Doha Al Corniche Run

It has been a very rough last few days indeed. Unable to sleep much at all, I worked through most of the night tired and irritated until dawn.

At 6am, still unable to sleep I ventured outside in frustration to run the Corniche in Doha. Might as well run myself into the ground.

I went in to work bleary-eyed after that as well.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.

As the lyrics so passionately articulate, it's the despair and desperation of time wasted and having nothing to show for it at all.

I have to also remark at this point that I can't believe the last time I posted about Doha was about two years ago (see England-Brazil Soccer Match).

So this morning at 6am, I did the Al Corniche run weary-eyed and not expecting much at all. I know my body will crash and collapse sooner or later. Sometimes I feel the sooner I get this to happen the better.

My route went from the Four Seasons Hotel (opposite the Mövenpick Towers, a Swiss chain, where I am staying) to the Pearl and back. Checking my records, I had originally filed the run with MapMyRun exactly 2 years and 10 days ago.

(I normally run all the way up to the edge of I.M. Pei's achingly beautiful Islamic Museum of Art, see here, but the side entrance was blocked by Doha's omnipresent and endless construction.)

See the route below:

I split the run into two halves. On the outbound leg I ran to the Pearl. Then took a short break to drink my water bottle and glance at the high-rise area where I had started my run and ran back along the curve of the Corniche.

Into the elevator, I went up to the jacuzzi at the hotel fitness center.

But being so tired, I wasn't in the mood to enjoy the brightness of the scenery from the 26th floor.

I downloaded my run statistics from my iPod Nano to the Nike+ website:

The run data wasn't that bad. At least I burned about 875 kcal in a bit over 7 miles (or nearly 12km). Still, I was incredibly tired and irritable. And decided not to review the details.

After breakfast, I relented and plotted both legs of the run in Excel. Here you go:

As the red line clearly reveals, yes, I was a wuss on that return leg.

My mind wanders randomly when I'm exhausted. But because I run with music on my iPod Nano, another set of lyrics came to mind:

They say a restless body can hide a peaceful soul
A voyager and a settler, they both have a distant goal
If I explore the heavens, or if I search inside
Well, it really doesn't matter as long as I can tell myself
I've always tried