The Accra International Marathon

After I bid farewell to Maridee and Lani- they were headed for a cheap night’s sleep before their departure for Cape Coast, I pulled out a small piece of scrap paper. On it, I had written numbers and names of connections in Ghana, the most valuable being “the guy Mike” as Joel likes to refer to him. A friend of the marathon race director, Mike is an American living in Ghana who had graciously agreed to put Joel and I up for a couple of nights. I gave him a call, and within minutes I was settling in to a high class apartment in the lush district of Accra.

I couldn’t believe how I was welcomed with a key and instructions to make myself at home. Mike was great company. I middle aged former PCV and also regular marathoner. We exchanged stories about Peace Corps for a while, and I turned in to bed early, in my very own guest room complete with air conditioning. Livin the life.

The next morning, I made friends with the 8 Peace Corps volunteers from Ghana who were registering alongside me the morning before the race. It almost felt like home again, getting all in the running mode. Except for the fact that it took me four hours to get my teeshirt- we’re still in Africa.

They showed me around town and even invited me to the country director’s house for a pre-race pasta dinner. That night, Mike’s guests went from 1 to 5 nomadic Peace Corps volunteers- he seemed to be having a great time though. Alone here on a year long project with NGO consulting, now he had a house full of Peace Corps kids, and was as laid back as you can get.

I had a bit trouble falling asleep because of excitement, and managed to get in 3 or 4 hours total before our alarm went off at 2:30 a.m. We had called a taxi to pick us up and bring us to the shuttle, which would get us to the start plenty of time before the 5:30 gun time. It’s Africa, may I remind you, the marathon actually started at 6:45.

My plan was to start out around 8:40 pace, but that completely went out the window. I ran the first 7 miles with a PCV from Ghana, Serena at about an 8:15 pace. Then I wiped out and after that I was on a mission. I was hitting some good mile times in the middle there, trying to draft off of people as much as I could. We ran with a terrible head wind in our faces for the entire race (it was all in one direction on the coast of the ocean). But drafting off of Africans is difficult. Most of the ones back with me were guys in decent shape but very confused on how to pace themselves. We’d be going 7:15 pace one minute and 9:00 pace the next.

The course was terrible- in mid morning traffic in down-town Accra. They didn’t clear the roads, so I was dodging crazy taxi drivers and breathing in smog. And after the thing spead out, there were many times when I was all alone, wondering if I was still going the right way. Support was pretty good though, enough water-stations, bananas and whatnot. But the Ghanians running the stations half expected me to stop and take an order like I was at McDonalds. I got the hand of yelling “Juice Jucie!” or “Water! Water!” from 20 meters away to get them prepared. I was once handed an entire carton liter of orange juice, what the heck? And took a water cup that always had water in it before, dumped it over my head only to find out it was apple juice.

I definitely slowed down the last 5 miles, but I felt surpisingly good the whole way through. And I got good at yelling “Move! Move!” When I city bus would be letting out a crowd of Ghanaias right in front of my path. I placed 5th among women (1st white girl!) in 3:47. Not bad for a first timer. I’m sure the time could have been faster under better weather and race conditions, but I was happy. I like the marathon, and will most definitely be running more of them (in the states!). My new friends were pretty impressed, as was Mike who left us a feast of lunch meats, pitas, fruit, junk food and drinks back at the apartment. Oh yeah, and I won the equivalent of $100!