8th and last foot race is over

the last foot race of the winter is over. after calling out loud that we like to have 100 finishers, it turned out to be even better. people where calling me until 12:00pm on friday to ask what time the Run in Jordan foot race was on. sorry, at that it’s over! actually the phone stated already to ring on wednesday. i can predict according to the number of calls i get haw to race day will be. i even msg to our host Mecca Mall to ask if there would be sufficient t-shirts. personally i expected over 200 people coming.

the day is beautiful and promised to be hot. at 9:00am the place in front of gate 4 was still empty. i know this week-end was difficult for Run in Jordan because of two reasons: first it was a prolonged week-end as on sunday was 1. of may (workers day) so many left amman for a longer week-end. and, that same friday thousands went to petra to vote for this monument of world heritage. as at 9:30 only very few people cam i got a bit nervous. but, by this winter experience showed, that when you say start at 10:00am the people show up at 10:00.

9:40am - suddenly, runners coming from all sides are starting to fill the place in front of gate 4. and in less than 20 minutes there must be arund 200 people who like to participate at this last foot race. this is going to be a successful event. we are late - as usual - giving out t-shirts and haitam giving some stretching instructions. unfortunately not all got their t-shirt as some where taking two. finally at 10:15am we started the kids. definitely there where more than in any other foot race. how many i will see at the end when the last crosses the finish line. this time we also changed the procedure and let the kid’s run alone until they finished. so the participants of the longer distance had to wait a half an hour before going to their start. usually ayub is ahead of all other, but not this time. he faced two older boys who where running together all the way from start to finish. the youngest boy - armen - was 3 years old only and completed two laps (2km) - bravo armen.
10:45am finally we could also start the longer distance. they where all nervouse as they had to wait so long. we had all sorts of people coming - top runners like mohamed al-sweiti, mohamed masri, fahed abdel asiz, haitham and others. but also not so well trained came who needed around 40 minutes to complete the not so easy 6km.

all in all we can say that the mecca mall foot race was the race with the highest participants. 63 kids crossed the finish line and about 77 adults. making it 140 finishers. this is much more than we all expected. but also the track was not realy easy. and looking at the faces of all who came you could see a brightness and happiness that only can be noticed when you participate at the foot races for the love of running.