Official 2018 Dubai Marathon Discussion Thread

tmw? What are you, a teenage girl?

I am guessing that was just one of his normal spelling/grammatical errors and it just happened to turn out to be a standard teenage girl text abbreviation.

Alamirew 2:04:57

Disappointing there are no elite Americans in the race, especially Galen Rupp who would run a super fast time (2:03-2:04) on the Dubai course

omg so excited like smh can't wait

Galen? I can’t remember, is he the 4th or 5th fastest non-African in the world right now?

C'mon, Rupp is slow but he has to run better than 2:04 for a half...

Live stream official site

http://www.dubaimarathon.org/standard-chartered-dubai-marathon-2018-live/

Cheers

Interesting to see Negesse back and no one mentioning (remembering ?) that he was involved in the meldonium scandal at the beginning of 2016. It's uncertain whether he was suspended or not though...

IAAF Report with Elite Fields. https://www.iaaf.org/news/preview/dubai-marathon-2018-tola-degefa1

Do we get to have a poll on odds of Flotrack buying the stream at the last minute?

Hey, isn't Tamirat Tola running Boston as well? If that is the case, he might not be fully energized. Rupp's changes go up a little.

Rupp just keeps getting faster, doesn't he? Pretty remarkable, for a 2:09 guy. Just think how fast he will have run when he's telling stories in his 50s!

Scorpion_runner wrote:

Hey, isn't Tamirat Tola running Boston as well? If that is the case, he might not be fully energized. Rupp's changes go up a little.

You don't think an elite marathoner can double back in 3 months and whoop up on a 2:09 guy? LOL

This is Dubai, so that tells us two things

A. The winning time will be 2:04:xx

B. The winner will be some random Ethopian, and probably not the defending champion.

With that, my bet is Alamirew. His debut is either going to be huge or a massive flop, but I'm going to be optimistic here, he's run 12:48, showing that he has massive talent. However jumping straight from then 10k to the marathon without ever running a half before is strange and worrying.

Prediction

1. Alamirew 2:04:23

2. Geremew 2:04:49

3. Tola 2:05:20

The women's race might be even more loaded than the men's.

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2018/01/2018-dubai-marathon-womens-preview/

The women’s race in Dubai this year race boasts two sub-2:20 women and a total of six who have run under 2:23 including Worknesh Degefa, who won here in her debut a year ago, three-time champion Aselefech Mergia (2:19:31 pb), and 2015 world champ/2016 Olympic medalist Mare Dibaba (2:19:31). The field also boasts super talented debutantes Gelete Burka (10k silver at 2015 Worlds) and 22-year old Senbere Teferi (5k silver at 2015 Worlds, 14:29 pb) as well as 67:26 half marathoner Netsanet Gudeta (bronze at 2015 World XC, 2:29 in her debut marathon). I guess we shouldn't leave out Jordan Hasay slayer Dera Dida, 21, who has only one half marathon result to her name (68:06 in Houston last year) but in that race, she ran 34 seconds faster than Jordan Hasay (who was also making her half debut and who wound up being pretty good at the marathon).

[

Curious why doesn't the race doesn't attract other than Ethiopians?

On the Boards wrote:

[

Curious why doesn't the race doesn't attract other than Ethiopians?

I've wondered the same. Only theory I have is that Ethiopia picks Worlds and Olympic teams based on times, and Dubai is always guaranteed to be fast.

Of course this is a non-championship year, but maybe this selection factor has something to do with the race generally becoming popular among Ethiopians but not Kenyans?

I predict Tola will repeat.