It was September in Morocco, and Ramadan was in full swing when I met up with Moroccan marathoner Abderrahim Goumri. He was preparing for the 2008 ING New York City Marathon, where he had finished second the previous year.During Ramadan, Muslim runners tune up their spiritual lives by dedicating themselves to a month of inner reflection, devotion to God, and even greater discipline than usual. Observance throws off the finely tuned rhythm of the elite athlete’s life, which is why Goumri’s training was more laid back than one might expect six weeks before a major marathon.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up.
We ran in the late afternoon sun through a small eucalyptus and ironwood forest about half a mile from the Atlantic Coast in Temara, a beachside community eight miles outside of the capital in Rabat. The top athletes, like Goumri and Mohammed Amyn — both two-time Olympians — live a short jog from the beach, the forest and from each other, training, eating, going to movies and living as an extended family.
Sixty minutes into our first “easy run,” as they called it, a desperate mantra reverberated in my head: I need water, I need water, I really need water. I last drank and ate just past midnight. I learned on subsequent nights to follow the wisdom of Amyn and his family, whom I was staying with, and set my alarm for 4 a.m. to eat the light, suhoor meal before going back to sleep and resuming the daytime fast from all food and drink.
In addition to fasting, Ramadan days are spent praying the Qur’an and moving slowly toward that 5 p.m. run knowing you’ll feel sluggish and depleted before you’ve even laced up your shoes. After sunset, the sweet reward of a post-run shower and the breaking of the fast with the iftar meal feels even more satisfying, having run on empty.
Even running as a group, training during Ramadan is a solitary endeavor. During my two weeks with them, Goumri, Amyn and El Hassan Lahssini (a 2004 Olympic marathoner), ran mostly in silence, but chatted quietly while stretching in the sand as the skies turned pink and blue above us. Runners become even more introspective than usual, and at times struggle with the weariness.
Hassan said that during these runs, when he felt tired, “I say to myself, ‘It’s natural, it will be better tomorrow.’ I know myself, and I just run easy so that tomorrow I have a good day.”
They often met up at 10 p.m. for their second workout. Between the two, they ate dates, cheese, fresh fruit, bread and harira (a Moroccan soup-staple of lamb, chickpeas and lentils) with family and friends. They went to the mosque for prayer. While the women visited in each other’s homes, I was invited to join the men at seaside cafés to drink sweet mint tea or robust espresso.
Not surprisingly, they ran stronger in their second session. Another meal followed and then we all caught some sleep before waking briefly for the pre-dawn snack.
READ ON... worth it!!!
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