Running round and round… until you drop

Running round and round… until you drop

That ‘run till you drop’ August international marathon was a bad idea ab-initio.  How dare the MOE* come up with such a run!  The stipulation was that a runner was expected to run and keep running until the runner dropped out.  Alternatively, any runner who dared not drop was forced to drop out at seven, for a run that was to start at four-thirty in the evening.

*Marathoners-of-expert, the team that organizes runs for the group

The run was being done within the employer’s compound, hence had the relaxation of a casual run and gave the impression of something easy.  Afterall, it was just a one loop route of 1.3km, right?  Wrong!  That one loop was to be rep’ed for as many times as was humanly possible in the timeslot allocated.  Dropping out at any time remained the easy way out.  Being forced to drop was not even under consideration as we started the run.  How do you run round for over 2-hours!

I gathered together with the largest crowd I have ever seen at the lineup of any of our international runs.  We were six – five gents and a first-time runner lady, Rose.  We counted ourselves down from three to zero and started the run at the designated starting point at the staff parking lot.  The phone that I was using for the timing read ‘Fri. Aug. 26, 2022 - 16:50’.  We moved around as a big group in the first circuit.  The route was half hilly and half down-hilly.  We started on the hilly side of things.  We were all back to the starting point about six and a half minutes later.

That first loop would however be the end of the group run.  I set off slightly ahead of the pack as we started the second loop with Sammy close by.  I increased pace slightly, aiming for a 5-minutes-per-kilometer pace thereafter.  Sammy tagged along and we were soon way ahead of the pack by the time we finished the second loop.  We could hardly make out the presence of the followers by sight of footsteps by this time.

However, Sammy would not continue to keep pace when we got to the fourth circuit and I just started hearing his footsteps retreat and soon be lost somewhere behind.  I kept going and if anything increased the pace.  I would then start going round and round and round, some of the rounds were past some runners, others just on my own, but the rounds continued unendingly.

I could have lost count of how many times I had gone round had it not been for the sheer willpower to keep track of the number of circuits done.  I usually do not glance on the timer when running.  I run at my pace of comfort.  Looking at the timer usually causes me to panic after realizing that I am either too fast or too slow.  I then mess up my run strategy by changing it mid-run, which ends up messing up the overall run.  My best runs are done when I am just on auto-run, with no gadgets controlling any of my actions.

I was aiming for at least 15-rounds on that loop.  Eighteen would be the ideal number and twenty would just be the icing.  After almost everybody had dropped, apart from a new lady runner, Val, who had joined in at some point, and Karl who kept going, I found myself counting the fifteenth lap.  I finished the fifteen count while still energetic enough to add the next three that would take me to eighteen.

I reached eighteen with some effort of just over fifteen-minutes.  I could feel that I was getting tired.  The half hills on every round was starting to take a toll on me.  I was not looking forward to them, but they were permanently etched on that route and there was nothing that could be done about them on each and every round.

I finished nineteen and found Karl and Val at the starting/finishing line.

“You need to drop, the route is now closed,” Karl flagged me down as I passed by their standing position.

I momentarily looked at the phone to check on the time.  It was 1856!  Wow!  How time flies!  I knew that the circuit would take me at least 5-minutes, but there was no stopping when I was only one more round to the ultimate goal of twenty.

“I have four minutes,” I responded as I struggled forward onto the ultimate go round. 

I tried to increase pace, but was just too tired.  I kept going with the knowledge that the run would be ending in less than five minutes, and I would thereafter be taking a rest.  And… The run did finally end after twenty loops around that 1.3km circuit.

I have been to many marathons, but this round-and-round type marathon was the first one that I had ever encountered.  It was a bit monotonous, but it had good motivation in terms of the short course and the targets that you could easily set on the course… if you could keep up with the count before going dizzy.

I crossed the finish line at a distance of 25.9km and just had to run that extra 100m to a new finish point to get to the magic number of 26.12 in 2.09.56.  The pace was 4.56min per k.  Would I do this again?  Maybe after the Nairobi International marathon in October… but then again, that is usually the last major run of the year.

WWB, the Coach, Nairobi, Kenya, August 29, 2022