Sunday, August 10, 2008

Coban 1/2 Marathon


I know, I know. It’s been a long time since I’ve posted a blog. Mia Culpa. It’s not that I haven’t been doing anything. Really it’s that I’ve been doing a lot of things. So how do I get you all caught up? I think I’ll stick with one topic at a time. As my faithful readers know I am somewhere between an “avid runner” and a “retired competitive 1500m runner”. This spring I came out of retirement to run a ½ marathon in Coban. Coban is a city in the center of the country, a bit more tropical than Tejutla and a ½ marathon is a bit over 13 miles. I had been invited to run in the ½ marathon by Fito, the brother of the mom of my host family (my host uncle). He’s a doctor in Guatemala City. His wife is from Coban and they have family and a house up there. Another brother, Rolando, was also going to run. Having 13-miles hanging over my head was good motivation to get out of bed and run in the morning or to get a quick run in after work over the past few months. I ended up going up there with my friend Amy. We got in Saturday and the race was Sunday. After getting my number and t-shirt we went over the family’s house. The brothers were going to go out and get Churasco (BBQ Beef) for dinner. Coach Stanforth would never have allowed us to have Churasco the night before a race so Amy and I headed off looking for Pasta. After about an hour of wandering around town we ended up at nice little Churasco place. O’well. There were huge crowds and lots of festivities associated with the race. Even fireworks. A few gringos, but mostly Guatemalans. The race had about 3000 registered competitors and another 1000 or so who just ran. There were also a dozen runners from Kenya. It was pretty crowded at the beginning, but after the first couple of miles it cleared up a bit. The course was out and back so our cheering section was able to root us on at a couple of points (in Spanish of course). I ran 1:40:10 which is about 7:37 per mile. All things considered I was happy with that time. Not sure if I’ll be running it next year, but it’s always fun to get back in some semblance of “shape”. If I’m doing my math right, this marks the 10th country that I’ve raced in and the first in Latin America.