Yours truly, along with thousands of others, was a participant. It was a brilliant time, so glad we went! The atmosphere was fantastic.
5 of us met at Meridian Hotel and walked up to the Pyramids. When we got into the pyramids area, we were herded into buses and transported to the start line which was behind the pyramids in the area where you get to see the publicity shots of pyramids standing majestically isolated in a desert as opposed to plonk in the middle of a busy area of the city.
Some 'typically Egyptian' bits - they were waiting for the road between the pyramids and the start up on the plateau to clear of traffic - didn't seem to dawn on anyone that you actually have to stop all the coaches from coming along the road!
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| Thousands of people stretching from well behind me right round to the finish line. |
Also, the route fell apart a bit near the end - it wasn't clear which way to go! But kudos to the organisers overall, we all had our t-shirts (white for most, pink for survivors, blue for workers), and at the end, you handed over your food voucher and got handed a bag containing water, 'juice', a small bag of chipsies and a small individual pizza.
The tourists on the coaches seemed a little bemused but a lot of them started waving and smiling when they clicked what was going on.
There were thousands of Egyptian women there, and we were also very pleasantly surprised at the number of Egyptian men who turned out to run the event - no reason why we should be given that Egyptian men have wives, mothers, sisters all subject to breast cancer (and of course men can get it too - I did see one guy in a 'survivors' pink t shirt.
Anyway, we did our mile in about 30 minutes walking like most of the rest of the people. One of our group did in fact run and it took her about 10 minutes being buffetted by crowds and buses!
It was a great day out and was good for me because I was ill and confined to barracks for nearly 2 months. This was my first decent bit of exercise since August!
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