I often tell myself I am unaffected by the weather in Dubai.
I spend my evenings running as we head into the 36 degree, 70% humidity,
evenings of summer, right up until break, and press on through September until the
temps ease off in October. The runs
are hard,
the amount of sweat produced is actually laughable, but I don’t ever think that
I’m really
affected by the heat. I
drink more water, stop off a couple of times to buy Gatorade, and peel off
soggy “technical” gear at the end of a 100-minute stretch. I don’t expect
Adidas to ever come up with a product that can cope with distance running in a
Middle Eastern summer. It’s not possible. In essence, you just get on with it. You
do everything you normally do, and you just cope with the fact that there is
searing heat around you.
I’ve had doctors and specialists ask me if the heat is a
source of some health problems I’ve been having. “How long have you been here?”
they ask, “Have you had a summer here before?” I always respond with the same thing:
it was my second summer, and I come from Australia. We know this heat; not for
as long as five months, but it’s familiar. I tell everyone that I get on just
fine.
But I don’t.
Not really.
It can be hard work.
After living in an air conditioned apartment, racing to the
air conditioned car, spending leisure time in air conditioned malls, working in
an air conditioned school campus, with intermittent bursts of HOT, you find
yourself longing for some sunshine that you can actually sit in for more than 8
minutes. You talk to colleagues and residents, and they do talk about the health
problems associated with our hot-cold lifestyle. I found it fascinating. Not
only was I longing for real sunshine, but the change in weather really did have
an effect on health: heat stress, eating habits and general levels of energy.
Wonders never cease.
All that said, it’s not until you get OUT of the country
that you realise how desperate you are for fresh air and the ability to be a
pedestrian. On arriving back with my family in Brisbane last week, I was
whisked off to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary where I could actually walk on the footpaths, and I did it in a
wool coat! Inadvertently, I had forgotten about the searing UV rays on account
of the gaping hole in the ozone layer in this corner of the world, and actually
found myself a bit red into the evening. I kind of liked being burnt. It felt
like normal. It was normal to fry your ass off, you learned throughout
childhood, and if you were the stupid idiot in the group that forgot to put
sunscreen on, you were well open to being the Aloe Vera slathered laughing
stock of the evening. But hey, you got a decent dose of Vitamin D.
The sun was good, being outside was good, walking like a
normal human being was good, and ultimately the weather is…nice. It is pleasant, it makes one happy, it makes one want to go
outside and warm up in the sun, and it also makes one take SEVEN MINUTES off
her 14 kilometre Personal Best. Yes, that’s what the weather does to you; makes
you run fast. But it’s not only that. I feel calmer and less like I am
constantly trying to escape the inescapable. I feel more motivated the tackle
the world outside, even moreso than the steamy streets of Mumbai, and I feel
like it’s going to be a pleasant eight weeks of scarf and beanie weather. Hello
winter, it’s been a while.
