After crocking my knee in a 10k a few days after arrival my exercise in Abu Dhabi has so far been confined to the rooftop pool (nice!), gym, and climbing the stairs of my office building to the 28th floor every morning. And so when I saw a race advertised up the 64 floors of the Almas Tower in Dubai, a family day trip beckoned.
At registration I spotted six-times Snowdon race winner and 2.15 marathon man Andi Jones limbering up. Andi now lives in Qatar and had flown over with his family for the race. He pointed out that professional mountain (and tower) runner Emanuele Manzi was also present, having made the trip from Italy especially. Even with a 10,000AED (£1800) first prize on offer, this was a bit more serious than I had expected. Andi hadn’t done a tower race before either but gave me a few tips from his recce – ‘two steps at a time and the professionals wear a glove to grab the banister’ (damn it, too late for glove buying).
The race was run in time trial format with competitors being set off 30 seconds apart. The stairwell was a dark narrow fire escape but at least there was enough room to overtake and there wouldn’t be any annoying distractions…like a view.
And soon enough it was 3,2,1…go! The floors flew by, passing quite a few people, and I even got into a bit of a rhythm, albeit failing to swing round the corners with any grace, style or consistency. By around floor 40 I knew I was slowing down a bit but managed to keep to the two-step formula and then put in a late surge to arrive at the finish line gasping for air and water. Stopped the watch – 8 minutes 37 seconds. Down in the sauna-like service lift to the ground floor and the fresh air was marvelous.
We went for ice creams and a wander by the marina before returning for prize giving where I discovered to my amazement that I had come 2nd, having completed the climb 19s quicker than Andi, and just 18s behind the winner Emanuele, who was flying off to New York for the Empire State Building race next week. The fact that I had narrowly missed out on the massive (literally) cheque was more than compensated by the slightly surreal experience of sharing the podium with such running legends…an occurrence surely never to be repeated, although I’ve now got my eye on a potential rematch at the tower climbing world championships in Doha in March. It is just possible that I have found my niche.
Paul Faulkner