Guest post by Marco
I want to write you about the Rotterdam Marathon, as we had last sunday 5 april 2009 in………..yes, Rotterdam.
But first i like to tell you in short the source of the Marathon.
The Marathon is the longest running game in atletics. The competitors have to run the 42 km and 195 mtr. as fast as the can.
The source of it goes back to 490 years before Christ, in the village of Marathon (Greece) Marathon is about 42 km from Athens.
There was a havy battle that time in Marathon, and when the battle was over, and the greece won they send a messenger (running) to the the king in Athens to bring the good news.
History also learned us that the messenger (phidippides) died just after he brought the news.
So, this is why we still have this Marathons (based on the atletic and olympic games from Greece.
Back to Rotterdam 5 april 2009.
It was a great day for running, about 15 dgr.C. and no wind. It was the 29e edition of this biggest one-day event that we have in Holland.
It is a run, not only for the professionals but also for the amateurs.
This year almost 15.000 people were at the start.
Rotterdam is knowen as a city with a great ambiance hundred-thousends of people along the fast circuit, so most of the worlds best runers were on the start.
The best runners come from Kenia (Africa) It seams the have the best physical genes from nature.
And they are always in the front-line.
Also this time they made it a fast and hard run.
So at the end of the run it was a sprint between two man from Kenia, Kibet and Kwambai.
If you look at the finish photo you can see that it was very very close, but… Kibeti was the winner.
He won in a new circuit record of 2 hours 4 minutes and 26 seconds (almost 19,8 km/hour) It was the second fast time ever in the whole world. just 32 sec. above the world record.
See you next year.
