Marking Stanchart ‘2-0’ with a ‘2-Ouch’ run

Marking Stanchart ‘2-0’ with a ‘2-Ouch’ run

I had no doubt that I would finish the grueling 42km run at the Stanchart Nairobi International Marathon of Sunday, October 29, 2023.  I had after all done at least two preparatory runs that were each 30k in the two months prior to the run.  I had also religiously, since last Stanchart, participated in the monthly 21k IKM marathons that take place every last Friday of the month.  Running a better time was another thing altogether.  I now run to finish the run.  I have a pool of young runners whom I have left to run better time and break records.

However, the Stanchart 2023 event was yet to unveil its mysteries that would include many unexpected and unimaginable occurrences, all in a span of four hours…

I had to call and email our Stanchart marathon contact twice to reconfirm that the marathon was really starting at 6am.  This would be a first.  It has over the years started at seven.  The earliest it has ever started has been at 6.45am.  Six o’clock was a different territory, and that is what the 2023 marathon demanded of those on the 42 thousands metres run – any of the 1,091 registered runners who were brave enough to join in.

The bus carrying the marathoners from Uthiru left five minutes late, at 0505 hours.  It was full by any standards even in this early hour.  Last year it was hardly quarter filled.  This year it was over half full.  We picked two other runners along the way and were soon at Mbagathi road, then joined Langata road at 0530hrs.  It took another ten minutes to navigate the one kilometer road to Uhuru gardens due to the traffic snarl-up caused by the vehicles that were mostly headed to the same Uhuru gardens, which was the venue of the marathon.

The bus attempted to find a parking spot on the already filled up Carnivore grounds parking yard, even as I jumped out of the bus at 5.45am and started navigating my way through the big crowd of runners who had already filled the road around Uhuru gardens heading to Southern bypass road.  It took me about five minutes to move through the less than five hundred metre road that had no navigation space due to the sheer volume of humanity.

I was at the starting line with less than ten minutes to spare.
“The big forty-two kilometer run is just about to start,” someone announced on the public address system as the crowd of hardly five hundred jostled on the tarmac space behind the starting line.
“This is big,” he continued, “It is like going round a playing field for 105 times,” he let it sink a bit, before continuing, “Nairobi and the world, are you ready!”
“Yes,” the crowd of runners responded.  It was still dark.
“I did not hear you, Nairobi and the world, are you ready!”
“Yes,” we roared back.

By this time a team of security guards had formed a human shield and interlocked arms just in front of the crowd, about ten metres to the starting line.  They attempted to hold the runners back with some success but not for long.  The shield of about twelve beefy men stretched all across the tarmac would soon start being pushed forward from the back by the crowd.
“We have a countdown in two minutes,” the PA blared.

That announcement intensified the pushing forces.  The security guards were forced to move the shield some metres ahead due to the sheer force of the push that was coming from behind.  We were now just about five metres from the elite runners who had been advantaged to be allowed to gather undisturbed in front of the human shield.

“Nairobi and the world, we now have the countdown,” the PA announced.  My phone was by this time already on airplane mode and the Runkeeper app timer set for run activity and ready for the start.  My runner no. 1394 had already been affixed to my NMMT Tshirt the previous night.  This was it!  The morning had by now started being a bit bright.

“Ten, nine, eight, seven,….,” the countdown started.  
The excitement rose towards a bursting point and it finally did burst when there was a popping sound to mark the start of the run, the sound coming from somewhere ahead.  It was exactly 06.00.00 when the run started.

I started the run amongst the middle crowd runners.  I had already calculated that this would be a long long long run.  I had given myself a running window of 4 hours.  I was bound to be on this road for many hours, all the way to 10am.  It was now just six.  There were still many many many minutes of feet on the tarmac on this Sunday.  It is with this in mind that I took off relatively slowly and followed the crowd.  I settled on a comfortable pace that was slightly slower than a fast run that I would adopt on a half marathon event.

I was still lost in thought when we encountered the first water station.
“This cannot be true,” I did self-talk.
The not true was about the distance.  I expected the water station to be at the 5km mark.  It seemed to be a bit too soon, but maybe I was just running faster.  I have made it a habit of not looking at my timer when I am on a long competitive run.  I just let go and enjoy the run.  Let the timer do its thing.  I do not change strategy based on the timer.  I just run.
I picked a packet of water.  Yes, packet of water!  This was new.  I am used to plastic water bottles, or worse an open plastic tumbler, but this time we were getting them in 250ml packets.  

“This is now true,” I did a second self-talk about ten-minutes later, when I saw the ‘42k/21k/10k – 5km’ sign.  My body was behaving well so far.  The weather was still calm at this time of the morning, hardly 6.30am.  It was still on the darker side of light and the overhead clouds did not seem to be ready to give in to the sun on this Sunday.  I kept going.  It was the same run route as that of last year and I therefore knew the general profile.  We would run towards Mombasa road towards the Internal Container Depot then do a U-turn to run back along the Nairobi National Park fence towards the Uhuru gardens starting point.  However, we would then continue on the Southern bypass to reach the ultimate U-turn somewhere far, to then bring us back to the finish line at Uhuru gardens.

There were adequate water stations, at least every 5km.  Each had water.  Some had soda!  Yes!, for the first time in living memory Stanchart provided soda for the runners.  However, they served them in some very small plastic tops, akin bottle tops.  Anyway, something is better than nothing.  But the 20th anniversary celebrations of Stanchart still had many surprises in store.  They provided the runners with some fruits, bananas, melons and pieces of orange.  This was surely Stanchart ver. 2.0.  It was not the same old.


On these very long long runs your mind can play tricks on you, so do not believe in what your mind tells you, believe in what you see.  I had almost been cheated at that 5km mark distance marker, and my mind was about to cheat me again at the 20km mark.  I knew that we were already back to Langata road flyover near Uhuru gardens and I should have now done about 20km.  However, I knew that I could not trust my mind when it came to judging the distance, especially when tiredness was now starting to creep in.

By this time we had already seen the 21km leader-board group follow us from the opposite side of the road having starting their run at seven.  I knew that they were still behind me but not far.  Later on I did see the 20km mark sign.  I was once more vindicated that distance does not go that fast when running a long run.  You just keep going and trust the distance markers.  You can easily assume that you have gone and gone, yet you have hardly done a kilometer of distance.  Trust me!

The run from Langata road flyover for the rest of the Southern bypass was lonely.  This stretch had only 42k runners, since 21k runners would turn back to the finish just a few meters after that flyover.  The 42k still had to go and go and go and go for another ten kilometres, before turning back to face the same distance towards the finish line.

I was ready to run and run and run, and so I kept going through the lonely run.  I did not look back.  I could see one or two runners somewhere beyond the horizon.  I could hardly hear footsteps behind.  Occasionally I would overtake a runner.  Occasionally I would be overtaken myself.  I just kept going, picking water where I could, picking fruits when provided, and finally, picking re-hydrating salt solution offered in plastic tumblers, when offered.  This was also a first at Stanchart.  They did not end there.  We even had sponge stations in at least three sections of the course.  Stanchart spoilt us rotten on this twentieth edition!

I finally made the ultimate U-turn at the extreme end of the run course, then made it to the 32km mark.  Now I had only 10km to run back to Uhuru gardens.  My mind went to a usual lunch hour run when I and my team would usually squeeze a 10km run over the lunch hour.  That is what I would now had to survive after having already run for almost two and a half hours.  What has to be done has to be done.  This was to be a long run, and running for long is what I was going to do.

Then….

Then I knew that it was happening!  I was just getting to the 35km mark when it came and it came fast and abrupt!  I was hit by a sharp pain on my right thigh.  It was so painful that I stopped running mid-step and moved out of the road to the periphery.  I almost collapsed due to the pain.  I could not fold the leg at the knee.
“Oh emm geee!,” I shouted loudly as I dropped out.

Runners came by and passed by.  A duo of runners whom I had overtaken not long ago passed by, with one of them being sympathetic, “Relax, alafu tembea, bora umalize” he said while he kept his run.
Some two guys walked by next to me at the road periphery.  They were just passersby.  They seemed to be headed to church by their clad and prominent exposure of the Holy book.  They passed me by while I was still at a standstill, hands on knees, pain still running deep in my right leg.  They said something in Luhya language that I understand, to the effect that ‘that runner is finished’.

They were right, but only momentarily.  I finally managed to fold my leg and the pain started to subside as I attempted to walk with a limp.  I started walking with a limp as runners continued to pass by, and then momentarily restarted my slow jog.  The pain subsided slightly and I resumed my run, with a little limp and with reduced speed.  I would rather limp-run the last 7km than the alternative of either walking the whole 7k or the dreaded DNF!  I even laughed at the prospect of a first DNF and that encouraged me to regain my almost normal pace.  The pain was soon fully gone and I resumed my normal pace.

Lightning would however hit twice when the same symptoms repeated in the same sequence hardly one kilometer later.  I once again started feeling the onset of that muscle pull while it was still a mile away in my central nervous system and when it finally hit without warning, I had to do another abrupt stop!
“This is not my day,” I lamented quietly.

There was no way I was going to do any run from this point on with all that pain.  But how would I even run when I could not even bend my knee?  I once again dropped off to the roadside and let runners pass by.  I again persuaded the leg and it finally accepted to bend on the knee, before I resumed a walk, then a slow jog, then finally back to the run.  This second episode did not however go away completely.  I kept feeling it deep in the bone and had to jog along with a slight limp.  I intended to get medical help but did not see any medical station on this side of the road.  Coincidentally, we had at least two medical stations on the other side of the road.  I wondered whether they thought that runners can only get injured upto 32km turn back point, after which they should survive on their own to the finish?

I kept picking water, fruits and that re-hydrating salt whenever offered.  It reached a point just with 5km to go when I saw some soda at a water point and slowed to a standstill intending to get some.  I could see the sodas in the big 2L bottles bundled in hundreds at a corner of the tent, but there was nothing at the tables next to the running track, where only packets of water were neatly arranged.
“I need some soda,” I asked one of the scouts servicing water.

She looked a bit perplexed, so I pointed to the tons of soda bottles just behind her, “I need some coke”
She also looked back, a bit surprised.  She kind of gestured in desperation, “We have no cups”.
I know that I had already encountered such no-cup situation in some station when I still have the strength to suggest to them to empty a water packet and pour the soda into that pack.  This time round I was just too exhausted to make suggestions and so I just left, a water pack on one hand, two sweet bananas on the other, phone in pocket.

With the finish line hardly five kilometers away, I was not letting the lack of coke in the blood stop me from finishing the run.  I had already survived two muscle pulls and was still nursing a pain from the second pull.  I was surely going to survive soda deficiency.  I kept going.  My mind was now focused on nothing but the finish line…
“Focus on the finish line, there is nothing but the finish line,” I re-crafted a tag line I had heard in some cartoon episode that features some sea creatures, one of whom wears pants.

My intention to finally get a good finish from the setbacks would however be messed up with the same mess that Stanchart-20 repeated from last year, mixing the finish line for 42k, 21k and 10k runners.  It was now only a mere 2km to the finish when the three run categories mixed, with the 21k and 10k runners being in the tens of thousands and having completely blocked and filled up the road.  Most were just walking and even having photo ops along the route and the signage.  There was hardly any run in this section of the route despite my best effort to get by.  I tried my best but the energy of colliding and avoiding to stumble on runners was just too much.  I slowed down to the best pace that could ensure coexistence with the crowd, even as I weaved my way through.

I finally finished the run at Uhuru Gardens, with my timer recording a 3.33.09 though I knew that I had stopped my timer a bit too late since I was still recovering from the effects of the long run.  This was confirmed when the final official time turned out to be 3.32.27, taking position 231 out of 730 total starters in this run.  The men and women winners had already done their bit in 2.10.18 and 2.24.31, with the half marathon having been conquered in 1.02.39 and 1.11.18 respectively. It took me over 5 minutes to figure out where the medals were being issues.  It was not the usual finish as you get a medal as before.  This time the medal issuance had been relocated but there were no directional signs and the sheer size of crowds at the finish line area did not help matters.

However, for the first time in many years at Stanchart I finished the run and remained standing.  I would previously collapse with hardly functional limbs.  I had to seek medical attention last year due to the muscle pull that had hit me in the last few kilometres to the finish and had persisted after the finish.  This time round the legs were still strong and that unfortunately double episode of muscle pull was a non-issue.  I was not feeling it at all.  The run stats showed that the run was good.  4.08min/km by 3km, 4.22 by 8.5km, 4.25 by 18.9, 4.48 by 29.4, and as expected 5.03min/km by the finish.

We left the venue and first passed by Langata Police station, where one of our runners was going to record the loss of her phone that was stolen from her marathon bag by some ‘runner’ who had slit through the bag in the course of the run.  It was on Monday, a day after the run, that the runner updated me that she had found a big crowd at the Police station, most of them in Stanchart Tshirts reporting lost items mostly phones.  However, there was a reported loss of laptop and just when it could not get worse, two runners were reporting lost vehicles – stolen from the public parking of the marathon grounds.

WWB, the Coach, Nairobi, Kenya, Oct. 30, 2023