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Flight Centre Active take Dubai by storm

"Hey i've got a great idea, let's all do a marathon in the desert - It'll be so much fun!". Err... You can only imagine the looks on everyone's faces in the office.

“Hey i’ve got a great idea, let’s all do a marathon in the desert – It’ll be so much fun!”. Err… You can only imagine the looks on everyone’s faces in the office.

Needless to say that on the 22nd of January, Flight Centre Active Travel had their biggest participation ever in the Dubai Standard Chartered Marathon with over 50 Flight Centre Travel Group staff running across a mix of the 42.2, 10 and 4km races in the searing heat.

The Flight Centre party in Dubai was hosted by Rob Flint (Head of Global Corporate) and Andrew Boxall (Executive General Manager UAE) with Ironman Tod Horton (Global Business Leader, Healthwise Global & Flight Centre Active Travel) leading the charge from the front.

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Rob Flint & Tod Horton

 “It was an incredible effort in definitely some challenging conditions that pushed us all to the limit, so it was a truly awesome achievement by everyone to finish”.

Tod Horton, Global Business Leader, Healthwise Global & Flight Centre Active Travel

With the Dubai event ranked second in the world behind only the London Marathon in terms of elite field and finishing times, this year’s race again showcased the city to a global audience of hundreds of millions with viewers watching live across the world. The race itself started and finished opposite the Madinat Jumeirah in the shadow of the iconic Burj Al Arab.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Ethiopian athletes again dominated the world’s richest distance race in plus 30 degree heat as Tesfaye Abera and TIrfi Tsegaye struck gold in a men and women’s 1-2-3 finish.

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Tesfaye Abera & TIrfi Tsegaye (Ethiopia) Male and female Race Winners.

The event also officially kicked off the famous annual Flight Centre Group Global 12 week challenge, which this year is the companies biggest ever turn out. The event has this year extended to suppliers too with Delta, Air France, KLM and Alitalia in Canada all jumping on-board to transform their lives.

3,000 staff from all over the world in total are taking up the mind, body and soul challenge in a race for personal and physical improvement over the 12 week period.

The competition criteria includes submitting before and after photos with measurements taken and a ‘transformational’ letter from a loved one as part of the entry process and will be judged by Skroo Turner with the Healthwise team in April.

The individual winner will take home AUD$3k cash with the winning team collecting AUD$2k.

Would you be crazy enough to run a race in Dubai? Share your thoughts below.