Last Friday was the day of the annual Dead Sea Ultra Marathon, and although I hadn’t been training much, I decided to participate in the 10K category – also known as the fun run. I managed to convince a group of the students I work with to participate, and 20 of them did!
The number of people who take part in this event keeps increasing year after year; when I went to register two days before the marathon, all the 10K numbers were gone, and it took some exceptional measures to get all 21 of us registered. I wish I had taken pictures that day of the employees and volunteers at the Society for Care of Neurological Patients, the organizing body of the Marathon since 1993, along with the Amman Road Runners. The place was a busy bee cell, and it was wonderful to see the effort and dedication they put in to make this work and to make it the successful and internationally acclaimed event that it has come to be.
One of the things that ticked me off on the day of the race though, was how runners were throwing away the empty water bottles and the sponges on the side of the street. I soon realized that I cannot really blame the people, because there was not a single trash bin all along the road to the Dead Sea… NOT ONE!! I mean, this is something the organizers should’ve paid attention to. They had a lot of details taken care of, and having trash bins wouldn’t have been difficult.
Apart from that, I had a wonderful time; it was very refreshing. I loved seeing so much diversity of people participating; little kids and elderly. Of course, in 99% of cases, when you see an old person running you can immediately guess he or she is not Arab. It really gets me thinking, when I see people as old as my grandma, dressed in Athletic gear and running, not the 10K, but the 42K… it makes me wonder what it takes to be like that when you grow old, and what are the obstacles towards that in this part of the world.
Oh, and I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this… selling shorts! I wonder how many they’ve sold :)
The number of people who take part in this event keeps increasing year after year; when I went to register two days before the marathon, all the 10K numbers were gone, and it took some exceptional measures to get all 21 of us registered. I wish I had taken pictures that day of the employees and volunteers at the Society for Care of Neurological Patients, the organizing body of the Marathon since 1993, along with the Amman Road Runners. The place was a busy bee cell, and it was wonderful to see the effort and dedication they put in to make this work and to make it the successful and internationally acclaimed event that it has come to be.
One of the things that ticked me off on the day of the race though, was how runners were throwing away the empty water bottles and the sponges on the side of the street. I soon realized that I cannot really blame the people, because there was not a single trash bin all along the road to the Dead Sea… NOT ONE!! I mean, this is something the organizers should’ve paid attention to. They had a lot of details taken care of, and having trash bins wouldn’t have been difficult.
Apart from that, I had a wonderful time; it was very refreshing. I loved seeing so much diversity of people participating; little kids and elderly. Of course, in 99% of cases, when you see an old person running you can immediately guess he or she is not Arab. It really gets me thinking, when I see people as old as my grandma, dressed in Athletic gear and running, not the 10K, but the 42K… it makes me wonder what it takes to be like that when you grow old, and what are the obstacles towards that in this part of the world.
Oh, and I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this… selling shorts! I wonder how many they’ve sold :)
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