For inquiries
Dubai United Arab Emirates
At sunrise in DAMAC Hills, Gwendoline Philippe laces up her trainers, steps through her garden gate and runs. Ten kilometres later, past trees and lakes, she is home before much of the city has had its first coffee.
This month, hundreds of thousands of Dubai residents will try to build a similar habit as the annual Dubai Fitness Challenge returned for its 10th edition on October 31, asking residents and visitors to complete 30 minutes of activity every day for 30 days.
Dubai Ride opened the calendar on Sheikh Zayed Road on November 1, Dubai Run takes over the same stretch on November 22, and more than 30 community fitness hubs are offering free classes across the city.
For some residents of DAMAC's communities, though, the 30x30 is less a challenge than a description of an ordinary day.
Gwendoline Philippe: Slowing down to go further
Philippe, originally from Brittany, France’s northwesternmost region that juts out toward the Atlantic Ocean, started karate at five, won her first national title at 11, and never lost on French soil again.
Asked what her goal was, she said world champion without hesitating. "People smiled. Some laughed. That only made me more certain," she says.
At 13, she left her family in a small coastal town in western France to join a training centre hundreds of kilometres away. It was there she met her husband, also selected for their first World Championship. She went on to win three world titles.
Dubai has been the backdrop to both her highs and her lows. She won a World Cup here a few months before the Olympic Games; in 2020, she suffered a complete rupture of her anterior cruciate ligament mid-fight in the city. "It shook me, but it also rebuilt me," she says. In 2025, a few hundred metres from that same gymnasium, she gave birth to her son, Ayden.
Now 27, Philippe runs an international digital marketing agency with her husband, and home is where she lets the city's pace drop away. "Dubai moves fast. Everything here is grand, spectacular, always in motion. But at home, I need to feel time slow down," she says.
She ticks off what sits within reach: tennis and padel courts, an athletics track, pools, a farm, an equestrian centre, a fishing lake and playgrounds for Ayden. "They forgot no one," she says. "My morning runs feel like a retreat. Life here has a rhythm that I didn't expect to find in Dubai."
For more Information contact: www.dxrprop.ae
Call/WhatsApp: +971501090635
Email: alnashra2013@gmail.com
– To write a special article about the name of your organization or company, you can write to the following email: