Where are the runners? – ending July without company

Where are the runners? – ending July without company

Being a Friday, it should have been a day for just another Friday run, but it felt different.  I started the run at 12.45pm.  The weather was downcast, the sun was nowhere, the cold was struggling to persist in the inevitable warmth that was permeating from the hidden sunshine.  The clouds were not making things easier on this temperature situation.  The sky was enveloped in white but it was not as cold.  Maybe end of July also meant end of the cold?

I left for the run and was soon heading to Waiyaki way, hardly ten minutes after the start.  The road was a bit deserted.  What was happening on this Friday?  Even the vehicles on the roads seemed fewer than usual!  I would in a moment run across Waiyaki way and then get running on the other side of the road, for that stretch of about a kilometre, that would take me to run under the Uthiru flyover.  

This stretch of road that takes you from the point of your crossing over towards the flyover is a long straight tough section of the road.  You are running through an unending major road, with vehicles zooming from ahead, some leaving the full six lane road to push you out of the edge of the road where you are!  

You are glad when you start finally leave the highway, turn to the right and circle around the roundabout to soon turn left to face the downhill towards Ndumbo.  At this point of heading towards Ndumbo, you only need to worry about the matatus that park in the middle of the road as they beckon passengers for the ride to town.  That blockage means that vehicles from opposite directions have to struggle through one lane of the road.  It is the runner who has to suffer by running out of the road on the very rough edge, where there is no semblance of walkway – just a rugged patch of stony road shoulder.  

However, once you survive the Ndumbo stage area, then it is all smooth running towards Wangari Maathai.  Coincidentally, the road section around Ndumbo was not busy on this Friday.  I even enjoyed my run on the edge of the tarmac until I was through with that stage section – something that is hardly possible with the matatus have parked on the road.  What was happening today?  Where are the people?  Where are the vehicles?

There was hardly a vehicle or a person by the time I was heading towards Wangari Maathai Institute.  I would however encounter a group of people, some in yellow jackets, slashing the edges of the road, just before the Institute’s gate.  That group was probably all of humanity on this road.  I would later encounter one person washing a motor vehicle near the river, with potted plants lining the left edge of the road, the edge where I was running on.  I have progressively seen these pots grow from none, hardly three months ago, to now about ten of them.

I overtake the potted plants and soon get to the river and start the uphill run to Lower Kabete road.  I meet no one.  However, one or two vehicles pass by on either directions.  I reach Lower Kabete road and the two motorbikes are parked on the pedestrian walkway at the junction of the road, as usual.  I overtake them and turn left to run about three minutes uphill on Lower Kabete road.  Even this major road that connects Wangige to Westlands and town centre has very few vehicles to count.  Usually there would be at least one every half minute.

I eventually make the left turn to the dry weather road that would take me towards Mary Leakey school, then the University farm some kilometre away from there.  This road section is also deserted.  I hardly meet a person.  I would soon face the University farm that would for sure be lonely for the kilometre run-through.  It is for sure deserted, as expected.  I meet no one through that five-minute run.  

I am tempted to ask the ‘where are the people’ question while on the farm, only to remember that this section usually has no people any day, anyway… usually only the runner, and occasionally, such as on Monday, some farm workers tending to the plants.  On that day I had tried to decipher what plants they were tending, but my running motion could not register the green sprouts on the vast land.  Could it be coffee?  Could it be tea!  It was not maize for sure!

I am back to reality as I now run to the tank.  I for sure have to go for the half marathon route on this occasion, but who knows, I may just surprise myself by giving it an end-of-month twist and adding ‘something’ to it.  However, I am not sure yet.  I first have to get to the U-turn before I decide on how much more I can add to the usual run-back distance.  The weather is still downcast.  A gentle wind swishes by my running frame as I keep running on Kapenguria road.  I shall be running for about fifteen-minutes before I get to the U-turn point.  This section of the road towards the U is generally flat, though a bit hilly after the cross road at Kanyariri AIC church.

I keep going.  I am now just looking forward to that U-turn.  My mind is blanked, but I still notice that there are very few people on the road, even on that cross road shopping centre, which would normally be bustling with activities and the notorious loud motorcycles.  I soon get to the U-turn and I am glad to be heading back onto the return leg towards the finish.  But there is no need to get all excited and all.  The finish line is still very far.  As far as one hour or more, depending on run speed and final route chosen to the finish point.

I am now running back and heading home.  I get to the tank after about fifteen minutes after the U.  I have the option of continuing down the road, then up towards Ndumbo – the usual straight road towards the finish… or turning left at the tank and doing the same same route that brought me here.  The left turn means an extra 4km on my bill.  It is however too late to make sense of my decision, since I find myself taking the left turn back to the University farm.  

I shall soon face that eerie silence and nothingness for over a kilometre through the farm.  I do not even think about it as I traverse the farm in complete solitude.  I just keep running.  Going back to Mary Leakey school, then Lower Kabete road, then the right turn back to Kapenguria road.  All these while I can hardly see humanity.  Where are the people?

I now have to run from ‘the tarmac’ back to my starting point at Uthiru.  These are about six kilometres of pure painful run, coming at a time when I have been on the road for over one-hour-thirty-minutes.  I however have no choice since I have to get to the finish line one way or the other.  Runs are not just finished in the middle of nowhere at a whim.  After all, there are no people, or even motorbikes passing by.  How else would I get to the finish line even if I decided not to continue with the painful last thirty minutes?  I just have to keep going!

And that if what I do, first to the river, then to that dreaded 1.5km of uphill from the river, past Wangari Maathai institute, back to Ndumbo.  That dreaded hill!  I shake my head in dread, just as I still meet the same group of people who were doing the slashing of the roadsides just past Wangari, on the final hill stretch.  One of the people slashing comments loudly that the sun is too hot, which would mean that it shall be raining soon.  His colleagues shout their affirmation.  That brings me back to my senses.  It is surely shining.  When did the shine begin?  I cannot recall!  It was cold and cloudy the last time I checked.

I am now only three kilometres from the finish line when I am get back to Waiyaki way.  I am too tired to notice anything, though there is nothing much to notice with all this desertion.  However, I can see the traffic police, for the first time since the initial lockdown in March, with a roadblock just next to the Kabete Police station.  I see vehicles from town forced to stop and the men and women in luminous yellow jackets approach and speak to the drivers.  These activities are unfolding on the other side of the dual carriage way.  I ignore them and keep going to enable me cross the wide road and start my home stretch.

I finish the run in 2hr 13min 35sec.  I am completely finished!  I collapse on my desk as the phone app beeps with a message ‘Congratulations – 26.84km is the longest distance this month’.  I do not even care.  I do not even want to be congratulated.  I am finished completely!  I even fell like drifting off into slumber, though I am still all sweaty and the environment feels so heated.  I need to hit that shower if I am to feel any better.  

I am just about to take a painful step from the seat, when the announcement from the online stream that I keep on comes out loud and clear, that the world has reached yet another milestone in COVID-19 cases.  So I pay attention to the numbers - 17,630,927 infections on planet earth with 679,655 deaths!  That 17M level got me into searching the data for Kenya.  And soon I would scroll through the list on worldometers to see the motherland listed at number 64 with 20,636 confirmed cases and 341 deaths.  

I am resigned to a ‘what shall be shall be’ state of mind, when I soon hear a ‘cautiously optimistic’ sound-byte from a US top infectious disease expert that there shall be a vaccine by end of year.  The very prediction that I had given TT a few articles ago.  I was now heading to the showers with the mindset that humanity shall wrestle TT to the ground by end-year when it dawned on me that this Friday was Id-ul-Azha holiday – it was not a work day!

WWB, The Coach, Nairobi, Kenya, July 31, 2020