Dubai, UAE - While the talk is all about Gebrselassie’s record bid in the men’s competition, the elite women at tomorrow’s Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon (Fri 16) are going to do it the old-fashioned way, that’s to say they’re going to have a race!

Berhane Adere won the $250,000 prize last year, winning in 2:22:42. She is favourite again, the more so since her colleague, 2007 winner, and Berlin ‘08 second placer (2:21:31), Askale Magarska has a stress fracture. But another colleague, Bezunesh Bekele clocked 2:23:09 in her debut here last year, and Helena Kiprop of Kenya is a 2:25:01 marathoner.

But Adere has caught the pacing bug. She admits that Paula Radcliffe's World record of 2:15:25 is out of reach for her, "too fast, too high," she says.

Nevertheless she wants to go sub-2.20, and has asked to be taken through the half in 1:10, then, “run 1:09, maybe 1:08, something to push.”

Back to the men’s race, and the organisers are pulling out all the stops, to ensure that Haile Gebrselassie gets all the assistance he needs in his quest for a new World record.

Gebrselassie, 35 and his pacemakers – who are aiming for 2:56 kilometre splits, ie a 61:40 ‘half’ - will be preceded by a giant digital screen on a flatbed truck, with running time, split kilometre times, average kilometre times, and projected half and full marathon times.

The screen - almost four metres square - is the big brother of something that marathon buff, Sean Hartnett has been developing over the past two or three years.

Hartnett, whose day-job as geography professor at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire often takes a back-seat to his hobby, explains. “The idea is to bring the marathon up to speed with the track, where we get lap times and kilometre splits onscreen straightaway. In marathons, we still use a timing car, same as back in the 1970s.”

“I was in the lead vehicle last year, and we could see that Haile and the pacers were going too fast, but we couldn’t communicate it to them.”
 
“I’ve been working on something with the Chicago Marathon for two years, first it was a white-board with kilometre splits time, and last year, we had a small digital screen with the kilometre split, the average split, and the projected ‘half’. But it worked for Evans Cheruiyot, he took off at 38k, because he said he could see the pace going way over 2:06 (he won Chicago ’08 in 2:06:25).”

“Typically for Dubai, this is way over the top, but we’re bringing marathon timing into the 21st century”.

And if it works, Gebrselassie, who has suggested that he is capable of 2:03:30 here (his record in 2:30:59), will take the record towards the 22nd century.

Pat Butcher for the IAAF