Amathunta Half Marathon
23rd November 2008

Amathunta Half Marathon        

I decided to attempt the third staging of the, what turned out to be, a low key Amathunta Half Marathon event in the Ancient Kingdom of Amathus, Cyprus. The weather was surprisingly torrential rain the day earlier and television forecasters predicted heavy rain country wide all weekend. On waking up early on race day, no rain clouds were thankfully spotted, although unfortunately the south-westerly wind conditions were horrendous. On arrival to the unmanned car park, the location of the start was unclear and ironically the Cypriot policeman at the event did not even know. I nonetheless, managed to exchange some race information with fellow running colleagues I already knew as the race organisers appeared indistinguishable from other people. Once the race commenced at 9.01am, we faced the very strong wind and it was nothing I had experienced in UK races. This inevitably slowed some runners down and once we turned around the wind was noticeably behind us. Not to my liking, the race comprised of two laps and the first lap we ran past the starting location and it felt somewhat demotivating to know this. The wind was still extremely strong on the second lap until we turned around again to come back and run easterly to the finish location. I decided to take the event as a training run since the prospect of a personal best was diminished along with the continued recovery of a right calf injury. This race is clearly in its early days since the organisation needs to be improved and runners’ safety needs to be seriously readdressed. Running along a dual carriageway on Cypriot roads on the best of days and being driven past by polluted buses, cars and motorbikes in a foreign city was truly not safe! The white souvenir t-shirt and solid finisher's medal was at least some consolation to this experience.

Adam Hills

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