The 16th Wadi Bih run was held on Friday the 25th of January 2008. The original Wadi Bih run was held in 1993 and hence this was the 16th run, which has been held continuously since 1993, which must make the event one of the longest running sporting events in the UAE sporting calendar .
As always there was uncertainty about the route. Due to restrictions on expatriates passing through the UAE border post on the RAK side it was not possible to hold the events on the usual preferred route from RAK to Dibba.
Luckily the very heavy rains experienced in Dubai and Sharjah the week or so before the run had little or no effect on the condition of the road on the Dibba side.
Thus the route started from the beach in Dibba and followed the wadi Khabb Shamsi up to the high point of the road and then back again to the finish at the beach in Dibba.
The weather had been another uncertainty with some prediction of rain days before the event. However we were fortunate and the track was in good condition and unaffected. The weather on the day was cool with fresh breeze and some cloud cover making for ideal running conditions.
The finish and start location was at the new Golden Tulip Hotel in Dibba directly adjacent the beach. It is interesting that there is an old Shiu ( tribal ) graveyard just adjacent the hotel this could be useful for interring expired runners.
As is the tradition a number of teams camped on the Thursday night prior to the run on the beach at Dibba and the campfire and barbecue were appreciated to fend off the relative cold.
A total of 67 teams entered the event and 59 of those showed up on the day. A further 3 teams registered on the day that this gave a total of 62 teams plus two solo runners plus five cyclists giving us a total line up of about 320. The no-show teams were given an early morning phone call to their registered mobile number on the day
just to check that they had not inadvertently travelled to RAK for the start . There were a few sleepy responses !
As always there were some clever ingenious cryptic and interesting team names on offer. A list of the teams and participants on the run is on the website along with the overall team times.
Where people have given an e-mail address on the team timesheet we have scanned the sheet and e-mailed it to them. However some of the sheets are not legible. If anyone wants their original sheet back if they can drop me an e-mail with
their name & team name and address ( PO box number ) we can send this sheet on to them.
As always the run relies on the support & help of various organisations and people.
In keeping with the origin of the run as a sporting social hash event sponsorship has been limited - In fact we only have one sponsor ! Many thanks again to Sun & Sands who provided the T-shirts for the run and also vouchers for the prizes. Special thanks to Vishal Bhatia the Marketing Manager.
Thanks again to Andy Whitaker for the lively graphic showing the happy runner arriving at the beach to meet a mermaid. Andy had a pretty poor excuse for not attending the run - he was on his honeymoon .
Apologies to the people that picked up an XL size T-shirt which was about the right size for a toddler. I can only conclude that XL is Chinese for baby or even crop top or boob tube.
This year we moved upmarket somewhat and held the post run meal at the Golden Tulip hotel at the beach in Dibba . Many thanks to the food and beverage manager Rabih and his superb team at the hotel for an excellent spread.For details of what they can offer check out :
www.goldentulipdibba.com
Thanks are due to the Nepalese mountain guide Ram from the Absolute Adventure company for arranging the firewood and grill for the camping on Thursday night and also thanks to Paul Oliver of Absolute Adventure for letting us use his location map to guide people to the start and finish. For details of what they can offer check out :
www.adventure.ae
To improve the efficiency on the collation of the teams registered we prepared a website for the run and many thanks are due to Helen Rodd for getting this operational on the server and for also collating all of the entries.
Wouter Kingma was busy all day with the photography on the run and we hope to include some of these shots on the website.
At the registration many thanks are due to Jenny and Robert for helping and also to the additional help from Bingo and Bunbury - their dogs - who very tastefully modelled the Wadi Bih T-shirts.
Congratulations to the overall winners of the event the Dubai Tri Club team of ; Paul Weler, Roland Kemp, Chris Sellar, Sinead & Ivana for their excellent time of 5:08:17. They each received a free nights stay at the Golden Tulip hotel - not sure if this was all together in the same room !
The second team, again with an excellent time of 5:11:37 was the Mirdif Milers Elite which comprised of three runners over the age of 50 , we won't embarrass the geriatrics by saying which ones. Well done to : Chris McCann, Richard Thomas, Hugh Archibald, Keith Thompsun & Chris Vernon.
Special congratulations are due to the two solar runners who ran the entire 76 km on their own. Well done to James & Amelia Varley.
Best wishes & see you all at next years run
John Young
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