Dubai Overview 2013 – Cathay, Emirates, British First Class

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One of the things that many readers asked for at the end of 2013 was for more trip reports. I am really going to work harder to provide trip reports that can satisfy the traveler and the runner. To that end, I thought I would give a recap of my Dubai experience in 2013 since I am running it again tomorrow. This year’s travel for Dubai was significantly easier and more simple and my goal for the marathon more aggressive. However, the travel experience from last year was quite a ride!

Dubai Overview 2013

I had made the decision to run Dubai last year because I wanted to find a marathon that made for an interesting travel plan to fly and review as many different airline products as possible. I knew that running the marathon was not going to be that great since I had barely trained but I was just going to do it for review sake so I was not going to care that much about time.

After all the travel was set, I was looking at being able to fly a variety of aircraft and airlines:

• Cathay Pacific First Class
• Cathay Pacific Business Class
• Qatar Business Class
• Emirates First Class (w/ the shower!)
• British Airways Coach
• British Airways First Class
• JetBlue

All of this was done in the course of 5 days and that was including running the marathon. Here are the posts about the Dubai Marathon 2013 and the travel.

dubai marathon trip – introduction

dubai marathon trip – cathay pacific first class (part 1)

dubai marathon trip – cathay pacific business class (part 2)

dubai marathon trip – colombo airport / serenediva hotel (part 3)

dubai marathon trip – araliya lounge / qatar airways business class (part 4)

dubai marathon trip – doha premium terminal / qatar airways first class lounge (part 5)

dubai marathon trip – dubai (part 6)

dubai marathon trip – four points sheraton sheikh zayed road (part 7)

dubai marathon trip – the dubai marathon (part 8)

dubai marathon trip – emirates first class lounge (part 9)

dubai marathon trip – emirates first class (part 10)

dubai marathon trip – paris and british airways (part 11)

dubai marathon trip – hilton paris charles de gaulle airport hotel (part 12)

dubai marathon trip – british airways first class (part 13)

I have to say – the whole trip was quite an experience and one I thoroughly enjoyed. However, it was not the best travel scenario for running a quality marathon!