On December 11th Mark, Jared and I ran in a race at the Giza Pyramids! Back in September, a teacher at school sent out an email seeing if there was much interest among staff members to run this race. Once Mark saw that he was in. You could run a half marathon, a10K or a 5K. Because it stays hot here forever and doesn't really ever get truly cold outside (inside its feels quite cold which I definitely remember from last time we were here) I knew a 5K would be the only distance I would be interested in and asked Jared if he was interested in running with me. In the end Mark signed up to run the half marathon and Jared and I signed up to run the 5K. There were 3 other teacher guys close in age to Mark who also signed up for the half marathon and they formed a whatsapp group to encourage each other in their training. The day of the race Mark ended up running the last 2 miles with 2 of the guys (Matt and Caleb) which proved to be very helpful because the half marathon course was really hard. This half marathon was Mark's hardest by far. It was sunny and quite warm (the sun is so powerful here) the day of the race and there is an awful hill at mile 10, the worst place to have a hill according to Mark.
There were about 20 teachers who signed up which meant that the school provided transportation for us which was a huge perk. It made the morning of the race much less stressful. The three of us got up around 5:30 to walk over to the school by 6:00. Lydia stayed home and slept in until about 7:45 (there is a teacher family with a 5th grader who lives above us and they were on hand to help Lydia if need be). The morning was a bit chilly but as soon as the sun was up long enough it was warm. This race was really well organized. A group called TriFactory ran it and they did a great job. They gave out great swag (athletic race shirt, hat (a very ugly hat but it was still there), drawstring bag, huge medal and cute little wristbands with the distance we were running to wear). I loved that there was a red carpet at the finish line and the whole race had a really fun atmosphere. Jared actually did very little training the months before the race. I was really impressed with how well he did for basically doing a 5K as a walk on. He must get it from Mark. We stayed together for about 2.5 miles and then since I had trained I went ahead for the last half mile. I knew he would be safe and there was no way he was going to get lost by then. We easily met up at the finish line, got our massive medals and then I walked him back to the bus where he stayed and read while waiting for Mark to finish. It worked out great.
We all enjoyed the experience and plan to run it again next year. I think I will stick with the 5K because the 10K has the same hill as the half marathon and I only heard how bad it was. I could just already decide to walk up the hill and not worry about my time which would be fine. I will see how I feel next December and what Jared is up to. I don't feel great about him being alone in that crowd while I keep running. It was a very well attended race, just under 4000 runners. In the weeks before and especially the night before I questioned why I was doing this race. Running is always hard but it has proven to be especially hard here in Egypt. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed that race. It is pretty cool to think that we ran at the Great Giza Pyramids. The biggest disappointment was the fact that you could barely see the pyramids. It was so dusty and hazy that even though we were incredibly close we could barely make them out. By the time we were leaving you could see them better but there were definitely not the best views on race day. It was Jared's first time seeing the pyramids and he was impressed with what he saw. He said the pyramids were bigger than he expected. Soon we will go back and actually tour them.
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