On Sunday, March 24, 16 students from NYUAD’s running club raced down the sunny, orange-strewn seafront in Limassol, Cyprus.

Seven students ran the full 42 kilometers through Cyprus’ second largest city, while the other nine students, plus three accompanying NYUAD faculty members, ran the 21 km half marathon.

All students successfully completed their respective races, with NYUAD sophomore Jaen Ocadiz-Flores leading the NYUAD marathoners at a time of 3:33:26 and freshman Louis Plottel clocking the fastest half marathon at 1:40:56.

“I was happy with the results for all the students,“ said Wayne Young, Associate Director of Athletics at NYUAD who organized the trip. “They got to the start line, they got to the finish line and they did a nice job.”

Young hopes this first trip will set a precedent for long distance races in the following years.

“I would like to continue it in the future,” Young said, “Whether it’s a spring break trip every year just depends on the race schedule and where we can get to. But I think it’s a good thing for the students to build up their training and have a goal race and then get out and do that goal race and see what they can achieve.”

Freshman Devin Cuinn explained what prompted him to run his first marathon.

“It was a goal I set for myself at the beginning of the year. I remember that some of the staff asked what were our goals for the year and some people were saying that they wanted to travel to all the emirates … A marathon was something I wanted to do.”

Like many of the students participating in the Limassol race, Cuinn had ran several 10 km races held in Abu Dhabi. “It’s very different [from other races]. It’s a lot longer, first of all,” Cuinn laughed, “It relies a lot more on mental, that you want to go on, whereas a lot of the other races it depends on how far your muscles are able to go ... Your muscles just kind of break down during a marathon and you just have to keep going.”

“I would definitely do another [marathon],” Cuinn said and expressed hope of participating again next year.

Dylan Maurer, an NYUNY junior who completed his first half-marathon, also looks forward to the next challenge.

“I had a lot of fun doing this, it was something that I like working towards and something that I liked the end result of. I think I want to try out the full.”

The marathon took place as Cypriot ministers, politicians and bankers scrambled to pull together what was becoming an internationally publicized bailout proposal from the European Union. The EU demanded the Cypriot government to bring together austerity funds before it would grant the Mediterranean island nation a 10 billion euro bailout package.

During the week before the marathon, the Cypriot parliament rejected an initial austerity agreement that would have imposed a tax on deposit holders under €100,000. Banks had been closed over that week and there was a withdrawal limit of €100 at ATMs.

Limassol is known as a popular summer destination for foreign vacationers, especially for British and Russian tourists, partially for the beautiful Mediterranean beaches and coastline and partially due to lenient tax laws that have attracted large deposits from foreign investors.

The boulevard running along the coast of the city is dotted with small Russian supermarkets; every signpost and advertisement was a Rosetta stone with Hellenic, Cyrillic and Latin alphabets for the many languages that pass through the city.

However, the recent financial crisis has had major implications to the country’s reputation internationally, with Standard & Poor downgrading the national credit rating to CCC from CCC-plus On March 21.

With the announcement of a new bailout plan on Monday March 25, the effects of the crisis seem as though they will have long-lasting effects. Two Cypriot banks, the Bank of Cyprus and Laiki Bank, face a huge brunt of this crisis, with the latter having to close down permanently and merge its assets into the former.

The banking system of Cyprus has taken a hit and the industry may never recover its former status. News sources are describing this 5th EU bailout deal as "painful" and "setting a new precedent" The extent of the impact this crisis will have on Cypriot society and the broader EU will reveal itself in the coming months and years.

However, for the NYUAD runners, the presence of the crisis was far more subdued.

Young, responsible for the group of students and staff, commented that the economic situation did not overly impact the trip.

"We just had to be more aware of the situation here ... the one little thing is that I took more of a cash advance to make sure we had enough money to feed people in case all of a sudden credit cards didn't work."

The town of Limassol was perhaps quieter than normal the weekend of the crisis, but apart from dramatic news reports including one of a bombing at a Bank of Cyprus branch in Limassol on March 24th and many sightings of journalists and film crews rushing to interview Cypriots as they walked past Laiki Bank, there were few signs that anything was out of the ordinary.

James Smoley, a freshman who ran the half-marathon, explained, “I thought I would be walking down abandoned streets or that I would be swamped by rioters, but it was business as usual in Cyprus. All the shops and restaurants were still open, be they a little quiet, and that little bit of extra calm made my trip even more enjoyable.”

“Although Cyprus may be facing tough times, the country is yet to show any weakness on the ground,” Smoley continued. A local hotel manager in Limassol echoed the sentiment that the financial crisis of Cyprus has so far not had a visible effect.

“The hotel business is still going well and I think it will continue.” said Marinos Michaelides, Manager of Reservations at the Odyssia Hotel. “We haven’t had any cancellations, we haven’t had any [problems]. More than that, we get more groups, we get more requests.”

Michaelides believes this is due to the strength of the tourism industry in Cyprus, which he does not think will be diminished by the economic crisis.

“Cyprus is selling sun ... That’s not going to change,” Michaelides said. “It has always been a popular destination, it’s a sunny and safe country.”

As for the other businesses in Cyprus, Michaelides is equally optimistic. “We will survive it, as [we have] everything else.”