Let’s Go A Little Tom Clancy For A Moment

A side-affect of my job and my degree is that I am sensitive to trends in speech. You know, how groups are labelled, etc so I tend to notice when these labels change. For example,ISIL (I hate to get political but it’s a really good example) are referred to as Daesh (sounds like dash when pronounced) by the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council). Up until a couple of weeks ago, I had never heard ISIL referred to as Daesh outside of an Arabic speaking presser. However, the US are slowly changing their lexicon to refer to this group as Daesh, bringing their terminology inline with the GCC. This makes sense as the US are working closely with the GCC on joint military operations in the Middle East and have aligned themselves, politically, with Saudi Arabia.

Pause as I look out of my 10th Floor window, trying to spot the military fighter jet that is making a racket as it flies over the city. Hmmm, there has been a lot of that recently.

Anyway, enough of the geopolitics. You came here to read about running. But wait there was a point to this. Yes. That was it.

Treading Around The Terminology

In a not very similar way, I have had to make an amendment to my lexicon, instead of referring to the treadmill as the Dreadmill, an image that conjures up an approximation of some medieval torture device, I have learned to refer to it as the Tready, a much more friendly approach, and it flows better as a word too.

I have been using the Tready quite a lot this week, in fact I think all of my recent runs have been inside. So the Tready has been my friend this week, it has kept me sane as sleep demands I do not to get up early and humidity insisted that I do not run at night. But this is not what I want to talk about.

SUP

Last night, I finally got in a session of Paddle-boarding, The wind has been just a little bit too high over the last week or so, so Melinda, our instructor, kept cancelling the sessions – and quite rightly so. I have been out in slightly windy conditions and it is hard work, harder than one would think. But Wednesday night, the weather was perfect so our Sunset SUP session went ahead. As I mentioned in my previous post about SUP, the learning curve is steep but speedy. This was my third session and it definitely felt easier, I felt much stronger on the water, it was easier to keep my balance – sure I still fell in a couple of times but I kept it together pretty well.

Sunset At The Pearl

Sunrise and sunset are tricky here, usually it is nice but sometimes the haze is up and the sunlight is diffused. On days like that it is quite interesting since the sun seems to rise and set about 45degrees above the horizon. But last night, the haze was down, the wind was practically non-existent and the waters around the Pearl were free of Jet ski’s and very very warm. Melinda took our small group of 5 – myself and these 4 American pups – I say pups, they were probably late teens. So yeah! Pups! Out to sea, then around the canals of Qanat Quartier.

The salt levels in the sea were high as usual and I got dunked a lot while we were playing some balance games – walk up and down the board, turn around in circles on the board, and jump versions of those same games – need to work on my core and balance because my efforts were frequently punctuated with a loud splash and I needed to use a quarter of my water supply to get the burning salt off my face and out of my eyes. I should be able to get in more practice though, the QSUP people are running sunset sessions all through Ramadan luckily.

The Look Ahead

Well, I am off into the Desert today with a group from work: lots of desert based activities and a trip to the inland sea – so I will be going for a paddle down south, hopefully. Will upload some pics of the day. But before that I think I will go for a run on the Tready, maybe 4 miles – a nice even number. Then tomorrow morning I WILL BE RUNNING OUTSIDE as I will make sure I am up for a run with the Doha Bay Running Club, if only to ask them what they do during Ramadan.

Happy trails and travels, wherever and whenever you are 🙂

I would also like to acknowledge that the photos of SUP are provided by the QSUP facebook page.