chinese thermarest. Iola got to sit in the shopping cart like a big girl. Then John worked on a story at the foodcourt while iola slept and I read my book-club book Gate of the Sun in the car. Our friend from abu dhabi Lauren and her friend Joao showed up, and then we got back on the road. We got to the Oman border around 4:30, feeling that sense of urgency that imminent twilight always brings. About 15 miles north of the border, by a town called Hana, we saw a little road go off to the left, and decided to take it to get off the main road. It turned into a dirt road, and wound down toward the coast. When we thought our little car couldn't take much more, we got out and camped in a bend in the road. We had sausages and bread and wine; iola slept; john played the guitar; we slept.
It turned out that we picked the most dramatic cliff edge to sleep next to. In the morning we walked out to the edge and looked down 300 feet and saw sea turtles swimming. If we'd followed the road down further it would have let us out onto a little beach where three other (4WD) cars were already parked, tents set up. It was also a cemetary: too rocky to bury the dead anywhere else. Several fisherman passed our camp on their way to the water. I'd been forcibly studying arabic to john in the car, so we got to use a couple words.
We kept driving to Khasab, maybe another 10 miles. That road is beautiful. We had lunch at a ramshackle turkish place with an algerian waiter and an indian translator. The men swooped iola up and brought her into the kitchen to laugh at them. She thought the guy in a checkered dishdasha and baseball cap was especially funny.
We split up with Lauren and Joao in a wadi, because I wanted to take a boat into the islands, and they wanted to explore the village. Somehow by luck we got a boat with us as the only passengers. It was like a living room on the water. We were out for three and a half hours and saw lazy dolphins, and went for a quick dip in the coral by Telegraph island, a tiny island that the british used for build a telegraph cable between Iraq and Oman way back when.
It was a five-hour drive back home, and we got in at 11pm dead tired, feeling like we'd been gone longer than two days, which is the point. It is already summer here again. That may have been our last camping trip until next December.
John and iola on the dhow, February 21st 2009.
John wrote this last week:
Songs in A & D
Until the recent boom years, Abu Dhabi did not exactly loom large in American consciousness. If the emirate did merit a reference in pop culture, it was usually as a shorthand for windswept obscurity, roughly interchangeable with Timbuktu. But for a young Nathan Deuel, growing up in Atlanta, Georgia in the early 1980s, Abu Dhabi was not synonymous with remoteness. It was synonymous with funkiness.
A couple of my running columns have passed by, might as well post here:
Had baby, will run (yesterday)
Paula is most famous, in my mind, for running throughout her pregnancy. She ran up until a day before giving birth to her daughter. Her non-pregnancy regimen consisted of two runs per day, 100-minutes in the morning and evening, along with strength training and lifting weights. She rested every eighth day. During her pregnancy, she stuck to the morning run but cut out the evening one, substituting cycling, aquajogging and swimming instead. The baby’s growth was monitored weekly to make sure it was gaining adequate weight.
Join the club? (last week)
On the other hand, maybe I should consider the running-out-of-doors option. A couple of years ago, when I lived in Lucknow, India, I remember taking cycle rickshaws around the city in 50°C weather. The rickshaw drivers prided themselves on not drinking water because, as one of them told me, it makes them sweat. Now that is hard core: the human capacity for endurance is amazing, no matter how wimpy I feel out in the sun.
Marathon moves (week before last)
The study on depression and running was published in August, but I was preoccupied and didn’t see it. I have always believed in the intuitive and seemingly correct research that showed a strong correlation between exercise and positive mood. There is, in fact, a strong correlation between exercise and happiness, but apparently, one doesn’t cause the other. The study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, tested causality by observing patterns of exercise, anxiety and depression in identical twins and siblings. The researchers found that if one twin exercised more, the other twin tended to have fewer anxious and depressive symptoms even if he or she didn’t typically exercise. So something genetic may be working behind the scenes, motivating the will to exercise and boosting mood levels at the same time.
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