Today, members of Joud have daily runs inside the Saudi Aramco camp, as well as some other special exercises on Sundays and Wednesdays, and anyone can join.
JOUD RUNNING CLUB Joud Running Club was founded by Abdullah Al Joud, national coach at the Saudi Arabian Athletic Federation. With a passion for running, Al Joud started his athletic journey in 2005 when he was 29 and, by the time he participated in the 2012 Olympics, had been the number one runner in the Kingdom for four years in a row. Around the same time that he had caught the initial spark of running, Al Joud met Ian Willson, the coach he attributes his success as a runner to. Soon after, he started training heavily and participating in races and marathons. 34 DESTINATION SHARQIYA NOVEMBER 2017
“I tried joining the Saudi National team, but they rejected me for my age,” said Al Joud. “At that point, I knew there was only me to believe in myself.” Challenged and motivated to do more, he participated in his first international competition in 2009, and ran in several events throughout the years since then, including winning 2nd place in the Gold League. In 2014, he broke the Saudi record in Copenhagen. After learning about training from a running camp in Morocco, he came back to Dhahran and started training a group of people in Saudi Aramco, before finally founding Joud Running Club. joudrunning