Running Wild - Lewa Marathon

Here I am, waiting near the start line.


Everyone is gathering for the start.


This was like 5 minutes after I finished. It is surprising how much color is gone from my face (compare to pre-race picture). About a minute after this picture was taken I thought that I was going to faint. Luckily the race has a free "recovery tent" so instead of passing out I got a free leg rub down.

Lewa Marathon, with the motto "Running Wild," has been rated by Runner's World as "one of the top ten races to run in your life." - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewa_marathon). I have been running very regularly for a past couple of months, with my longest run being 16 miles, which I ran last Tuesday. With this in mind I told my friend Carly, who was also running the race, that there was a one percent chance that I would attempt the full marathon, leaving a 99 percent chance that I would stop after the half. About half a kilometer from the 13.1 mile mark there was a junction, with the finishers of the half heading left and those brave souls attempting the full marathon turning right. As I approached the sign, I reaffirmed that doing the half was the correct decision and that I was not ready to complete the full marathon. Somehow though, I found my legs carrying me down the path on the right. Actually, I think that I went right because the person that I was running next to ran to the right, so I figured, what the hell, if he can do it, so can I.

So away I went, down the path less taken - 850 runners did the half and less than 150 did the full. The same man that I had been running along side looked over at me after we were 3 km down the path and said, "this is going to be tough." I ended up passing him, and when I came up to the next person in front of me he said, "If you can smile, if you can talk, if you can sing, then you can continue running," which was better fuel for me and became my mantra for the rest of the run.

The race is awesome, each half is a lap through a wildlife conservancy north of Mount Kenya. For the entire second lap I only passed or was passed by 3 runners. The only other people that I saw where wildlife rangers (protecting us from lions, hyenas, and rhinos), and the volunteers manning aid stations every 2.5 km.

I was able to smile, talk, and sing until about the 20 mile mark, and from there on out the race was a little rough on my body. I finished though, and, in the words of Carly (the other volunteer running the race), "we didn't get eaten by a lion, not even munched on a little bit"