Comin’ Out

Sadly, this is not the post for which Martha et al have been waiting. I have been hesitant to disclose to too many people my intentions of running a half marathon. I tend to perform poorly in the face of big expectations (I believe that the element of surprise is critical to being perceived as awesome) and since it’s been pretty much grueling, I didn’t want anyone to know what a quitter I really am. But… surprise! I’m running a half marathon this Saturday. I’m pretty confident that I’ll finish as I successfully ran 12 miles (20K) this last Saturday in preparation.

Training has pretty much eaten my life. Warning, understatement to follow: training for a marathon is hard. I’m sure everyone comes across their own challenges in preparing for a marathon, but when I started to come up with a list, I had so many I decided I needed to organize it for easy reference. The following is ordered by specificity to my situation.

General Challenges
• Your life, for better or worse, is training. This means alcohol, illness, and socializing past 10 pm are not options;
• I’m pretty much ready to end the day by the time I arrive at work; and
• Blisters and smelly workout clothes.

Venda
• Venda is ridonkulously humid. I start running at 5 am – while it is still dark outside – just to finish before it gets so hot I can’t go on. We’re talking temperatures well above 100° F (38° C), but the humidity, oh the humidity;
• Then there are the hills. Lonely Planet describes Venda as an enchanting area of misty mountains. Misty mountains are significantly less enchanting when you’re running through them for hours;
• My housing situation is sort of iffy on the water front. Water only turns on at around 6 am, so there is no way for me to know before I start the day’s run if the water will be put on or not. If it happens to be one of those days when the water doesn’t turn on, I get to simmer in my nasty, nasty sweat until I am able to scrounge up enough water to ‘clean’ myself. This morning, for example, I bathed in an inch and a half of water after a 75 minute run. I will not discuss the color of the run-off or where I found the water. Needless to say, I am a dirty, dirty girl; and
• And then there is the local reaction to the white chick running around their neighborhood for hours. Hordes of school children run after me, pointing and laughing as we go. But it’s not only children. Really, men and women of all ages get a kick out of chasing me through the streets. And I am not what you would call a social runner.

Personal Problems or Why My Skin Hates Me
• I’ve been troubled with various skin conditions that make running less pleasant. The mango allergy evolved into a full blown reaction that covered me from head to toe. I ran in spite of it, which was really nasty because when you run for hours in extreme humidity your surface area seems to liquefy into a sweaty mess… during which time having oozing blisters is less sweet;
• There is this mysterious synthetic material that I have an allergic reaction to when my skin is wet and in contact with it for a prolonged amount of time. I have had the attendant rash thrice: once when I selected a bathing suit poorly – I don’t want to relive that day but consider if you will where bathing suits are snug; second time I was wearing these hipster-sheik pants and I was caught in a downpour; my final experience with this allergy has been while running – every time I run for more than 60 minutes, which is four times a week now, I have a ring around my waste and around my chest where the elastic from my shorts and sports bra collect sweat. Sweet;
• Oh yeah, I got a wicked case of boils… curiously located in my butt dimples… which I once considered cute; and
• One of my feet is bigger than the other and so my right sneaker is too small for that foot. As a result, three of my toes on that foot are bruised, perpetually… perpetually bruised toes.

I am suffering.

In any case, I’ll be running a half marathon in Polokwane on Saturday. Since I’ve come this far, I figure I should try to do a full marathon and at the very least I can always cop out and just do a second half marathon. And what’s the fun of running a full marathon (or an ultra-marathon, if I can manage walking the last 6 miles or 10K) if it isn’t for a good cause… soooo here is my shameless plug:


-----------------------------------------


Less than two months to go until…the Second Annual 2006 Powerade Longtom Ultra & Half Marathon in support of the Kgwale le Mollo Foundation!

Here’s a little background: Two SA11 Peace Corps Volunteers, Alli Howard and Bowen Hsu, established the Kgwale le Mollo Foundation (www.kgwalelemollo.org), which sends a promising Grade 7 student from a poor rural area to 5 years of exceptional high school education at Uplands College in Nelspruit each year. The first scholarship recipient, 12-year old Refilwe Ndimande, was selected from a pool of hundreds of nominated students and is currently enjoying here first year in high school. Each year, Kgwale le Mollo will send a new student to Uplands. Currently, a number of people are helping to raise funds for Kgwale le Mollo from a variety of sources, including corporate sponsorships, individual donations, and the Longtom Marathon. As long as Peace Corps is here, we’d like to make Longtom an annual event.

How it works: Peace Corps volunteers sign up to participate in the Longtom Half Marathon (21 km/13.3 miles), for which they commit themselves to raise $1,000 from friends and family in the United States. The Longtom Marathon (www.longtom.info) will take place on Saturday, April 8th near Lydenburg in Mpumalanga. No one will be chastised for the amount they raise; any contribution is much appreciated so do not let that deter your participation. To those who find the word marathon intimidating, we had plenty of walkers last year so you’re welcome to walk. To those with a screw loose, you may run the Ultra Marathon, which is 58 km. We’ve arranged for a discounted rate to stay at Sabie Backpackers in Sabie. Participants will travel to Sabie on Friday, the 7th (there are direct taxis from Nelspruit and other places TBA). On Saturday, a bus will take us to and from the marathon and in the afternoon we’ll have a braai. Everyone will head back to site on Sunday. The event is a great opportunity to get in shape, socialize with fellow volunteers, break the routine of your lives at site, see another part of the country, and raise funds for a worthwhile and sustainable effort in the KLM Foundation. Hence, little coaxing from my end should be necessary. A number of people have committed to participating, but we’re waiting on more. When you sign up, I’ll send you details on the procedures of fundraising and logistics. Please sign up by March 10th at the latest. Come join us!

-----------------------------------------------

If you’d like the donation form, email me at my tried and tested emailed address or at soniamarathoning@hotmail.com and I’ll get you the form. After the marathon, I’ll let everyone know how much was raised by myself and by other volunteers. I am told the organization, started by Peace Corps Volunteers incidentally, requires $30,000 to send the child through school and won’t enroll one until they have the full amount… so… let’s do this thing! for the children!

Special Props to...

Erich for becoming a pilot! Christie for her big love... of Starfuss etc

Communication

• I think some social scientist needs to investigate the way people from different cultures give directions. In Japan, if I asked for directions, most of the time the person would whip out a piece of paper and draw me a detailed map, including irrelevant details, like bakeries and pachinko parlors blocks out of the way of my route – great if you are not in a hurry. Here, if you ask someone for directions, they will invariably respond “that side” and if you’re lucky, you might get a vague hand gesture that might have more to do with shooing a mosquito away than your inquiry. I’ve actually picked it up as a self-preservation tactic: when people ask me where I live now, I just say ‘that side’ and the person is pretty much fine with that;
• If you are using the word empower as a verb describing an action you are doing to someone else, 99% of the time you are being patronizing. No one has any business nosing around in someone else’s empowerment – that’s the whole point;
• “We are suffering.” I hear this phrase often and in cases where I would not use the word suffering. In point of fact, I do not believe I have heard it used in actual cases of suffering. It’s used almost flippantly. The prevalence of the word ‘empowerment’ in social development circles has probably played a role in the evolution of this phrase into the more politically correct version “we are struggling,” which is a little bit more optimistic, little bit more “empowered”; “we’re struggling” says to me we’re suffering, but we’re trying to do something about it. For example, in response to my perfunctory morning “how are you,” one colleague replied with “we are struggling not so much” today. What a relief.

Special props to my biggest South African supporters, Steve and Caz, for theirconstant support and … unspecified assistance this past holiday season.