This was a race that Faye found while looking for things to do in Dubai while we were there on holiday.
After a bit of research on theses races and still struggling with injury after the inverness half I decided to enter the week before we flew out hoping a nice relaxing and resting holiday would help.
The race involves climbing 52 floors (230m vertical) of the Jumeirah Emirates office tower up one of the fire escape stairwells.
Two days before the race I decided to try a run along the beach, I didn’t get far before my ankle started to cause problems again. It seems I’m ok going up hill but anything flat or down hill isn’t good, so was still looking hopeful for the race.
It was an early rise on the Friday morning as we had a 45 min taxi to get to the race start for 8am.
We arrived at registration and collected my race number and complimentary tee-shirt. Race number on and my vest is spotted by another Scottish runner Paul Faulkner from Carnethy running club who now lives out here. After talking to him for a while he is telling me that he is hoping to win the race and trying to get me to start with the elites at
the front, he says if you don’t start near the front you will be held up with slower runners as the stairwell isn’t that wide.
After a race brief we head out to the start line still not knowing what I’ve let myself in for. To stop a bottle neck on runners in the stairwell we are set off in groups of 4 every 30sec.
I decided to let about 30 runners off before I started. I’m off and what I didn’t realise was that we had about a 400m run outside first before we enter the building so I’m taking this really easy so as not to hurt my ankle. I enter the stairwell with 1334 steps to climb taking 2 at a time and I soon start to catch the runners in front and passing them. Floor 25 comes up pretty quick and I’m still taking 2 steps at a time. I’m now starting to be held up with runners that are stopped taking a breather or some of the running teams were holding hands and I had to ask to pass.
Floor 40 and my legs are starting to hurt but I’m still taking 2 steps at a time and still passing all the runners I let start in front of me, should have taken Pauls advice and started at the front.
Floor 52 at last and I cross the finish mat and my legs are like jelly. I looked at my watch and I’m at the top in just over 10 min a good bit quicker than I had planned. After getting my breath back and a drink of water we wait for the lift back down.
The only disappointing thing was there was no windows to see the view. Once at the bottom there was an after race breakfast buffet. As our holiday was coming to an end we didn’t hang about for the prize giving so we headed back to the hotel to relax at the pool.
Later on in the afternoon the results were up and I find I was placed 4th out of 133 that finished in the individuals category and only 13 sec behind 3rd place , if only I had taken Paul’s advice to start at the front, oh well there is always next year.
Report by: Steven Morrison