By Naureen Malik
Abdi Abdirahman is a road warrior in every sense of the word. The elite runner logs 400 running miles a month and flies at least 50,000 miles a year. This Sunday, Nov. 6, the five-time Olympian will be racing in the New York City Marathon for his eighth and final time.
He’s not done yet, though. The 45-year-old, Flagstaff, Arizona, resident is on a quest—with thousands of runners around the world—to run all six major marathons. He plans to knock off Tokyo in March and then run in London or Berlin in 2023. “I love running, too, so, why not?,” Abdirahman says.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___The runner has twice finished as the top American in New York’s race, but all he knows for certain heading into this weekend is that he will be nervous. “You don’t get nervous because of fear, or you’re going to fail. You get nervous because you care about it. You want to succeed,” Abdirahman said. “Sometimes if I don’t get nervous, I feel like I’m not ready.”
Abdirahman travels some 15 to 20 times year, to race around the US, go to events, visit his family in Somalia or train at his camp in Ethiopia. He flies on United Airlines when he can. Hilton is his preferred hotel chain, and he’s partial to Denver’s airport because it’s easy to get to and to get around in.
This Sunday, though, he’ll be speeding through New York’s five boroughs, running at a pace of five minutes per mile for 26.2 miles, from the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge through Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and back down to Central Park.
The days leading up to a marathon can be an emotionally stressful time for long-distance runners. After months of intense training, they now have to rest up to get ready for the big day. Abdirahman says he focuses on rituals: getting to sleep on time, staying hydrated, carb loading from two to three days before it, and staying busy by getting out and seeing friends in the city for lunch and dinner. Oh, and shaving his head.
Just reaching the start line is another massive undertaking. He flies from his home in Flagstaff to Phoenix and then to Newark International Airport in New Jersey before catching a ride into Manhattan. To avoid the stress of losing checked baggage, he always packs his race kit in his carry-on: singlet, shorts and his Asics Metaspeed Sky running shoes. “Everything else can be replaced while you’re there, but it’s kind of hard to replace your racing shoes,” he says.
Here are his travel tips.
The carry-on luggage that’s worth the price.
I have one piece of luggage I always carry on: Rimowa, a navy blue hard-case bag with wheels. I think it’s one of the best. It’s a little bit pricey. I’m a believer if you want to invest in something, you want to invest in something that will last forever. I have had it almost five years now, and the wheels have never come off. I have stickers from where I have been to.
Keep your wardrobe to a minimum …
I just take maybe one pair of dress jeans, one pair of black Common Projects shoes, a blazer and two dress shirts—one dress white shirt and maybe one black. After that, nothing else. Toiletries, and that’s it.
… and you can prioritize delicious souvenirs for the trip back home.
I’m kind of a coffee snob. I like good coffee since I’ve been traveling to Ethiopia the past few years. Ethiopian coffee is some of the best. So when I go there, I usually give my training clothes to my friends and my training partners, and then I make sure to bring my luggage back filled with coffee. Every time, I go try to find a good coffee shop. I like cortado. I like strong coffee. Some coffee shops give you dark water, and you put the milk in it; you can’t taste anything. So I usually bring my own AeroPress.
The one thing to pack on long flights?
You have to have a water bottle, especially like a 13-, 14- hour flight. A lot of people take sleeping pills, which I don’t, actually, I try not to take any supplements. I try to make everything natural for me. I just drink a lot of water and try to sleep as much as I can. If I get there in the morning, my goal’s usually to stay up until the afternoon, or make it to night.
But the best way to hydrate isn’t water.
I like Pedialyte. Instead of drinking a lot of water, just drink one Pedialyte—strawberry flavored—a day or two days before a race, and that will give you the hydration that you need, instead of drinking water, water, water.
The day before the race is pasta, carbohydrates. Just carbo load a couple days, three or four days out before the race. Pasta with meatballs or meat sauce, that’s good for me. I’m not trying to overeat the night before—I just eat more than usual. I try to not to make it too complicated.
Choose the airline that works for you.
I like United. I travel with a lot of airlines and had trouble with flights getting delayed. I know United is not perfect, but I just never had that trouble, and I travel a lot. And it’s easier for me. I can go to Denver or I can go to Chicago, and you have a direct flight to Africa. Most of the other airlines, you have to go through Europe and then stay there for another 12, 13 hours. They have Star Alliance and other airlines they work with, like Ethiopian Airlines.
Be kind to yourself on the road.
At the end of the day, I’m a human being like anyone else on the road. If I’m tired, if I have been traveling for almost 24 hours and I get to the hotel late at night, the last thing I want to think about is running. When you arrive in the morning, it’s easier to exercise and to do things you wanna do. If you arrive at night, you want to get to bed. For me sometimes, I get to the hotel in the morning and I don’t feel like doing anything, so I hydrate, get some rest, recover and get ready for the next day—because you don’t lose fitness in 24 hours, or even three to four days, if you don’t do anything.
I bring exercise bands. Usually, if I go overseas I also take my small foam roller. That’s just one big part of something easy to carry and to use in the hotel room.
And I never order room service, unless I am desperate and I have no other option. Most of the time I try to explore the town I’m in. I ask, what’s the best food here, how far is it?
Embrace naps.
I have been doing this for over 20-plus years now, so the most important thing for me is the recovery, especially at this point of my career. Taking a nap during the day—like an hour, or 40 minutes—has become a part of my training.
Embrace the experience that comes with getting older.
I’m not the same athlete that I used to be. I’m not as fast as I used to be when I was young. But now I don’t need to do a lot because I have all those miles, 20 plus years of running. It’s just maintaining the fitness that I have. I kind of know the routine of how to get ready for a marathon, what to do, what not to do. I still feel the same way—get nerves and stuff.
Everybody is different. The most important thing that someone can learn, to run the marathon, is to just listen your body because you are the one who’s running. You are the one who knows how you feel, if you’re feeling tired, if you’re feeling fatigued, if you’re feeling pain. Sometimes we have a tendency to run with injury, or if we have pain because we want to accomplish something.
But people don’t realize that pain can turn into something bigger. Instead of being like two or three days of not exercising, it can be a few months of not exercising. I’m talking about the point where you have stress reaction instead of a stress fracture. A reaction can take a week or two to heal. If you get a fracture, it can take eight to 12 weeks.
Find your rituals to prepare.
I need to shave my head every night before the race—every race, it doesn’t matter. Even if I shaved it this morning, I have to shave it tonight before I go to bed. I think that started during college; I shaved my head and I did so well. It just became a habit.
Embrace the unknown.
I don’t like running on the road because I don’t want to see where I’m going. I like to explore new trails. Observatory Mesa is a little bit above [Flagstaff], so I drive to the top and park there. You can run so many miles, so many trails. I just love it there. If you go two miles out, you barely see anybody. I like being in peace and listening to myself and thinking about whatever’s going through my head.
But in New York, I run in Central Park. I don’t run anywhere else. I like that 1.5-mile loop around the reservoir because it’s soft. You do that twice and then two miles to get there and two to get back to the hotel. I do the six-mile loop once in a while.
The secret to real mental toughness comes from within …
When I made the Olympics in 2020, a lot of people did not believe in me. That was the fifth one, and being the 40-plus year, people made a big deal out of it. I never thought about it until I made the team and I talked to people. I know some people who are 45 and they can’t do the half of the things—or the quarter of the things—that they want. But I think sometimes, they believe that they cannot do them. At the end of the day, I think as an athlete it’s what you believe in. It’s your mind.
… but there are other ways to gain an edge.
Instead of focusing on the whole 26 miles, focus on one 10k [6 miles] at a time.
Sometimes you are running with a group of guys, and you’re not feeling good. Things are becoming difficult because we are not all the same level. Make sure you are running with your own comfort zone, what you’re capable of. Don’t try to run with someone who is 20, 30 seconds faster than you. You might never finish the race. Just run your own race. Don’t run someone else’s race.
