The Mirdif Milers are spreading the joy of running in Dubai

Jay Asser 08:04 27/11/2014
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  • Moving ahead: The Mirdif Milers focus on long-distance running

    The Mirdif Milers on their website claim to be “possibly the most unique running club in the UAE”.

    – #360fit: Dubai's top running tracks and routes

    Malcolm Gatenby, the club’s co-founder, says the slogan is meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, but that it also is a claim with some merit.

    The long-distance running club, now celebrating 10 years of exist­ence, are hard to miss with their neon yellow kits and their social attitude.

    Predominantly all Mirdif-based, the Milers have 35 to 40 regular members. With the change of demographics in the region, many of the members are young, single expats who hold jobs as teachers, for example.

    The Milers have plenty of run­ners now, but that wasn’t always the case, especially at the start.

    “We were basically a group of ex­pats, three or four people, running around Mirdif because it’s a natural 10 kilometre loop,” said Gatenby.

    “Then it just grew and grew with people joining us on our Monday night runs. Then we started adding Saturday morning runs mainly as training for the Dubai Mara­thon and half marathon.

    "We grew further about six years ago when we had 27 of our runners do the marathon. So we built upon there.”

    “We were always known as the marathon-training club. We were more focused on the longer distances.”

    Marathons are the Milers’ bread-and-butter. They take a group of 10 to 12 runners overseas and have done marathons in places like Munich, Istanbul and Athens.

    Locally, they run year-round with the season stretching from September to April. Many of the events, however, are bunched during November, December and January and that’s when clubs across the UAE come together. The club’s main event, the Donut 10 on November 21, was sold out and saw 450 runners take part.

    “In marathons, we still have our inter-team battles,” Gatenby said. “All the clubs here, we all have good runners and we have friendly rivalries.”

    The Milers encourage anyone interested in joining to come to their weekly runs. Even though some fitness is required, the club will help shape into a better run­ner.

    “Obviously there’s a group of us out running, so you should be reasonably fit, but we do build people up,” said Gatenby. “We train people and we encourage them and last year we had three new runners who did the marathon for the first time ever and they ran with us all through the 16-week running plan.”

    Gatenby, who did his first marathon seven years ago, has now done 19 and attributes his drive to running with the Milers.

    “I would recommend it to any­body,” said Gatenby. “You’ve got to be motivated to do it but it’s a lot of stopping and giving up because you’re on your own,” said Gatenby.

    “Everyone runs together, pace together and it’s good because you’re running with people you’re going to race with.”

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