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Singapore Marathon: Sir Ran Ran For Sir Run Run
It was a wager with his brother
2003-12-05
There used to be a famous Singaporean movie mogul named Sir Run Run Shaw. Had he been alive and filming when Sir Ranulph Fiennes ran the Singapore leg of his seven marathons in seven days on seven continents a month ago, we might have had the timeless headline, Sir Ran Ran For Sir Run Run.Nonsense aside, this was the marathon that caused Sir Ran the most problems, given the humidity. Its the official Singapore Marathon on Sunday, and even though the marathon begins in the dark at 6am, by the time the elite runners finish, men before 08.30am, women before nine, the temperature has climbed to high 20s centigrade, with over 95% humidity.
Kevin Allen has a lot of time in hand though. Londoner Allen is attempting a similar challenge to Sir Ranulph, but instead of seven days, Allen is about to enter the Guinness Book of records by smashing the cumulative time taken for him to run seven marathons on seven continents in a year. Another Brit, Tim Rogers holds the record, at 34hrs 23min 08sec. But Allen, who has run in Egypt, Antarctica, London, Vancouver, Argentina and Sydney has accumulated 20hrs 22min 03sec so far. Which leaves him over 14 hours to run Singapore. Since hes been averaging around 3hr 20mins for the previous six, there would have to be a disaster on Sunday for him to fail.
It was a wager with his brother, after Allen ran his first marathon, in London 2002 that resulted in this assault on Guinness. His worst moment was when he encountered an aggressive fur seal in the Antarctica event. "I was in the lead, and saw this fur seal bang in the middle of the course. I stopped and the guy in second place caught me up and said, un straight past it. For a moment my heart was in my mouth".
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