On Sunday, September 26th, I ran in the Accra International Marathon in Accra, Ghana. As new volunteers, my friend Jeremy and I had heard about this marathon and talked about doing it. This April, our friend Colleen put together training info and we started our training in May. Through the heat of hot season (think mid-90's to 110/115 daily) and the down pour of rainy season, we trained with this day in mind.
Jeremy and I decided to go to Accra a bit early while everyone ele came into town on the Saturday before the race. When we arrived in Accra, we were thrown by the language (English!) and the fact that the YMCA hostel really was only for young men; I spent the first two mights of our trip hiding, sneaking in and out of the hostel so that the other "young men" wouldn't see me. We explored the city - which is enormous - discovering the following: in fact there is not a zoo in Accra, but there is a large prayer forest that is home to previous zoo animals and their respective enclosed habitats, a journey to which our taxi driver accompanied us; the markets in Africa tend to all be the same, but the Accra market was far and away the most overwhelming market I have ever been in; Accra is so huge, it is necessary as a tourist to take a taxi most everywhere, and they are not cheap; there are more ice cream shops, Chinese and Indian restaurants and cell phone companies per capita than any other city I have ever been to; and surprisingly, there were almost no motorcycles, although the drivers were just as scary.
By the time our friends arrived in Accra, we were almost experts on the area of Osu. In addition to the Mali volunteers, were joined at our hostel by volunteers from Ghana and Togo. PC/Ghana had ten runners, as did PC/Togo, a mixture of marathoners and half-marathoners. Our group was made up of 4 marathoners, 2 half-marathoners, and a large group of "rowdy spectators." As we prepped for the race the night before, Gloria and Chris prepped their own bags with water sachets, bananas, power gels, cameras and extra clothes for the runners. the runners prepped with a dinner of pizza, pasta, and ice cream.
The night before the marathon, I was anxious and didn't really get much sleep, but the next morning as we took our "before" photos and loaded the bus that was to take us to the starting line, I began to feel less sleepy and more excited. Wishing Ali and Josh, our half-marathon runners good luck, we dropped the 200 or so half runners at their starting line. After what felt like much more than 13 miles, we disembarked the bus and got assembled at the start line. An hour late and 3 false starts later, the gun finally went off and the race began.
I am known for starting too fast, so I was careful to go out at a steady pace. Through out the whole race, I felt pretty good, and at about mile 6 I began to pass a few people here and there. Of course, the problem of passing other runners on a poorly labeled course, is that they were your markers and now you become lost much more easily. Many times I wondered where I was going, and where I was leading the people running behind me, and just when I was sure I had gone the wrong way, I would see someone in the orange shirt we were given running ahead of me.
In this manner, I made my way through the run, passing a huge group of our friends hanging at a beach bar around mile 16 and later, Chris and Gloria at mile 20-something passing out water, bananas, and GU. Before I knew it, I was passing more milage signs, although they were not really marked so all I knew was that I was putting more miles behind me. Around what I think was mile 24, I hit my wall. My legs got tired, and my mantra of "this doesn't hurt, you're not tired, you're almost there," turned into something much more obscene and much less optimistic. It was around mile 25 that another volunteer caught up to me, a woman that I had thought was way ahead of me. After struggling to keep up for a bit, she passed me by, and just behind her was a Ghanaian woman. I watched them ahead of me, both in bright green shirt, waiting to see when they stopped running, thinking it had to be close.
Finally after running for far too long through traffic and smog, with random people telling me to "try hard, run fast," telling me the other runners went that way, I came to the turn off, to mile 26. I was able to pick it up a little bit, finish in good form, and crossing the finish line, I felt strong. It wasn't until I was lead to the race tables that I realized that those two women were the only other two ahead of me, and that there had only been 10 people total ahead of me.
I met up with Ali and Josh, both of whom finished their half strong, and we waited for the other Mali marathoners. Soon enough, Colleen, Kat and Jeremy came into view, and we watched them cross the line. Although we were hot, sweaty, sunburned and blistered, we all made it. After all of our training, all the sore muscles and dehydration through training, the early mornings of waking up before the sun, the nights we turned in early while others stayed up, the ways we sacrificed our bodies and our sanity, we all finally made it.
I am so proud of us all, proud to say that I did it. While I set a new personal record and placed for the first time, I am more proud of the time I put into training and the fact that I ran it all. I was also really proud to say that I was part of such a supportive and determined team of runners and spectators. And of course, not an hour after crossing the finish line, we were discussing the rumor of another marathon in January...
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