Keeping Up with Dubai

Dubai looks like a city that forgot to pace itself — and somehow got away with it. Everything here is bigger, taller, faster.

Not long ago, Dubai was a small fishing and pearl-diving village along the Arabian Gulf. When the pearl trade collapsed in the 1930s, the city endured real hardship. Oil arrived in 1966, but unlike many resource-rich states, Dubai refused to make it the centerpiece of its future. Today, oil accounts for less than five percent of the emirate’s economy. The real fuel is movement: people, planes, ships, capital, ambition.

Dubai built first and asked questions later. Ports before cargo. Airports before passengers. Entire districts — Dubai Marina, Downtown Dubai, Palm Jumeirah — rose from sand on the assumption that if you made something impressive enough, the world would eventually show up. Mostly, it did. 

Nearly 90 percent of the population is expatriates, representing more than 200 nationalities. Emiratis are a minority in their own city, yet cosmopolitanism here feels less like a posture than a fact of daily life. 

Dubai is global, tightly-regulated, strikingly safe (with one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world), and meticulously planned — a metropolis that feels engineered and alive at the same time.

Which makes it an oddly appropriate place to run the Dubai Marathon. Dubai is not a city that strolls. It accelerates. It expands. It commits — often before warming up. 

Running through it means passing architectural flexes and immaculate roads, with the quiet realization that this entire metropolis is younger than most people realize. By the time the starting horn sounded inside the Dubai Police Academy compound, the metaphor felt unavoidable. This was a city built at race pace. The only real question was whether I could keep up.

The morning air was surprisingly cool — around 16 degrees Celsius at the 6:30 a.m. gun start — and the sky was an unblemished blue. That cool didn’t last. There is no cloud cover in this desert, and as the sun rose, the heat arrived decisively. The course, often ranked among the flattest in the world, unfolded in long, honest stretches of road. No hills to negotiate. No excuses to hide behind.

I ran alongside my buddy Imelda Reyes, excited but oddly nauseous as we settled into rhythm. I run marathons often, but each one insists on being singular. This one made its point early. As a woman nearing 55, my cycle has become erratic enough to be almost theoretical. I had no reason to expect company that weekend. Yet, somewhere along the way, I realized I was running heavier — not just fatigued, but weighted.

The long sweep of Jumeirah Road is where Dubai really shows off. On one side, the Arabian Gulf; on the other, a parade of landmarks: the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab, Jumeirah Beach, and the rising form of Marsa Al Arab. 

This is not one of those massive, shoulder-to-shoulder world majors. Fewer than 5,000 runners toed the line, which gave the race an oddly intimate feel.

The Filipinos were everywhere — on the course, at the aid stations, cheering with familiar warmth. At each stop, I poured water over my head to fight the heat. With about 10 kilometers to go, the volunteers — our kababayans — drenched me completely without my asking. I barely registered it, except to note how heavy my shoes suddenly felt.

It was only at the finish line that I understood why. Blood streaked my legs unmistakably. And suddenly the gesture made sense. Quiet kindness, no questions asked.

Crossing the line wasn’t just about endurance. It was about running through a city that sprinted ahead of the world. Dubai left its mark not only in kilometers covered, but in perspective gained.

If this city runs at full speed, so did I. Bleeding, tired, carried forward by strangers. And somehow, I kept up.