Reggae (Half) Marathon

To continue with the trend of an exciting few weeks, I finished out this week with a half marathon on Saturday. It’s something that I had been thinking about doing since I got here and heard about it in March, something I decided on doing early in the summer, and something I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull off. But despite a few ups and downs in my training, and with the help of a few good friends, I successfully ran 13.1 miles on Saturday!

The race itself was really cool – especially the start. Since it gets so hot in Jamaica (yes, even in December), the race started at 5:15 in the morning so that most people could be finished before it got too hot in the late morning. The sun doesn’t even come up until 6:15/6:30, so the first hour or so was spent running in the dark. The whole theme of the race was Reggae/ Rasta culture, and so there were drummers at the starting line, and the road was lined with torches for the first half mile or so. It gave the start of the run a really cool atmosphere, and it helped that it was almost a full moon, with bright stars and no clouds. It’s hard to describe exactly what it was like running with almost 1,000 people in the dark, and all I can really say is that it was really, really cool. And even after the sun came up, they had reggae playing at different points along the course to keep us all going. Luckily we finished before it got too hot out – there were some people still running at 11 and I have no idea how they managed. And they had fresh coconuts, bananas, Red Stripe and other goodies for us at the finish line that definitely helped ease the pain of the 13 miles. There were also a handful of PCVs who volunteered to hand out water, and they were pretty well spaced out along the course, which really helped. It’s amazing how much a friendly face (or, in this case 5) can to do boost your morale when you’re running for 2+ hours.

There was also a pasta party the night before and an after party the night of the race, so it was an eventful and exhausting weekend. Sadly, the headliner for the after party (reggae star Etana) double booked herself and didn’t actually end up performing, but there were a bunch of volunteers who went and we all still managed to have a good time anyway.

A few people have already been asking me if I’m going to run it again, or if I’m going to be upgrading to a full marathon anytime soon. My first reaction to that has so far been “Jesus, can’t I wait until my legs don’t feel like bricks before I think about running again?!” But next year is the 10^th anniversary of the Reggae Marathon, and so I think it would be cool to run it again. However, I don’t think I’ll be running the full marathon. I do understand why it’s appealing, but honestly, the idea of running for 4+ hours is just not something that interests me in the least.

Oh, my time? 2 hours, 25 minutes. My friend Jess and I ran together the whole time (sorry, Alicia!) and we were able to finish before any of the full marathoners did, and out of about 400 people who finished the half (men and women), we came in at about 215 and 216. Not too shabby, huh?

Jess and I approaching the finish line (I only look happy because of the endorphins...)

We did it! (Thanks to Emily for the pictures!)