Ran my first race in Morocco!
A lady named Danielle and I decided to run the 1/2 marathon right here in Casablanca. When Danielle (who is from Grandville, MI) and I were talking I asked her if any one was going to run the race and she said no so I decided to run it with her because it is no fun running a race by yourself.
So on Friday we went downtown and picked up our race packets. Now in the US, these things are full of adversitments for running gear, time chip, sports drinks, or energy bars. This packet had our race number, one page pamphlet about the race (in French), a sponge, and a t-shirt. That's it. We didn't get any time chips or any free samples. Bummer. We were a little confused on what time the race started. When we picked up the packet, the lady said the 1/2 started at 8:00am. But in the pamphlet, it said it started at 9:45. So we decided to show up at 8:00 and just run it no matter what. One we had lunch plans we other women and we wanted to get the race over with. The marathon went in two big loops so we thought we would just stop running once we finished one loop, which would be 21 km, or 1/2 marathon.
On Saturday I went over to her house and she made me dinner. Her husband picked me up because their kids were at birthday parties close to my house. I think that kids have birthday parties every weekend. She made a ton of pasta. She also gave me one of her Gatorade packets for the race. Which was really nice of her. When some one gets something from the states you really treasure it, especially food items.
Sunday morning and I'm ready to go. While driving down there I have no idea what to expect. Danielle ran the 10K in Casablanca last year and said it was really unorangized. I didn't even know if they would have a starting line or anything. But I was really surprised when we pulled up to it. It looked just like the Riverbank Run back in Michigan. They had a big starting line, gates to keep people out, some tents were set out, and tables for snacks and water after the race. Now it's about 7:50 and we are about ready to start. There was probably about 200 people running the marathon. We looked around and everyone was really intense. Wearing all the right gear, having water bottles around their waist, and ipods ready. Danielle and I are standing in the back, wearing just cotton t-shirts, not knowing what to do. This guy comes up to us and tells us that we are in the wrong race. He said this was the marathon and the half started at 9:45. We acted like dumb Americans, like usual, and said ok but we are just going to run it now anyways. Then I got the urge to go to the bathroom one more time before we started. Nothing in Morocco starts on time so I thought I would be ok. But when I got out of the port-a-john, everyone was gone! So I ran to where Danielle and I were standing and she was waiting for me yelling at me to hurry up. It was ok, we weren't that far behind the other racers.
So we are running and I'm noticing all the signs are in kilometers. 1 KM, 2 KM... how many kilometers are in 13.1 miles? I didn't know and neither did Danielle. So spent the majority of the race thinking about that. We didn't know if it was 21 km or 24 km. That is a big difference when you're running a race. We ran right past my house and I saw some of my friends who were waiting for a taxi to go to church. Then a little farther Danielle saw her family in their car driving to church as well. It was crazy. They were trying to cross the road but waiting for racers to pass and they honked at us and her husband and kids were all waving at us. So it was really nice for Danielle to see her family. They had water every 5 km but around 15 km they were all out of water bottles. I did see one guy in front of me bend down and pick one up that was laying on the road. I was never that desperate. There was either a policeman or military at every intersection or road. So about every 50 feet stood a person. I would always say merci or thank you and they would say something back to me and I had no idea what they said. But my favorite part of the whole was when I was at km 17 and a man yelled "good job" in english to us. That made my day. Because every one kept saying things but I didn't know what they were saying and here this guy yelled something and I understood it.
So we are getting towards the end of race, only 1 more km to go. As we are running I'm looking around and I don't see any other racers. No one. I'm about ready to die I'm so tired and then all of a sudden a guy just sprints by us. Then a little while later another guy sprints by us. We then looked at each other and just started laughing so hard. We never thought to think that by the time we were finishing running 1/2 marathon, the speedy guys would be finishing a whole marathon. We can now see the finish line and a lot of people have come to watch the finishers. We knew that we couldn't finish the race because only the really fast people were done and they wouldn't let the 1/2 finish. So literally we just stopped running, jumped on the sidewalk, and walked behind the crowd of people cheering. It was really anticlimactic. We just looked at each other and laughed some more. We didn't cross the finish line and nobody cheered for us. Maybe we should have thought of our plan a little more.
But all in all, it was a great experience. I will probably do another in January. About 10 girls are training for that one.
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