Marathon Weekend! All continent time

The night before marathon. Double Rainbow...good omen

This week is the week of weeks.  The Kilimanjaro Marathon has occurred for the past 11 years.  It is an all continents marathon so those insane people who love to run marathons, come here to complete the continent tour.  It is probably helpful to the Kenyans that we are so close, as they always win.  The Marathon is an amazing weekend.  People are arriving in our small town by Friday, and wandering around, mostly confused, but when you are in a small town, confusion is not so bad, because everyone is willing to help for a few shillings.  For those of us who are living here, we stay out of town as much as possible.  But, we register, and we love it.

This year's marathon was great because John was feeling his fitness, and thankfully his knees held up.  Our sweet neighbors turned out, and Matt who is one or two or 20 years younger than John ran as well and they had been training together.  He ran half marathon race in 1 hr. 26 min (I think)  very fast for sure.  His adorable children and wife were there to cheer him on.  John ran in 2 hr. 2 minutes (2nd best for him) and I ran the 5K in 30 min.  We were all happy.  You have to understand that these races involve a lot of uphill /up mountain runs.  For the half marathoners, they run the first 10.5 entirely up the Kilimanjaro mountain on the Mweka side.  It is so bad that almost all of them declare in the first 1 Km that they cannot do it.  What makes them consider to keep going is unknown to me since the 5 K route is mostly just prevent a trample from the other 3,000 of your best friends.

We finish with the beautiful Kilimanjaro mountain behind us

John waiting for his time

ACTG, beware....John and Agnes rock!!!

Greg, John Jan Trish Bob Matt and a few kids

Mat, Jess and their very cute kids!

5 K end and some Moshi CAB folks...yea

Double rainbow was really last night but who cares!

Showing my fitness at the end!  Ha ha.  but it felt great.

So the good times were indeed great! Another year past.  I mostly was so proud of my 19 CAB members who did the 5K.  Most of them had not thought about this before and yet they all did it.  I have this picture of some of them.  What a wonderful weekend. 

All 19 participated, but I could only find 11 to get together (my fault!)