Seifeldin Fawzy, Co-Founder &amp; COO Of The TriFactory was NileFM's Guest On "The Big Drive" with Zeinab and Sami and he told us all about the upcoming&nbsp;Pyramids Half Marathon.&nbsp;
Can you give us an introduction about yourself and what The TriFactory is all about?
I&rsquo;m the co-founder of The TriFactory, and for those who don&rsquo;t know, The Tri Factory is Egypt&rsquo;s leading organizer of endurance sports events and mass participation sports events.
The sports events world is split into two, events that you watch, like if you go to a football match or a basketball match, and events that you take part in, which is what we do. Like the races, the triathlons, and the running events, including the Pyramids Half Marathon.&nbsp;
Your biggest annual event is the Pyramids Half Marathon, can you tell us more about that?
this is something we&rsquo;ve been building for years now, since 2019. It actually started as the Pyramids Marathon&mdash;a full marathon, 42 kilometers.&nbsp;
And then we brought it down to a half marathon. I think that was a huge step in its advancement. It really kicked off after we did that in 2020. We were a little bit unlucky, of course. The second edition was in February 2020, and then COVID hit.&nbsp;The event took a bit of a hit, but it has rebounded really strongly.
We are building something fantastic a race at the Great Pyramids of Giza. There are three different distances: 21K, 10K, or 5K. This year, we have a record number of participants six and a half thousand.
When you had the dream of this particular marathon how did you turn it into a reality?
I have to give credit to our partner, Mahmoud Abdel-Hakim, because he dreamt up this&nbsp;idea. He pushed us all to do it.&nbsp;
From day one,&nbsp;the idea was to have a global-level event at the Pyramids, and when we had that dream,&nbsp;we started off with a marathon, and then we brought it down to a half marathon.
What that has done is that it made this race accessible. It made this race something that's&nbsp;on the global calendar now, and it made it something that has the potential to grow into&nbsp;the future as, you know, a major half marathon in the world, one of the biggest and one of&nbsp;the best.&nbsp;
We had a vision&nbsp;for it at the beginning. What we have today correlates with that vision, and it's moving&nbsp;in the right trajectory. As I said, a record number of participants this year, a record&nbsp;number of nationalities as well taking part.&nbsp;
What we're seeing is that more and more&nbsp;people from across the world are asking about this race. "How can we come? How can we take&nbsp;part?" And more and more people right here in Egypt are taking part. And that just gives&nbsp;us so much encouragement that we're on the right path.&nbsp;
You mentioned there are over 6,000 participants. We wanted to know&nbsp;how many nationalities are participating this year?&nbsp;
More than 80.&nbsp;which is really impressive, honestly, because it really shows how multicultural this race is.&nbsp;&nbsp;
We're very proud, I mean, the number one nationality by far is Egypt, and we see&nbsp;so many of the best Egyptian runners take part in this race of all ages and abilities.
We have runners as old as 80, and we also have runners that are as young as eight years&nbsp;old. So we have everyone across the board.
We have runners who have never&nbsp;taken part in a race ever, and this is their first race and they come and they do something&nbsp;that they've never done before, and we have people who don't miss a race and they don't&nbsp;miss the Pyramids Half Marathon. The idea is that we bring everyone together in a&nbsp;very family-friendly and very positive environment.
Yes, that competitive&nbsp;element is there. Yes, the Pyramids Half Marathon is certified by AIMS, which is the&nbsp;Association of International Marathons and Distance Races, which is a really big deal.&nbsp;
So, yes, it has that competitive element, everyone is timed, and you get a timing chip&nbsp;on your race number that gives you your exact time down to the millisecond, but the other element that's there is that we have the three distances.&nbsp;
Someone&nbsp;who's kind of a bit more advanced can take part, someone who's less advanced can take part, and people&nbsp;can take part together. We have a lot of corporate companies that come together.
Can you tell us about your role during the marathon?
I hold the mic and I cheer everyone on, which is a really&nbsp;special part of the job because it's really great to see the emotions on people's faces.
Either first-timers or veteran runners or whatever their story might&nbsp;be, and everyone kind of gets a very special finish line moment.
I mean, they have that sense of achievement, and then they earn their medals.
At the awards ceremony, I kind of cheer every single person on and recognize their achievements, because it's hard to win a race like this, the amount of training and the sacrifice you make, I can only imagine.&nbsp;
You don't win just by training for a race like this, and you deserve a special&nbsp;cheer at the finish line.&nbsp;
This year marks the sixth edition of the marathon. How does this one differ from the previous ones?&nbsp;
Well, in the world of marathons, what you're trying to do is we're trying to kind&nbsp;of build on the success of each one.&nbsp;
It's not a brand-new thing where you're&nbsp;coming up with something completely different. So we're building on the success of the previous&nbsp;editions. This one has grown almost 50 percent in size, so people can expect a much bigger scale.&nbsp;
For the first time, every single runner will have their name on their&nbsp;running bib, which again goes back to cheering people on and having that&nbsp;feeling of personalization.&nbsp;We have a major partnership with Puma and we have major athletes coming from abroad.
What makes the Pyramids half marathon special compared to other marathons?
The Pyramids and I know that this sounds very obvious.&nbsp;
We see the Pyramids maybe every day here in Egypt and so on, but we have&nbsp;thousands of runners from abroad, and for them, seeing the Great Pyramids of Giza, the last remaining&nbsp;ancient wonder of the world is an insane experience.&nbsp;
This is something that's legit, and not only to see them but to run around them&nbsp;and to experience them in that way, completely pedestrianized roads,&nbsp;no cars on the road.&nbsp;
I'm just trying to think, if I'm someone who's not from Egypt&nbsp;and I'm coming to Egypt specifically to run through history,&nbsp;that in itself is a life-changing experience, I can see someone kind of like running and thinking&nbsp;how many people previous to this, thousands and thousands of years ago&nbsp;were in the same place that I am at this moment.&nbsp;
Even if you are not from abroad and you are Egyptian,&nbsp;that is still an experience that you're not going to get every day.&nbsp;You're going to be running somewhere that very few people&nbsp;have gotten the opportunity to run in before, and you're going to get a view of the pyramids that you don't get&nbsp;as a normal visitor.&nbsp;You're going to be surrounded and supported by 6,000 other people&nbsp;on the exact same journey as you.&nbsp;
What kind of feedback have you had from participants over the years? And how do they describe their experience?
We have around 80 runners who haven't missed an event.&nbsp;They haven't missed a Pyramids Half Marathon.
They haven't missed the Pyramids Half Marathon since 2019.&nbsp;So those guys are super, super special.&nbsp;
We're doing something special for them this year as well, and we have, a couple hundred&nbsp;who have done four out of the five past editions.&nbsp;So they've just missed one for whatever reason.&nbsp;
So we have a lot of regulars and the feedback from them,&nbsp;obviously, is great and it's very constructive&nbsp;because these are our hardcore kind of runners&nbsp;who are great supporters of what we do,&nbsp;but will also give us constructive feedback
And we're always very receptive to hearing what people are saying, and at the same time, the feedback that we're getting&nbsp;from people who have come in from abroad&nbsp;and it's the first time they experienced the Pyramids in this way,&nbsp;that's super special, it keeps us wanting to make this race bigger every single year.&nbsp;
The Pyramids Half Marathon is part of the Race Through History series.&nbsp;What does that mean exactly?
At the very beginning,&nbsp;the Pyramids Half Marathon was just the Pyramids Half Marathon, and Race Through History was the slogan.&nbsp;
But with time, that has really grown and developed&nbsp;into a kind of something much bigger, and we now have another race that's underneath that same umbrella, which is the Saqqara Pyramid race, and that takes place on the 21st of February.&nbsp;
what we're trying to do is to really showcase Egypt's amazing historical monuments&nbsp;and cultural heritage in a positive way through sports&nbsp;and specifically through running, and the Race Through History series is what that is.
With time and in the years to come,&nbsp;we hope to add more and more races under that slogan&nbsp;and build it into a complete series all year long, not just two races per year.&nbsp;
How can people participate in the&nbsp;Pyramids Half Marathon?
It is officially sold out, and the reason is that we have a record number of participants, like I said,&nbsp;and we've gotten everything prepared for them,&nbsp;the race numbers with their timing chips,&nbsp;the t-shirts, special race t-shirts that have come in from abroad.&nbsp;And it's a whole thing to get all of the packs prepared in advance.&nbsp;
Is there a way for people to just come as spectators?&nbsp;
Yes.&nbsp;Spectator tickets are open and anyone can get them on <a href="https://www.thetrifactory.com/">thetrifactory.com</a>,&nbsp;which is our website.&nbsp;And we really encourage spectators to come,&nbsp;friends and family and even anyone who just wants to have a good time.&nbsp;
We have lots of F&amp;B vendors, awesome food and coffee, and everything.&nbsp;
It's an awesome morning at the pyramids, the last remaining wonder of the ancient world.
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