In retrospect, we probably overpaid for the cab to the start line. It was three rials but it seemed like at 5:15 AM that it wasn’t worth the hassle of arguing.
The Muscat Marathon started and ended at a chic shopping and living enclave at the Al Mouj Resort/Golf Course. It’s the same place we had to do our packet pickup the other day. I opted to check a bag, something I rarely do, as I figured Reda would take a bit longer than me to finish the course and I’d pack a change of shirt. Spoiler Alert: There’s a reason I try not to ever check a bag and this marathon was a prime reminder.
The marathon was scheduled to start at 6 AM and I wanted to be there a bit early to make sure I could check the bag — per usual, we were far too early. But in my defense, we were there at about 5:25 AM – who knew THAT would be too early. Reda seemed okay with it though… and honestly, is 35 minutes too early? Maybe.
People slowly filtered in with about ten minutes to the start…
The race announcer said there’d be a warm-up stretch led by a harem of pretty fit women from sponsoring organization Horizon Fitness (the women were pretty and fit and therefore pretty fit). But they announced the warmup at 5 minutes to the start and just as folks were gathering at the tail end of the starting chute, the race announcer said we had 30 seconds to the start, prompting a mad dash to the other end of the starting chute… ya know, to the start line? It seemed like a crazed warm up as is five minutes before… but the fact that the warmup was a mad dash from one end to the other to start the event was, well, an unusual choice let’s say.
Seconds before… maybe just moments before… they said “Go!” I snapped a quick selfie with Reda. She wished me good luck in Russian which according to my google search is something like “udachi” but it seemed like A LOT more syllables than that when she said it to me this morning at 5:59 AM.
Per usual, my iPhone cannot take decent pics in low lighting, especially on the run. The sun wouldn’t really rise until I hit about 10 KM. I deleted most of my attempts to shoot things prior to this as the shots were just of blurred masses of blobs… and while some of those blobs often resembled me more than I’d like (I made some poor nutritional choices both before and after the race… binging is I think the term), I still think erring on the side of a more curated photo posting is the way to go.
The opening mileage was along a road then onto a construction site. Somewhere a few kilometers in the road lights timed off plummeting us into even darker conditions. I used my phone’s flashlight feature; hours later at the finish, Reda said she had the same weird, “What the heck?!” moment when the lights went out over Oman. I’m not sure what time they are set to extinguish — we started at 6 AM and though we were a few kilometers in and therefore after 6:15, it was certainly not yet 6:30 when it happened.
Around the 10K mark I started taking photos that would come out, which coincidentally, was right about at the first turn around point:
This was fortuitous because as the sun broke over the horizon, I couldn’t help but snap away like a paparazzi pursuing the latest celebrity trainwreck. By that I mean, I took a TON of photos of that rising sun:
It was around here that I saw Reda. She was looking strong but she was definitely a few Ks behind me… making me think checking my bag as a good idea (oh, how naive I was).
Continuing back to the start line to finish the first half of the course, I continued my time-lapse chronicle of the rising sun:
Passing runners just arriving at the race village for their 10K event, I headed off through the residential areas of Al Mouj and was quickly passed by a cadre of sandbagging negative split runners. I don’t know where these guys came from but they zoomed past me like they had downed a six pack of Red Bulls.
Following the color coded arrows (marathon runners were to stick to the blue ones, we would cross another construction site… this one apparently doubling as a Spartan Race/Wipeout Obstacle Challenge event setting. I loved seeing this sign as I was about to run through the area:
From there we headed onto the winding paths of Al Mouj golf course. The brick pavers made for a smooth running past tees and putting greens.
From the golf course, we headed onto the highway… I thought it might be closed to traffic… that is until a giant semi truck barreled past me. Still, it was early on the weekend holy day of Friday so there wasn’t really a lot of traffic anyway.
At the final major turnaround (there’d be a few more roundabouts and zigs and zags but this was the 3/4 mark), I saw one of the few supporters along the course. The aid stations were well staffed every 5K or so, and there were course marshals, but there was almost ZERO spectator support. And while this woman was a course marshal, I definitely had to give her credit for her props. Because, c’mon, say it with me — MARACAS!
From there it was retracing our steps on the highway..
…back through the golf course…
…ducking and weaving the faux-Wipeout “sweeper” (that never moved)…
…and back through the Al Mouj residential areas…
…and finally straight on to the finish line.
I hung around waiting for Reda and snapped a lot of photos whilst stuffing my face with too much “recovery” food. So much for burning calories…
When the nice Omani woman told me to jump for an action shot at the photo board, well, I didn’t say how high (‘cuz I’m not a high jumper on my best days), but here’s how that went:
Here’s where it all kinda went sideways. Bag pickup was a disaster. Instead of keeping the bags sorted by bib number or even by event, they just tossed them all together in one Bag Mountain. So when asking for your bag, 99% of them were in the Muscat Marathon white goodie bag and tagged as we were told to do with the little numbered bag check. The volunteers working the bag check then had to dig through all of the slightly less than 1300 runners’ bags (as presumably there were some SMART runners who DIDN’T check bags) to find the one lucky bag that was each person’s belongings. It was a real blind spot for the organizers and one that should not have gone unnoticed in the prior 5 years of the event (this was year 6).
But one can’t get too upset — it’s not like yelling will help expedite the process any. Eventually they found my proverbial piece of hay in the haystack (as a needle would be far easier to locate than an individual strand of hay — who was it that first pointed out how much easier it would be to find a needle than a stray bit of hay in a haystack? One could use a magnet for example… or just look for the silver bit even…). Plus I had time to kill waiting for Reda… nonetheless it was annoying and an easy fix for next year if the organizers spent just five minutes thinking about it.
Scarfing down sandwiches and fries and all sorts of bad things for me, I felt a bit warumph. That’s a thing, right? Warumph? If not, it is now. Because it’s on the internet. And the internet never lies. It may offer alternative facts but it never lies. No, siree, Trump! No lies here…
Reda came in shortly thereafter, clocking in at a sub-5 hour marathon. She looked strong but she said she had to walk a good bit.
Unlike in Dubai, I didn’t feel dehydrated, just overloaded blotto with post-run foodstuffs. It’s odd that one can traverse 26.2 miles / 42.195K and still feel like you need to go for another run to make up for the poor eating decisions. Sigh. It’s a never ending battle of the bulge with me.
On the plus side, I snapped this selfie with a clown. An Omani clown doing facepainting and proffering balloons for the kids… nothing creepy about– Oh, MAN! That is one creepy clown!
I’m back at the hotel now, sipping a Coca-Cola Light, pounding out this post. I opted to try and give a flavor of the course. Years into this runkevinrun.com project and I’m still not sure how to go about “blogging.” But, hey, so long as there’s clowns, am I right?
***
Updated 1/27/17 at 4:57 PM Omani Time
I apparently came in 10th, a little over 30 minutes behind the winner.
