Ooredoo is less than a week away.

Yay!

I received my race number today and discovered that it was a surprisingly low number – which is worrying considering the event is sold out. I may find myself in a similar position to Marysville where I can literally count the number of people running my particular distance.

Prep

I ran a 10K race on the 1st, a 2.5K course which meant I had to go out and back 4 times to get to my distance. I was punching for a sub 50 min PB but a long stint at work is taking its toll and I struggled to maintain the pace I wanted, eventually running it in 55 mins.

10K Determined At The End

10K Start

10K Route

Still, I am happy with the time, I came 7th out of a field of 19 and was only 10 min behind 1st place – heck I could see the guy who won it for most of my 55 min out there, just couldn’t catch him.

Running loops was also good preparation for Ooredoo as the course is going to require multiple laps – although that is all I know at this point, the exact course route is still a closely kept secret, which a week out is quite irritating as I would like to know the course before the big day so I can walk a lap – as part of my prep.

Psychologically I am feeling prepared, physically I am feeling prepared. Now I just need to play the waiting game…

As a torture exercise (and secretly to get a lot of hits on my blog with the metadata tag Ooredoo Marathon 2016 Route) I reckon that the course will be a 10K lap which looks something like this:

If this is indeed the case, I am looking at 4 laps of this. The silver-lining being that the final 5 K will be very familiar and I always enjoy watching running towards the spiral tower on the Fanar Qatar Islamic Cultural Center near the Souq.

Fanar

The tower (as I understand) and the name Fanar (also, as I understand) is representative of a lighthouse. Now, it is seen as a beacon to help guide spirituality and understanding. As long distance running can be a spiritual, metaphysical and philosophical journey, having the Fanar beacon so prominent on this marathon route will be appropriately symbolic.

Club Runner

I will also be picking up a DBRC running top on Wednesday, which means I will be identifying myself as a “club runner” during this marathon (who would have thought) so I have club pride (or is that pressure) to get me round a little zippier too.