Nyeri Half Marathon

On Saturday, roughly 80 kids from here at Tumaini competed in a road race only 4 kilometers from here in the town of Nyeri. About 20 of us competed in the half marathon (21k), and the other 60 competed in a 3k children’s race.

I won’t go too far into the details of the mess that was registering for the race. Theoretically, the kids who were entered should have known that they were entered, because the ones who were entered were the ones who had told Coach Titus that they wanted to race. But just the same, the night before the race, there was a sea of chaos outside our door with every kid 12 years old and younger wanting to know if their name was on our printout of entrants. One little 9-year-old, Edwin, literally jumped 3 feet in the air in excitement when I told him he was racing. It was one of the most unashamed expressions of joy that I have ever seen, and it was incredibly cute. (The whole scene with the kids wondering whether they were entered actually made me somewhat sad, because I think a large factor in it was that many of them are so used to being let down that they hardly even dare to hope for someone to follow through on their promises any more, let alone to expect it.)

So, to the race... The race was supposed to start at 8:00 AM, and Titus had warned us that "Kenyans are not very punctual, so it might start late. Maybe at 10 minutes after 8." I don't know if we mis-heard him, and he actually said "maybe at 10", or if he was just way off! Indeed, the race was supposed to start at 8:00, but apparently that meant the race organizers started setting up for the race at 8:00.

So, after we had gathered 80 kids at the front gate of the home at 6:45 in the morning and walked them into town to arrive at 7:30 for check-in, we just had to sit and wait til about 8:30, when people came and started putting putting up signs from the sponsors and everything. At 9:30, we finally were able to start checking in and picking up our t-shirts. At 10:00, with about half the kids checked in, they ran out of t-shirts and race numbers. While someone was going to find extra shirts and numbers, we heard a buzz that the 3k race was about to start. Titus went to ask them to please not start the race until everyone had been given their number, and succeeded. (As an aside, Titus is awesome. I don't know what we would ever do without him. He is also, I think, the best coach I have ever met in any sport. He is a very well-integrated person and is excellent with the kids, striking a healthy balance of strictness and gentleness, of being their advocate and a disciplinarian.)

Eventually, at 10:45, the 21k race started. Titus told me that the course was "not too hilly", but this was a statement that I had heard from him before and have since learned to regard as utterly meaningless. Had we started at 8:00, we would have had nice cool running weather, but as it was, we had a blazing sun that made the 80-degree air feel much hotter than it was. Anyway, these are my excuses for my very ugly time of 1:33 - almost 6 minutes slower than I did in my only other half marathon 4 years ago. (For those of you who are curious about how my running is improving, I'll say that I was pretty disappointed at first at the apparent lack of improvement in spite of all the training, but after thinking about how much hillier and hotter this was than my other race, it's almost impossible to compare the two.)

Some of the other 21k runners from Tumaini did really well! Jonathan wasn't able to race because of Achilles tendon pain, but Karicho improved his time by 11 minutes from 6 weeks ago on a much flatter, cooler course in Nairobi, from 1:35 to 1:24. And Ewoi improved his time from 1:30 in Nairobi to 1:20 here. Believe it or not, Emilee finished at almost the exact same time as Ewoi! Unfortunately, this was because she and Ruth, the Tumaini girl she was running with, missed a poorly marked turn and cut about 6 kilometers out of the course =). After seeing the race organization, I can't say I'm surprised about this - I actually missed the same turn and ran about about a minute extra, and wouldn't have even known to turn back if I hadn't seen several others also backtracking.

Now, the funny thing about running in a race in Kenya is this: I'm not a great runner, but I'm faster than most people I see running in the USA. If I enter a race, I would say I usually finish in the top 20 percentile or so. Here, not so AT ALL! I finished in position number 167. Karicho (9 minutes faster than me) was number 157. Ewoi (13 minutes faster) was number 133. I finished right as they were starting the awards ceremony. I doubt there were more than 20 people who finished behind me. That means I was roughly in the bottom 10 percentile. And this wasn't a national championship or anything - it was the Nyeri Half Marathon - maybe the equivalent of the Menlo Park Turkey Trot.

Another highlight for the Tumaini / Hope Runs people was that in the kids' 3k race, 12-year-old James Lukine took second place. (He actually got nipped out as he slowed down crossing the finish line and otherwise would have won - a good lesson.) I was surprised that he was the top runner, because there were two other Tumaini kids who I thought were faster, but they finished in 10th and 15th places, respectively. But I should have known better, because Lukine more than anyone else here has one of those strides that is just poetry in motion - absolutely beautiful to watch!

A couple other things that I found interesting during the race were: 1) The road was not closed to traffic, meaning that you had to watch out for matatus travelling way too fast and deal with the occasional lungful of unfiltered diesel exhaust (I have since concluded that the organizers' decision to not close the road to traffic had to do with the fact that most runners here are assumed to be able to run at the same speed as traffic.) 2) Without a single exception, every time that I came up from behind a male racer and began to overtake him, he would look and see that it was a white guy and put in a little kick to get ahead of me again - he would repeat this until he would either start walking or slow to a crawl of a run and I would go by him for good. 3) Catherine N'Dereba, the former world record holder in the marathon, was there watching and handing out awards. Titus went to primary school with her and knows her quite well, so he introduced both Jonathan and Emilee to her, though I missed meeting her. Jonathan and Emilee said she was very nice.

After the race, the whole Tumaini herd walked back home. Em and I crashed on the sofas for the rest of the afternoon, Jonathan did some work, and the kids went into the dining hall and watched Rambo 4 or something like that.

Well, this was a long post, and if you made it this far, then thanks for reading!