We'll run till we drop
on Rose Hardman (Rwanda), 22/May/2011 08:04, 34 days ago
For the past month or so I have been intending to go for a run. For the past month or so I have come up with several excuses as to why that’s not possible; rain, people stare, tiredness, I might get my trainers muddy, running’s not good for you...etc. The reason for this sudden need to make excuses as to why I can’t run was that today was the Peace Marathon in Kigali and a group of us were taking part. Luckily I’m not disillusioned enough to think that I could actually run the marathon, or even the half marathon, or even the 10k relay. Sometimes I’d rather miss lunch than walk 5 minutes home from work (it’s up a hill!) so I’d already accepted I would not be doing any run that entered multiple digits. But, conned bythe fact that it was called a ‘fun run’, I registered to do the 5k along with Julia, Pauline, Judy and Brigid-Rose.I headed to Kigali on Friday for a meeting and decided to stay for the weekend. Friday evening was spent in awe at Vanessa and Jolande’s house. They have sofas, a television, a fridge and an oven. I put the sofa to good use whilst Vanessa did the same to the oven, producing amazing Mexican food, Rwandan style. After filling up on beans, salsa and guacamole, Pauline, Vanessa, Jolande and I headed to a party at a friend’s house.The highlight of the evening has to be when Vanessa got the entire dance floor taking part in the dance ‘the Vanessa kick’. I only wish I had taken a video!Luckily I didn’t have too much of a hangover on Saturday morning because nothing was keeping me away from doughnuts, bagels and coffee at African Bagel Co-operative. As seems to be tradition ever since we arrived at 10.30 one time to find all the doughnuts had been eaten, we were pretty much the first to arrive. So we set about gorging on all the wonderful food, including bagels with hummus and many different flavoured doughnuts.After stuffing ourselves fuller than a turkey at Christmas we went back to the dorm to recover. In the afternoon a group of us headed to Nyamirambo Cinema to see Alice in Wonderland before heading for a drink. I proceeded to fill myself on biscuits and beer and so couldn’t eat any tea and had to have an early night! This was good however given that we had to be at the stadium this morning at 7am for the run.So, with far too much energy for a 6am start, we headed to the stadium this morning where we met up with the other runners. VSO had two relay teams, six fun runners, and four cheerer-onners so a very good turnout. Following the obligatory hanging around we were off. Judy and I ran together for the first part and then I died a little whilst she carried on. She ran the entire 5K which was amazing. I ran, walked and jogged my way to the finish line, spurred on by Christine’s cheers echoing across the stadium. And you know what, the organisers were right, it was fun, although not always a run. I have now been motivated to start running and hopefully enter a 10k in July.Runners, walkers, spectators and friends were rewarded with lunch at Sole Lunya which is always good. I decided to go for the fully loaded carb pizza which comes with chips on top. Surprisingly it works and saves room on your plate for the pizza to be bigger. In the words of Neil Buchanan,‘try it yourself’!And they're off...Nothing can stop them...Not even a malfunctioning finish line!I know it was obvious but I couldn't resisit using a Bruce song as the title!