My First Maratón

Loud music blared out of the nearby speakers. A slow clap started amongst the large crowd. When the time finally came, a batch of fireworks shot off into the sky and echoed throughout the city. The crazy scene of a fútbol game? A hopping boliche (nightclub) during the wee hours of the night? Some sort of political protest? Try 10am on Sunday morning at the starting line of a local 8K road race.

When my host brother Pablo suggested I run in the UCEMA 8K maratón (the word they use for all races here, regardless of the distance) with him, I didn’t really know what to expect. With another big race, being the same weekend in another part of town, I suppose I pictured a low key event that you might be able to find in dozens of cities across the US every weekend, considering that running has only really gained large popularity here in Buenos Aires in the past 3 to 5 years.

Even though there was only about 1800 runners registered for the race, UCEMA and the race organizers didn’t hold anything back. Dozens of sponsors had their tents set up near the start line, a full stage was erected, the music was pumping, and they even had people santizing the porta-potties after each use!

While the race was lacking the creative costumes that you’ll often see at road races in the U.S., the atmosphere was more than lively, with the crowd counting down the time on the starting clock until the gun…or rather, fireworks, went off. A cheer rang out and the runners slowly started filing through the huge inflated arc that you would think would be more fitting for a major marathon than the normal 8K. Since we had positioned ourselves someway in the middle of the crowd, about a minute and forty seconds later, I wished Pablo good luck, crossed the start line and started my first international racing experience!

Weaving in and out of the other competitors for the first 2K, I finally was able to get some space and find a more consistent rhythem. With the temperature climbing into the mid 70s and it being very sunny, I was both surprised and relieved to find that volunteers were handing out full bottles of water at the halfway point rather than just cups. It seemed a little excessive-but as had been the theme of the day-all stops were being pulled out for this race. While things got a little bit more uncomfortable during the last quarter part of the race as they usually do, I made it to the grandiose finishline and timed in at 30:26, a time I could definitely live with.

With my host family believing that I am a semi-professional runner in the U.S., I was anxious to see if my final placing would justify their thinking. Having told them in one of the first weeks that I run for Georgetown’s club cross country and track team, which is a step below the  NCAA varsity level, they took that as semi-professional,  an understandable mistake, seeing as most universities here don’t have varsity sports, let alone club sports. I’ve just kind of rolled with it-and when the results came out and they saw that I finished 22^nd overall, they were thrilled. Apparently the legend lives on.

Anybody who’s close to me already knows that running is a big part of my life, so it should come as on surprise that that’s carried over to the southern hemisphere as well. Therefore this post could go on forever, but for the sake of time and space, I’ll just touch on a few more interesting points on running here in bullet form:

-Hardly anybody runs on the streets/sidewalks here. With most of the sreets bustling all hours of the day, its hard to find a run where you won’t be interrupted numerous times by busy crossings. Lots of people run in the parks though. I live next to a large circular park with a mile circumfrance and every evening there’s probably a couple hundred people going round. I more often than not opt for the sidestreets and chance to explore the city that come with them.

-In regards to races, one of the biggest draws here is the free t-shirt. Race fees are usually pretty comparable to back in the States, mine was a little under $15USD, but the shirts are a lot nicer. Instead of your normal cotton t-shirt they are the “high-tec” polyester wicking shirts that a lot of the athletic companies make. The UCEMA shirt was from Puma. With the imported athletic ware being relatively expensive for the average Argentine, you can run a race and get a shirt for cheaper than just buying one. Some people just pick up the t-shirt and don’t run. The other thing is that almost everybody wears the race’s t-shirt during the race rather than opting for their own favorite shirt on race day.

-Unlike my time teaching English in rural Mexico a few summer’s ago, dogs don’t give runners problems here. There’s lots of them throughout the city without leashes, and a good number of strays but the vast majority are well behaved. I even had one dog get up and run with me for about the last mile of my run all the way back to our house. It waited at lights with me, fell behind once and had to make its own way across a few streets on its own. I rewarded it with some cold water back at the house but unfortunately one run was enough, as he was nowhere to be found come the next run.

-If you run in the rain here you are loco. I went out one rainy night and went to the local park I described earlier. The hundreds of runners were nowhere to be seen-only one elderly man slowly jogging in the opposite direction. Each time we passed each other we shouted a few words of encouragement over the steady patter of the rain and poked fun at the others for staying inside.

With that I must be going, as its time for my run!