Report from Nick Hodgkinson:

‘Winter’ is a distant memory and week by week, it gets hotter and hotter.

This year the Riyadh Marathon was delayed for two weeks due to ‘an important person’ visiting the Dirab golf course – the race venue. The result was that the sun had two more weeks to get even hotter and the temperature for this event nudged just over 35C, in the shade. Unfortunately there was no shade, so running 26.2 miles in the burning sun was a real struggle.

Anyway, to cut a very long story short, I finished. No Middle East PB, so I will keep my finishing time to myself.

I will be returning (for good) to the UK some time in the next 2 to 3 months, at the end of my Contract.

I am looking forward to some cold wet runs over muddy Yorkshire moors. Here, my weekend training route around the dusty Diplomatic Quarter (referred to here as death valley) has become difficult recently, due to packs of wild dogs, that don’t like runners. Good for speed training, though.

Run Strong

Nick

ps I can’t get the ‘tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree’ song out of my head.