Kilimanjaro Marathon 2012

The pathetic start of the 5K portion of the Kilimanjaro Marathon just happened to be my first race ever. I was so excited anyway in the crowd of people. No one really knew what was going on. People were going out ahead of the others, but then the singers would move them back. At the time of the start (45 minutes late) the singers and the person in charge of the start just gave up. Yousuf and I were good participants and started right behind the "banner" and did not cut corners.

The end for the 5K was sort of pathetic as well, but I comforted myself with a fast time 32 minutes (was it really 5K?) and the knowledge that I had run the last 1K straight uphill. I have been completely unable to repeat that time, but maybe the excitement of the moment helped.

My running buddy Yousuf. He was kind to me and clearly could have gone faster except that I couldn't. For the uphill last 1K, I said go go go. And he did. I credit myself with getting him to enter even with only having practiced for 3 days, and he was just fine! Thanks for keeping me going Yousuf. We waited for the 1/2 marathoners to come in and especially to see John, Charles and Jan. It is hard to express the excitement that we all felt.

While we waited the first wheelchair entry arrived.

Unbelievably the first full marathoner came in ahead of our boys!

Charles hardly looked winded coming through the big finish sign.

John was not too winded. He said that he had kept a steady pace and finished in 2hr. 5-6 minutes.

John explained that Zuli, a really nice guy from Tanga, had helped him the most. As with all things, the organization of both the 5 and 21K were a bit chagalabagala. There was no effort to have the runners placed ahead of the walkers and that made the start awkward at best. For me, it was a constant effort to find a hole through which to run in the beginning, and then even later when the faster runners suddenly stopped and started walking. I almost crashed into two groups when I was paying more attention to moving than to what was in front of me. Poor John said it took about 5 minutes just to get out of the college gate because of the walkers and then he had to zig zag for about 1 kilometer to get space to run. That meant that he was already using more energy than he needed. And he met the same situation particularly on the way up. People who had set off too fast and suddenly stopped or started walking. He even found a man unconscious by the side of the road and, worried that it was Charles, stopped to take his pulse and shake him a little to make sure he was ok. When he saw that it wasn't Charles and saw women coming with water, he moved on. So, his time probably would even have been better if things had been a bit more orderly.

Jan was just a few minutes ahead of John.

We were pretty proud of one another. (AHHH)

Friends together--Greg ran with his son Nikoli and Niko's friend Omar. Nikoli could have easily done the half as he is really fast, but you are not allowed to enter until your bones are stronger at age 16.

The MEPI team was a bit bigger than this, but hongera sana to all of them who ran. (especially my girls Harriet and Lucy) We headed home to get cleaned up and take a break. Harriet came over to drag Charles back to the stadium (not much dragging involved)

We all hope to participate next year.