Dubai Marathon 2009 Part I

Two days before the event, I went to Westin Dubai Mena Seyahi Beach Resort and Marina to collect my run number and a bag of goodies. This new hotel resort is recently open and is located at the opposite of Dubai Media City. This is where the marathon will start and finish. My run number is 670 and inside the bag there are a yellow Puma T-shirt, a sleeveless Puma shirt, a bottle of Pokka energized carbonated drinks, the marathon map & guides, a Mika chip (a cool tracking device to be tied on the shoe and is supposed to track the timing for the runner) and commercial pamphlets. I begin to understand why the event has been claimed as World's Richest Marathon, judging from the preparation made by the international organizer as well as the US1 million prize-money as well as further US$1 million for a new record holder. The exact distance for this classic marathon is 42km 195m.

Having all the preparations ready, I was a bit worried about my own preparation physically and mentally. I was with my family in Dubai for 2 weeks and followed by my homecoming visit from 2nd to 9th January 2009. In those wonderful 3 weeks I had indeed neglected my last leg of my training plan. Back home there were a couple of times that I was out to train at Tasik Shah Alam but it rained so I drove home and continued eating cekodok, goreng pisang and keropok lekor. So I have this whisper in my head, "Come on, forget the running madness and let's eat more of the mee goreng, roti canai and nasi lemak". Somehow my mental strength has been able to fix my mind to just do it, just run till the end to finish what I have started, but still I had a good portion of that home-made mee goreng. Yummy. Well, let's see what happen on the 16th of January, the D-day for Dubai Marathon 2009. For this maiden marathon of mine, I hope I will make it to the end and finish the whole 42km in a less time than that of the last year English finisher at 7 hours 31minutes.