Sports has a way of making an impact on individuals, whether it is done as a team or individually. We all have our personal goals and desires we wish we could achieve, and that desire drives us to work towards them. SJ’s virtual team relay helped many participants accomplish completing a marathon which created a great buzz.
On Mother’s Day, Sunday 14th March, SJ participated in the 2021 Virtual Relay London Marathon organised by the British Airways Athletics Club (BAAC). This was Stanmore Jafferys’ first ever virtual team relay event with 26 troupes taking on the challenge of completing a distance of 26.2 miles. The beauty was to run or walk just 1 mile each in a relay format (one after another). The willpower to complete the mile and hand over the virtual baton to the next runner led each one to do their best.
Though the relay was virtual, the atmosphere set in the morning was electrifying. All participants ready and raring to go counting down from an hour before the event started. It felt like we were with each other in person. Each participant cheering on the runner with the baton, the motivation and banter drove us to success. SJ completed the entire marathon in just over 6 hours which beat our anticipated time by over an hour!
What better way to empower women and show them what they can achieve than these 26 participants being able to now say that we completed a marathon, and recognise it as a considerable achievement, it was no walk in the park, (pun intended!).
To conclude, this event wouldn’t have been possible without the Team Manager Sabiha Chagpar and the running coordinators Sakina Sidik, Kayla Black and Taranam Khaku. Our gratitude goes out to them for their hard work, dedication and motivation. Thank you to all the ladies who participated and made the event a smooth success, you rock! I will leave you with a quote to ponder on, “A marathon is an event where everyone is equal and ordinary at the start line but a legend in born at the finish line.”
Abraar Mamdani
