Runners in a marathon on Sunday sponsored by Standard Chartered Bank are set to cross Taipei following a new route, the first of its kind in marathon events in Taipei, the organizers said yesterday.
Instead of starting off in front of Taipei City Hall and running west, which is normally the case for marathons held in the capital, the race will head in the opposite direction, setting off from the plaza in front of the Presidential Office Building and heading east for the first 5km, the Chinese Taipei Road Running Association said.
“It will be an exciting route,” association president Tsao Erh-chung (曹爾忠) said.
Tsao said the competitors would cross a few bridges before arriving at the Keelung River (基隆河) in the northern part of the city. The marathon will finish at Dazhi Bridge (大直橋), which crosses the river.
Besides a full marathon, there are also other races, including a half marathon, an 8.5km race and a family-friendly 1km race.
Favorites to win the men’s marathon include Abraham Kioprotich of France and Moses Kiptoo Kurgat of Kenya, whose personal bests are 2 hours, 8 minutes, 33 seconds and 2:08:40 respectively.
The winners of the men’s and women’s marathons are to receive NT$200,000.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
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