I ran half of a marathon

No, not a half marathon, half of a marathon. And it came about in a bit of an odd way.

Things here in Burkina Faso aren’t like things in the US (duh) but here it’s common to not know something is happening until the day before or the day of an event. Luckily, I found out about this event a week in advance mainly because I happened to be in the capitol city and saw the flyers plastered everywhere. Apparently Coris Bank decided to celebrate themselves for a week and would finish off the festivities with a marathon that started at 6AM and would lead runners to all of the Coris Bank branches in Ouaga. Since I am already training for a marathon (May) and I was going to be in the city the weekend of the marathon I sat down with my running buddy (David)and asked, “Do you want to run a marathon next Sunday?” To which he replied, “Absolutely!”

And with that, our brilliant plan was born. With David who had run a 100km race and myself who had never run further than 10 miles we thought it would be a pretty awesome idea. So, we looked up important things like, how much to hydrate (a fair amount), what to eat the night before (pasta is good), and whether it was a good idea to take laxatives before the race so we didn’t have to go mid-race (it’s not). But with a week left to go before our marathon debut we were feeling confident, successful, and that the only thing left to do was actually run the race which was more of a formality anyway. 

About 24 hours after our premature feeling of triumph we decided that running a full marathon was not a good idea and that the risk of hurting ourselves was just too high at that point in time. So we decided to run half which is really the perfect amount. Not too far that you get tired, but enough so that you feel accomplished. With the total amount of running that we had to do divided by two, we were back to feeling good.

The next week was a whirlwind of training that involved a lot of running, a fair amount of abs, quite a few push-ups, and not a small amount of biking. The hardest part was putting together a playlist and figuring out where the marathon started (we thought we had a pretty solid idea).

Finally the day before our event came and we celebrated by making some awesome lasagna, garlic bread, and salad. Over the course of this we met another volunteer, Zach, who actually is a runner and when he figured out we were carbo-loading he asked what it was for and once he heard we were running 13.1 miles he immediately said, “I’m in.” Add to this a fourth volunteer who, when we heard what we were doing, promptly saved all of our lives by volunteering to bike alongside us with water, homemade granola bars (we made those), our wallets, and cell phones. Pat was the man of the hour.

At 4:45AM the next morning we were up, dressed, and trying to make sure that we would not have any digestive trouble over the next few hours. Since neither David nor myself knew how long this was going to take or even where we were going we didn’t want any unexpected surprises. At 4:50AM we were outside climbing into a cab with our two new members to the team, and at 5:20 we were pulling up to a Bank of Africa and telling the cab driver, “This isn’t Coris Bank.” We made it eventually though and we registered, went to the bathroom one more time and were ready to go at 6AM on the dot.

However, the race was not ready to go and we hung around making jokes, listening to music, and looking at other people’s running shoes (Nike Frees, boat shoes, tevas, and flip flops). Eventually around 6:40 someone fired the gun and we were off!

All of the Burkinabe promptly took off like a group of collective bats out of hell. And while the seasoned runner on our team took off as well, we had expected that. Finally David and I had been passed by nearly everyone and we were holding at the end of the pack. The logic of this move was that everyone else would tire out after a mile or two and when they did we would slowly and steadily start kicking some butt. And as we pressed on we occasionally passed people who would promptly start sprinting to pass us again. We did start a system of passing people on either side and once we passed them David and I would double high five, a move we called the “Eiffel tower”.

So, the race kept on, we kept Eiffel towering, the sun kept climbing, the playlist kept playing, and… “Wait, was that an aid station?” Pat, David and I were all visibly floored by the presence of water, bananas, oranges, and sponges along with a sign that said congratulations you’ve gone 5km! Well splendid, we quickly found out that we did not need all the water we had bought nor the granola bars. But Pat stayed with us anyway.

Not long after this, a pair of policemen on a motorcycle came up to us and said, “You’re going to want to speed up a little.” We thought we had been doing a pretty good job. We were moving at a comfortable pace, we were passing people, and people had been cheering for us as we ran by; yet, here were these two police officers saying “get your butts in gear.” With a brief look behind us to confirm that we could not see any runners behind us (they had either slowed way down and started walking or dropped out already) we sped up and tried to run down the next guy.

As time went on we ran on main roads, and police officers were there stopping traffic. We often ran by giving them high-fives, cheering at intersections, and motivating the runners we passed. Though something about being passed by two white guys who couldn’t stop cheering “Whoooooooo” at intersections and high-fiving must have been so demoralizing because everybody we passed ended up quitting. We were having a lot of fun though.

Finally we ended up hitting 13.1 miles after an hour and 45 minutes. Zach was already waiting for us but David and I had surpassed our goal time and were feeling awesome that we had actually run half of a marathon.

We then went and played in the annual softball tournament to nicely round out the day.

The marathon in May will probably be a lot hotter but, it’s only what we did plus an extra 13.1 miles. Game on.