Sahara Marathon 2008 – February 25th – 8th edition – 42km Marathon, 21km,10km, 5km – with AIMS childrens race, like 2007

The Sahara Marathon is an international sport event to demonstrate solidarity with the saharawi people and this year reached its eighth edition.
Run by the saharawi sport committee and organized by volunteers from all over the world, the Sahara Marathon, which along with the standard-distance marathon also includes the shorter distances of 21km, 10km and 5km and a race for children, is aimed at promoting sport activity among young saharawis and financing a humanitarian program, which this year will be the completion of the sports centre and the building of a workshop for recycled materials.

Close to Tindouf, within the Algerian territory, at a very short distance from Western Sahara and Mauritania, there is a border zone which has been home to 200,000 sharawi refugees for more than 30 years.
Each refugee camp is a “wilaya”, that is a little town, which bears the name of the corresponding abandoned Western Sahara city.

In Dakhla the sand creates majestic dunes, but most part of the surrounding area is “hammada”, that is a place whose climate is always extremely cold or extremely hot.
If you take a walk around the refugee camp, you will never feel alone, meeting people, children wanting to know your nationality or asking for candies, people stopping to talk to you and others who will just say hello without even stopping; most people will offer you some tea, the mark of hospitality for saharawi people.
It would be polite to take at least three cups. The first one tastes bitter as life, the second is sweet as love while the third is soft as death.

You came from a distant place for a very important reason, to promote more awareness of the health and food needs of Western Sahara children.
This event is much more than a sismple race.

The route symbolically connects the three refugee camps of Smara, Auserd and ElAyoun, and leads runners through a desert which has been the home of refugees for 30 years.
Thanks to your effort and your concern for this issue, you have reawakened their hope, giving them the feeling of not being alone.

But what is more important is that, as you decided to go there, they can now count on new friends all their lives.

Sahara Marathon

AIMS Children's series 2007 – and the race is repeated in 2008

The 2007 series again began with Children's races at the Sahara Marathon, on 26 February.
Held in conjunction with the Sahara Marathon for the second year, the Children's race was again a great success, even though controlling 1000 highly enthusiastic boys and girls is very difficult writes Mattia Durli. There were three races, of 300m, 500m and 800m, depending on the age of the children. T-shirts were distributed before and medals after the races, along with a small present for each runner.