Malaysian to brave Sahara marathon for charity!

KLANG: The Marathon des Sables (MdS) begins on Monday (April 9) in the Sahara Desert and a 41-year-old London-based lawyer is creating history by being the first Malaysian woman to participate in it.

Datin Sue Ding will run 250km in the six-day marathon to raise funds for two charities.

Ding, 41, hopes to raise RM250,000 for Make-A-Wish-Malaysia (MAWM) and Malaysian Dogs Deserve Better (MDDB).

MAWM grants the wishes of children with critical illnesses whilst MDDB rescues, rehabilitates and re-homes street dogs.

As part of her preparation to run in the desert, Ding had had several sessions in a heat chamber to get used to the high temperatures of the Sahara.

"I went into a proper heat chamber with a treadmill at the Kingston University which has a sports unit for sports studies," said Ding.

Ding added she had had five sessions in the chamber, each session being hotter than the previous one.

"It went up from 37 degrees with no humidity in the first session to 42 degrees with 50% humidity during the last session," she explained.

Ding added that she continued her MdS training in spite of suffering a stress fracture in right foot after participating in the Tokyo Marathon in February.

She had said if the fracture had not healed on time, she would have participated in the MdS even if it meant walking the whole 250kms.

MDDB director Ivy Liew said the rescue group’s members were touched and overwhelmed by Ding’s gesture.

"No one has undertaken something as challenging as this to raise funds for us in the nine years we have been around," said Liew.

Liew added she hoped Ding will be able to successfully raise the RM250,000 for both MAWM and MDDB through her crowd-funding page at https://www.simplygiving.com/appeal/sueding

To leave Ding, whose bib number is 784, a word of encouragement, please drop a message at: http://www.marathondessables.com/en/marathon-des-sables-maroc/write-to-a-racer