“I am very proud of this achievement”: meet the woman who has run through all the streets of Dubai – News

A Dubai marathon runner has walked all the streets of Dubai. Yasmine Salaam, fondly called the Pink Taxi Runner, has run the entire emirate of Dubai from the Abudhabi border to the Sharjah border, including Hatta.

“I am very proud of this achievement,” she told Khaleej Times. “I have traveled throughout the emirate of Dubai, street by street, and with great joy. This means I have traveled all the streets built by RTA, including alleys but not highways.”

Yasmine, who started this project on the first day of the Dubai Fitness Challenge (DFC) in 2018, said she now has intimate knowledge of the country she has called home for the past 48 years. “During this project, I learned everything about Dubai, how people work and live, how the city operates and provides services to its people, how urban planning is done and how civil engineering translates into an organized lifestyle for communities “, said. “During the five years 2018-2023, including the year of the pandemic, I have watched the growth of an extraordinary city of the future.”

Keeping up to date with Dubai

Yasmine said she found it difficult to keep up with the ever-developing city of Dubai. “As I ran, the streets multiplied and my percentage decreased even as I ran more and more,” she said. “I had to keep up with Dubai and this is an extraordinary feature. “I also learned about the diversity of the city and how people of all nationalities live in different neighborhoods and neighborhoods or how they sometimes mix.”

Yasmine has run approximately 1,000km each year and has been documenting her progress on social media for the past five years. On Wednesday, she posted her joy at completing her epic project.

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According to her, each street was a discovery. “My favorite streets are the most iconic ones in central Dubai, old Deira, Palm and Marina,” she said. “But I also love Jumeirah because I grew up there as a child and know it well. However, the neighborhoods I discovered were Silicon Oasis with amazing architecture, Awir Desert and Khawaneej and old neighborhoods like Wuheida, BuHail, Muraqqabat.”

For Yasmine, her biggest motivation was the DFC. “She has created an environment that builds a sporting community,” she said. “Dubai is a city that moves and the running community is very large. That’s why I feel that the emirate of Dubai is behind my project, encouraging me. “This is the emirate where everything is possible and where goals can be achieved.”

Yasmin hopes that the city’s top athlete, Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, will take notice of her project. “I would love for you to know that I have been doing this for 5 years for one reason only: the sporting emirate of Dubai that I love.”

The challenges

Yasmine’s passion project had its own difficulties.

“It’s been a challenge to run in the middle of summer or during the fasting month of Ramadan,” he said. “But the project itself motivated me to run regularly and kept me going because I had goals to finish. It was also a challenge to run in areas inhabited only by men, as Al Qusais, Jebel Ali Industrial and Al Qouz have many accommodations for working only with men.”

However, she felt safe at all times thanks to police patrols. “It was also a challenge to run in dusty industrial areas and where the roads are not well paved,” she said. “I’ve also run in all the gated communities where security is very tight and I had to park very far from the entrance because they don’t let you run freely through the gates, let alone drive into those areas to get to the further areas. . streets.”

Ricky Gates first started it in San Francisco in 2017 and soon walking through all the streets became a global trend. Yasmine was an early adopter of the movement that has runners from all over the world running through her towns and cities.

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