15K, Guatemala style

After a bit of a blogging hiatus I am not sure anyone is still reading this (not even my mom), but now that my computer has recovered from a disastrous run-in with chai tea, I thought I'd get back to it. So enjoy if you are still out there reading.

One thing I never thought about when I was considering joining Peace Corps was how it would affect my fitness and ability to exercise. Working out (if that’s what you could call my minimal exercise routine) was a part of life that I took for granted and probably complained too much about in the US. I never really considered a situation where getting exercise would be difficult, until I started thinking about possible Peace Corps sites. What if it was too mountainous? No gym? I can’t run alone as a woman, what if I have no one to run with? Etc.

When site assignment came I got very lucky. I happened to be placed in a site where running is very popular, and I have site mates who also like to run. Our town even has its own annual 15k that the WHOLE town comes out to either watch or run. The race is the 19th of September, and some friends and I had been training for it with great anticipation.

When the big day came, we all met at my house to finish our shirts and go down to the buses together. True to Guatemalan style, we were late, but the problem with the hora chapin, is that you never know who is going to follow it and who is going to be on time. Apparently the women’s bus to the starting line 15K away was not on hora chapin. We missed it. The race organizers took pity on us and announced that the men (who were to start 15 min after the women) should let us get on their bus first. However when the bus passed us, it was full inside and out. I was not about to climb on top of an old school bus and risk my life for 15k just to run some race.

Luckily some guys from the Tigo phone company were headed in that direction and offered us a ride. About 15 of us piled into their suburban, and I ended up on Laura’s lap with my head out the sunroof. When we arrived at the start and unfolded ourselves from the car, we were all cramped and some a bit nauseous. Not the perfect start to a race, but we had no time to worry about it as we jogged to the starting line where the women were already lined up.

Now in my concept of a race start, all the runners start behind the line and wait for the gun to go off to start running. Apparently things are a little different here. The women kept inching forward and were not inclined to wait for the last bus of runners to arrive. So all of the sudden off we went. I am still not sure if there was any kind of countdown, but it was run or be trampled, so I ran. A minute later I heard what sounded like a herd of elephants behind me. Apparently the race officiators were no more successful in holding back the men than the women, and I was soon overtaken by a tidal wave of runners. The last bus never made it to the starting line, and the men on that bus just joined in a few km up the road. In fact, people joined in at all points, some even passed me as passengers on motorcycles and then got off a few km from the finish. The front-runners were monitored by a race committee, but for everyone else there seemed to be no rules or shame.

Along the route people handed out bags of water (yea that’s how we do it here) and fruit. Cars stopped on the side of the road and people came out of their house to cheer. Running through a community I work in, all the school kids came out and yelled “Lidia, Lidia!” which gave me just enough animo to walk briskly up the 2 km of straight-up mountain before reaching Patzún. Entering Patzún the streets were lined with people and it was fun to greet the people I knew. By the time I reached the finish-line formalities had been dispensed with, and there was a huge group of people obstructing the actual finish, so I had to weave my way to victory.

Upon proudly finishing my first 15K, my site mate, who has a wrist watch that measures distance (woah!) kindly informed me that it was really only 14.6 km. But this is Guatemala, what can you expect. Plus my t-shirt says 15K, and that’s good enough for me.