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For a tropical country the Ticos really get into Christmas. My family and I headed into the town for the lighting of the decorations - very interesting. Was sort of like a parade but with each music/dance group doing their own route. It got a bit complicated when the groups bumped into each other but nobody seemed to care. I met even more family members and tons of their amigos.
Marathon time! So on Monday I was able to find one of the 3 places where you could register and then on Friday I received an email (in Spanish) that they changed the time from 12:40pm to 7:00am (yep!) On a great note - when I arrived the taxi literally dropped me off right at the start line!
I quickly realized that the only people that do these races in Costa Rica look very professional and I was way out of my league. Interested to see if they email the actual results and numbers - really looked like no more than 150 runners and I only saw 6 total girls.
I met several runners waiting for it to start - everyone was so nice and rightfully so looked very surprised to see that I was attempting this - some literally brought over their amigos to meet me. I didn't hear the word loca but could tell they questioned it.
The race actually started at 7:50am which was fine except this was the first cloudless day I'd seen since I'd been here - the high ended up being 82F. So we headed off through San Jose and I quickly found myself way in the back. A girl ran with me for several miles and I tried to spread out all of my basic Spanish but decided this would get old soon so when she stopped to walk I kept going.
Onto the course map (yes all in Spanish) - I gathered that we were repeating the same lap 3 times and the first 2 laps the organizers were really on top of things. Think there were almost more staff/police working the event then running in it. One section was an out and back so I was able to pass a lot of my runner amigos that I met at the start - several called me "California".
When I got to the 3rd lap I was looking for the "out and back" (hill) portion we'd done before except this time the big barrels with caution tape had been taken away, the smiling traffic police were gone and the group in front of me just kept going straight - great we don't have to do it for the 3rd loop - yes!! After a few miles of feeling pretty good then I heard runners behind me saying something "California" something something and my lightning quick brain told me we were actually supposed to do the 3rd "out and back" - about 4 miles. AH!
I spent the next few miles seeing if I could convince myself that 22ish miles was still good especially since I wasn't really trained and it was so hot out (thought of my grandmother :). But as I got closer to the finish line I thought of my real running amigos (Renee, Jen (50K), Bre, Hannah, Rachael, Chris (50 mi) and Sean (too crazy to explain) and knew I couldn't live with myself (or wear the cute shirt) if I didn't really do it.
It took several minutes to try and explain to the staff why I was passing the turn to the finish line but I was able to go back and do the part I missed. I actually bumped back into the girl I passed near the start and another friend I made at the start (dressed as an Indian above). I'm not sure exactly how much further I ended up going but if the map is to scale I think it was ~4.5 KM extra to go back to the missed turn but oh well - 5th from last isn't too bad.
Officially I'm sure I'll show up as DQ but in my head (and my sore legs) I definitely won a much needed "heck yeah" moment! Almost happier that it happened the way it did even though if I correctly counted and there were really only 6 women (and I did finish before the two above) I "possibly" could have had a chance at the 3rd place title and prize ($100).
There you go - long story but all of you reading it had a part in it (a lot to think about in 4:42) so THANK YOU!! Really appreciate your support!
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