Misty Sunday morning

 Very nice bike ride at Mushrif Park this morning. 

I had  arrived to the sound of music and an excited compère on the tannoy as it transpired that the Dubai MTB challenge was also being held at the venue this morning. 

The place was packed but the actual race was on a separate course so I was able to use my regular trail with occasional glimpses of the competitors as they flashed by through the trees.

It was a beautiful morning with blue skies and a hazy, misty feel to the surrounding wood land.

After my regular watermelon juice and a cup of tea, my next port of call was Kite Beach down in Jumeriah. 

The water was a little colder than I am used to but nevertheless  it’s as a very pleasant swim, and I came home with the feeling that I had successfully combined both sporting endeavour and some of Dubai’s more scenic attractions.

What’s in a Wordle?

 I suspect I may have blogged about this previously as the word game in the New York Times - Wordle - has been very much part of my daily routine for a number of years now. 

It started as a means of keeping my Father entertained (and for all of us to stay in touch) during the pandemic and currently has both my Brothers in law, my mother in law, Em and my cousins’s wife (as well as on an occasional basis V) circulating their daily scores on our WhatsApp group.

For those unfamiliar with it, the game consists of a 6 by 5 grid of boxes and the idea is to guess the daily word within 6 goes. Each go you are told whether you have a correct letter in the correct place (green) or in the wrong place (yellow).

I managed to get a run of 60 correct daily guesses it grew complacent and missed out a couple of weeks ago so have had to start from scratch. 

When the New York Times bought the game from its English inventor the main concern was American spellings. This has by and large not been a problem. However, given how long it has been going, a bigger issue may be hat they will run out of 5 letter words!

Rugby 7s

  A lovely day at the rugby 7s - although in fact a mixture or rugby,  netball and cricket. Despite dire prognostications, the weather was perfect.  Fingers crossed for the rest of the weekend!

The long weekend approaches

As regular readers will have noticed, the end of November signals the start of the Rugby 7s weekend and also the advent of a long weekend due to public holidays. 

In previous years, it would also signal the arrival of my Father who used to make a point of coming out for the Rugby 7s and in later years use to extend his trip so that is started earlier in November to also include a visit to the Race to Dubai Golf. 

I always looked forward to his arrival  - not just to see him although that was obviously very pleasant, but also because it gave me a fantastic excuse to see as much sport as possible at what is the best time of year weather wise in Dubai.

Although Dad is no longer with us, I am definitely looking forward to this weekend which for the first time for a while will include a trip to the Rugby 7s on the Friday (being the first day) with 4 days of holiday still to look forward to.

I am also due to play a bit of Golf and hopefully will also get out on my bike for a couple of rides.

Having said that, the weather forecast is not as sanguine as it might have been. We are usually spared rain at this time of year (if it rains at all, it is usually in February/March). However, if it does rain around the time of the 7s, it absolutely tips it down - I recall one occasion a few years ago, after I had persuaded my friend Ally to come to Dubai in November to watch some rugby and enjoy our glorious Winter sunshine, when it rained the entire weekend (leading A. to rather despondently remark that if he had wanted to watch rugby in the rain, he could have stayed in England).

In any event, fingers crossed for a good weather  over the next few days.

Did it really happen?

 I had another of those unfortunate incidents this morning when I got myself up early for a bike ride and failed to turn my Garmin watch on to record it. 

I only noticed when I went to pause the timer when I had to dismount to overcome some building works on the cycle track and realised that it had not been recording.

Whilst of course I knew that I had been riding for probably around 15 minutes at that point, of course this would not be shown on my Strava account so, as far asthe world was concerned, I had been lazy this morning and had reduced my usual cycle time by 1/3.

I was a relatively late adopter of the fitness gadgets. I started with a Fitbit (I think it is still around somewhere in the depths of a cupboard). 

This was not particularly sophisticated (if I went for a morning bike ride it usually thought I was running so it was great for my steps!) and had a complex charging device which meant that if you lost your charger you had to get a new one from the manufacturer rather than getting a “grey” market replacement.

I replaced this 3 or 4 years ago with an all signing, all dancing, Garmin which was much more sophisticated (and when I was travelling on my sabbatical last year and realised I had lost my charger when in Japan I was able relatively easily to get a cheap replacement). 

Garmin also has an arrangement with Strava that you can upload your run/bike ride swim/golf game to their platform which makes it easier to find a community of like minded sports enthusiasts to whom you can broadcast your achievements. 

I have recently read that Strava and Garmin have  fallen out of and are suing each other so I guess it may be at some point no longer be possible to transport my ride data onto Strava but for the time being, it remains the platform of record that yes, I did indeed achieve a certain, time, speed and distance during my ride this morning (if I manage to turn the timer on).

Thoughts on Hummus

Whilst fairly ubiquitous in the context of Middle Eastern cuisine, and relatively straightforward to make, there is nothing (save perhaps for Umm Ali - which would require a post all to itself) that sets a local restaurant apart from its competitors than the quality of its hummus.

This unpretentious dish (made from a combination of chickpea, tahini (a sesame paste), lemon juice and garlic - with a garland of olive oil) is usually served as a starter but has become for me a firm favourite as a meal on its own (particularly for lunch) when served with baked flatbread straight from the oven - in fact one of my favourite restaurants - Bosphorus at DSO - serves the bread as a kind of large inflated ball which you can poke with a knife to release a cloud of hot air.

Each restaurant worth its salt has its own recipe (a little like kimchi in Korea). Another favourite restaurant is On the Wood whose hummus is a very pale yellow/white with a generous drizzle of olive oil and which I regularly have on its own with bread and some olives - delicious. The Bosphorus hummus is a much darker yellow and is served with paprika and is also very tasty.

I was reminded of this at a meeting today at a cafe near my work where one of the other participants was having a late lunch of hummus which was almost brown in colour and very dense which reminded of the various different approaches to making it. 

I can however say that the one thing all of the various versions mentioned above have in common is that they are far and away tastier than any of their equivalents that I have managed to find back in the UK!

Fitness challenge

 A few years ago, the authorities here introduced the 30 day fitness challenge - various events were set up in order to encourage the local population to do some daily exercise during the course of November.

My own efforts have sadly been lacking. I have however (as regular readers will have noted) gone to great lengths to make sure that I am take part in the various build up rides (BUR) for the Spinneys 92km cycle challenge that is held every year (generally in February) - these practice rides gradually increasing in distance before the 92km race

This has required careful diary management as the rides are generally held on the last Sunday of each month so  I have to closely review my weekend travel plans to avoid clashes. My recent work trip to Barcelona was a case in point as I had to ensure that I was back in Dubai in time to take my place on the start line for BUR3 (65km) at 6:45am yesterday. 

This entailed (as recounted in earlier blogs) my first trip on Etihad Airwasy as their flight schedule got me back to Dubai at a reasonable hour on Saturday night rather than the early hours of Sunday morning if I had flown Emirates.

That however is not the reason for this post. The ride itself had seemed to go quite well by my standards as I latched on to the back of a group and managed to hang on for the entire race (even having a bit of a go  at - if not a sprint finish - then a brisk trot to end the race).

On crossing the finish line I noticed on my stop watch that I was well under 2 hours which for me was a very respectable time for 65km. 

It was only when I got home and took a closer look at my Strava that I realised that rather than the advertised 65km, the course was only 60km - so still not bad but not really the stellar performance I had imagined (and I suspect some of the other of the 750+ riders might also have been a little disappointed at being somewhat short-changed on the distance of the route).