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With the athletes gathering in the UAE for Friday mornings’ 6th edition of the RAK Half Marathon, now clearly one of the fastest half marathons in history, the question to ask this year is not “Will the races be fast again?”, but “How fast will they run?”.
In RAK this year, both men’s and women’s elite fields are strong enough to justify optimism once again of, at the least, two fast and highly competitive contests on Friday morning, and at best perhaps more record breaking runs.
Favourite perhaps amongst the men is the champion of last year’s Boston and New York Marathons, Geoffrey Mutai. The 30 year old, fresh from a comfortable 82 second winning margin in a preparatory run (63:53) in the San Blas Half Marathon on February 5th, is rumoured to have picked up well at his Kapng’tuny training camp following a two week break post Big Apple last November.
Keitany starts as favourite on Friday, aiming for something around 67 minutes but with the London Marathon in late April as her main objective, she too hopes to secure Olympic team selection at the full 42.2km distance; RAK therefore is a vital indicator of form with 9 weeks to go.
The truth will out early this Friday morning with the starter’s gun sending the field of almost 3,000 off shortly after sunrise.
PAST WINNERS IN THE RAK HALF MARATHON
| 2007 | Sammy Wanjiru (KEN) | 58:53 WR | Birhan Adere (ETH) | 1:10:58 |
| 2008 | Patrick Makau (KEN) | 59:35 | Salina Kosgei (KEN) | 1:12:29 |
| 2009 | Patrick Makau (KEN) | 58:52 | Dire Tune (ETH) | 1:07:18 |
| 2010 | Geoffrey Mutai (KEN) | 59:43 | Elvan Abeylegesse (TUR) | 1:07:07 |
| 2011 | Deriba Merga (ETH) | 59:25 | Mary Keitany (KEN) | 1:05:50 WR |
Read More: premiermarathons.com
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