A sucess ten months in the making.

If you've followed this here blog of mine or have spoken me with me since I left the States almost a year ago, you know that I trained for the Kigali Peace Marathon for essentially the duration of my one year fellowship.  I wrote a post back in January titled "Why I Run", so I won't bog this one down with the back-story of why I chose to start training.  But I did run, and I did finish.  So I figure I should at least close the door on that part of my year before I jet back to DC.

I originally had planned to run the full 26 mile marathon, mostly because I am hard-headed.  Somewhere around when my mother and aunt visited in February and I didn't run once in two weeks, I started to see that sticking steadfastly to that goal was going to result in me being really disappointed in myself.  So I cut it down to the half-marathon, confirmed with Alex that he wouldn't think I was an utter failure for "only" running 13 miles, and finished my training.  Originally scheduled to visit in April for my birthday, Alex had to re-plan his trip because of work and we set his new arrival date one day before the half marathon.  I made him promise he would run it with me.  

About 18 hours after he stepped off the plane, Alex and I were dressed and ready to head down to the national stadium for the start of the race.  The stadium itself was a bit of a mad house - not only were they running the full and half-marathons simultaneously, but they were also doing a relay marathon and a kids 5k fun run.  I wish I have pictures of some of the unintentionally hilarious getups some people ran in.  I vividly remember one woman in running shorts and a cheerleading top.  Who knows where she found that.

At about 8:45 am (really late, in marathon start times), encouraged on by some inexplicable European techno music, we were off.  I was so nervous I was ready to puke.  What if I didn't finish?  What if I'd trained this whole time only to fail on game day?  Thankfully, I wasn't the only one who was nervous.  Poor Alex quickly realized just what he'd gotten himself into.  I'm not trying to sound like a hero here, but running in Kigali is hard.  It's really hard.  In addition to being at a mile altitude, the whole city is nothing but up and down.  Even the "flat" parts are really just low-grade hills.

By the time we were making our way down the first big hill and into the first loop, the male marathon pack leaders were already circling back on their way to the second half of the loop.  They were insane.  A group of about 20 almost scary-skinny men just pounding the pavement, none of them blinking an eye.  A few minutes later, we passed the women's marathon (only about 6 of them) coming back from their first half of the loop.  Just as intense, just as focused.

As we made our way along the course, there were lots of images that will stick with me for a long time.  The man with only one leg who did the half-marathon on crutches and who stayed in front of Alex and me the entire time.  The blind man who ran the entire marathon with help from friends who lead him through the course.  The smile on an older woman's face as she handed me a banana from the sidelines.  The other man with one leg, a member of the national cycling team, who kept pace with the women's marathon runners to make sure the road was clear for them.  Stopping to help the man who fainted from heat exhaustion right in front of us.  The two women with babies on their backs who ran beside me up a hill I had almost walked instead.  The goosebumps I felt on my arm when people cheered us through the end of our first loop through the stadium and I pictured the almost 12,000 refugees who lived inside its walls during the genocide in 1994.

The phrase "a story for the kids" was something I said several times during our 2 hour and 45 minute half-marathon.  Alex was really my hero.  It got hot and we got tired and it was really one of the hardest things I've ever done.  But the old guy and I pushed through and we finished.  Exhausted, but finished.  It was a great feeling.  One day, I'll do a full marathon in someplace very flat and very mild.  We're planning on running the Charlottesville 10K in October just to get back into the swing of things.


I can't wait to hit the streets of DC in new kicks, with new tunes, and new-found sense of confidence.  Hell, if I can survive 13 miles at 5,000 feet and equatorial sun, I can surely survive whatever the District throws my way.