Nope, I didn’t come up with that name…that’s the name of the race that Jessica, Ashley and I ran on Saturday, along with a thousand or two other people in downtown Barranquilla. Since therace took place at 4:30 in the afternoon and none of the three of us have run longer than the rare 30 minute stint since we’ve been here, well, I was slightly worried we’d be having a mortal experience similar to the title of one of my favorite Hemingway novels. However, winter favored us and the sky clouded over and it rained just an hour before the race and then cleared up. Which meant that the streets were full of puddles and we splashed like duckies for the majority of the race, but it was also a doable temperature!
It started and ended at a park near Ashley’s house, replete with a giant, balloon covered arch to run through at the end, as well as water stations giving out bags of water throughout the race, and carts selling beer at the end. Gotta love Colombia!
We ran slowly, talked the whole way through, and luxuriated in the ability to run through the streets (they stopped traffic for the race) instead of circling the same one block radius over and over. (Here, due to the incredibly uneven sidewalks as well as safety issues, running entails going to a “park” to run, aka circling a single block—on the pavement—where there’s a small park and some playground equipment, and in my case, a truly hilarious jazzercise class with ridiculous American music mashups including “It’s Raining Men” and Celine Dion). Meanwhile groups of women cheered us on for being women and running together, which was pretty awesome.
Anyway, just to sum it all up, to quote the ever-appropriate but always cheesy MasterCard commercial…
Race Fee(Including awesome yellow shirt andwaterbottle)… 30 mil pesos
Bagged water during the race…Free
Mariachi bands to cheer us on...Free (almost priceless, not quite)
Raspao (shaved ice with passion fruit juice and condensed milk topping) post-race…1 mil pesos
Running for 10K with friends while supporting Barranquilla’s Red Cross organization….Priceless!
A before shot
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