Marathon Day

How (not) to prepare for the big race…

It’s 2am – four and a half hours to the start of the Kilimanjaro Marathon – and predictably, I am lying awake in bed with pre-race nerves. 42.2km is sounding like an awfully long way, and I’m wondering what on earth I’ve got myself into. This is not helped by the barking of a nearby dog every few minutes in the otherwise peaceful surroundings of Honey Badger Lodge, our home away from home in the town of Moshi, Tanzania, in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

3am, and just as I’m drifting off, suddenly – BOOM! – World War Three has started. Or that’s what it sounds like, as a huge thunderstorm starts with a big bang right over our heads, closely followed by the sound of torrential downpour. It seems the rains have come early. Oh dear. My nerves about the race start to get worse….

5.15am. We’re all at the breakfast table slugging multiple cups of coffee, munching bananas, and trying to transform ourselves into awake, alert, ready-for-action human beings. There’s about 20 of us – Eddie, Allys, Helen and I (“the Kenyans”), plus our comrades from VSO Tanzania, including Ishwar, the team captain, and Jéan, the VSO Tanzania Country Director, both also running the full marathon. The others are running the half marathon or 5km fun run.

5.45am, and Jéan informs us that, thanks to the torrential rain during the night, our specially-booked bus due to take us to the race start 5km away is in fact stuck in the mud halfway down the dirt track between the lodge and the main road. And so we find ourselves wading through the claggy mud in our running kit, in the pitch black, to find our bus and attempt to push it out of the mud. Our efforts are half-hearted, hampered by slippery mud, the angle of the bus, and our collective semi-consciousness.

6am, half an hour to race start, and it’s time for some VSO ‘flexibility and adaptability’. We leave the bus stuck in its rut and walk to the main road, and as the sun begins to rise, a group of ragged, mud-drenched mzungus in running kit manage to flag down an early morning dala dala (what we call matatus in Kenya) and, disturbing the sleepy quiet of the early commuters, pile in and set off towards Moshi town centre…

6.15am. It becomes clear that the dala dala driver has no idea where “Moshi stadium” is, and our chances of reaching the start of the race in time are starting to look seriously dubious. We’re all shouting at once: “Left! No it’s right! Wait, do we recognise this road? Just keep going!”. Thankfully, we begin to see mzungus in running kit emerging through the murky morning light, and we manage to follow them to the stadium. We arrive to find that, predictably, it’s fairly chaotic and the start of the race is pushed back to 7am anyway. Typical.

7am and we’re off!



Eddie and I try to ignore the macho-competitive taunts of the more experienced Jéan and Ishwar and try to follow the wise advice “go slower than you think you should for the first half”. Mixed success, as it’s all just quite exciting and distracting. Eddie reaches a new record for high-fiving innocent by-standers, rousing them from a strangely African, impassive, silent kind of support. It seems the whole town of Moshi is lining the roads, eager to enjoy the spectacle of high quality Tanzanian and Kenyan runners, mixed with crazy mzungus, as we circle the town centre. Local kids are constantly waving at us, running alongside, returning our greetings: “Poa”, they say in response to our “Mambo” (“cool” in response to “how’s things?”).

I’m feeling much better after a brief loo-stop down a dark back-alley (narrowly avoiding a ‘Paula’ moment), an energy gel and swigs of rehydration salts in water. We’re feeling good – it’s tough, but we’re nearing the half-marathon point and we’re pretty much bang on time for a 4 hour marathon. Not that we’re counting. We’re just trying to finish, but you know how it is. The weather’s also on our side – last night’s thunderstorm has brought down the temperature and humidity, and the burning hot sun is nicely covered by thick cloud.

It turns out the Kilimanjaro area is a bit…mountainous

And then we hit it. I hit “the wall” at the same time that we turn a corner and are faced with The Hill. We shouldn’t have been surprised. Eddie had found out about the course online, and we knew the third quarter of our race involved a steady uphill climb. But after running 22km, we’d convinced ourselves that the course had been changed to something much more sensible and flat. Alas, no. We looked up to see a seemingly-endless, winding hill up towards the mountainous slopes of Kilimanjaro, hidden entirely by cloud.

We trudge slowly upwards, passing kilometre markers which seem suddenly to have been placed twice as far apart. Eddie’s hip is protesting, my knees want nothing to do with me. We’re constantly passed in the opposite direction by triumphant half-marathon runners speeding downhill towards their finish line. We hate them. We hate the world. It’s never-ending. Every time the road flattens, it’s only briefly. We look up to see more uphill, more climbing, more pain.

We’re too tired even for the movie game. It takes us three kilometres to realise that Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett are in the same film (Indy 4). We’ve started swearing incessantly. We’re running out of water.

Finally, finally, we reach the highest point, the turn, and are welcomed by blaring music, a water station and the wonderful, beautiful view downhill…

The final 10 kilometres go on forever. Our legs no longer work. We struggle to keep going. Eddie saves us from complete despair by bringing out his ipod. We ignore strange looks from the locals as we sing loudly to the Rocky theme-tune (“Getting stronger”), Shaft (“No-one understands him but his woman – John Shaft!”), and even Star Wars.

Children from one of the villages decide to run with us the final few kilometres. We all run silently. They don’t grin at us, they don’t say anything. It’s a strange kind of solidarity. They’re running in flipflops or bare-foot.

We nearly cry when we finally reach the stadium. One final Herculean effort brings us through the gate, into the arena as my watch hits 5 hours, to meet our cheering, awesome supporters, Helen and Allys front and centre. We’ve done it. There’s hugs, tee-shirts, medals, photos, even cans of Kilimanjaro lager…

The marathon-runners - me, Eddie, Ishwar and Jean

It’s congratulations all round – Helen and Allys have successfully completed their 5km run, and still manage to look good (unlike us)…

Victory is ours (and Kenya’s)…

Recovering afterwards is blissful. There are afternoon snoozes. There’s quality time in the swimming pool (the obligatory silly jumping-in games only slightly curtailed by lack of functioning legs). There’s the best cold beer of my life.

All in all, a great weekend. It was lovely to be welcomed by VSO volunteers in another country and to compare the similarities and differences of our experiences. We got a brief taste of Tanzania and all agreed it felt strangely familiar yet very different from Kenya. We were amazed by the lack of hassle we got as white people, we loved the laid-back feel of Moshi, and of course we admired the epic Mount Kilimanjaro. Helen swiftly began plotting and planning a return trip….

The next day, as we headed back to Kenya on the bus, we met Kenyans who also ran the marathon, and who immediately began to persuade me to join their running club, and do another marathon in June. I must be crazy. A Tanzanian newspaper derided the lack of local success in the marathon, announcing that Kenyan runners had taken all the top places in both the men’s and women’s races, at both full and half marathon distance. We take some comfort from the fact that even the race-winner says "it is  one of the most difficult marathons I have ever participated in". We feel proudly Kenyan as we cross the border...

Massive thanks!

A brief final note of thanks to everyone who sponsored me for the marathon. We raised an awesome 60,000 Kenyan Shillings – 450 Great British Pounds – for Special Education Professionals! That’s a whole lot of money, and I’m really grateful. SEP will be able to reach more children with special needs in the slums of Nairobi, and ensure they can reach their fullest potential in life. If anyone hasn’t donated yet but would still like to, just email me and I’ll let you know how.

Asante sana!

And extra-special thanks to: Helen and Allys, for outstanding support; Ishwar, Jéan and the rest of ‘Team Tanzania’ for making us feel welcome and giving us an insight into volunteering Tanzania-style; The Honey Badger Lodge for supplying a swimming pool, beer and comfort; and Eddie Thomas, for getting me into this mess in the first place.