It is sweltering hot, what was I thinking? Everything I do seems to take just that much more energy and I am on a slippery slope of decline. It all started out harmlessly enough. I was to meet up with my neighbor around 5 in the morning and then head out with him on his motorcycle towards Zapote. The morning was crisp, it was cool in comparative standards and there was even a bit of fog settled in the valley. I was ready for my neighbor to come by and was already in my running shorts with an emergency 20 cords in my pocket. The whole reason we were heading off to Zapote was to take part in the running of the torch. The torch is run every year through all the Central American countries to commemorate the independence of the region some 180 years ago. I wasn’t sure what to expect in my town since we are no where near any well traveled route and would not be seeing the real torch. My nose was in the correct place, after a 30min ride out we were met by a hodgepodge collection of students and one carrying the leg of a chair with a tin can nailed on top… your torch. I guess it is cute to see how the people deal with what they have and make the best of it, but it is a far cry from the running of the Olympic torch that I saw years ago.
After cutting up a new mop bottom and thoroughly soaking it in some oil and gas we had ourselves a torch. The MINED delegado made a short speech, we sang the national anthem, and we were off. I should chime in here and let you know this was about a 20km run. The idea is that each school along the road would run a section and then pass the torch off to the next school as we make our way to San Dionisio. I didn’t think that was exciting enough and I got a couple other professors to join me and run the entire route. In my infinite wisdom I figured running 20km would be a piece of cake, I already ran three marathons so how bad could this be. Luckily, we stopped several times because the torch went out or we had to sing the national anthem again because maybe someone forgot it, but it wasn’t a continuous run. It took us nearly two hours to run the 20km or 12miles and felt pretty good. The only rough patch was when we finally met up with the high school and all the older runners waiting to sprint to town. They wanted to show off how fit they were, but they forgot that I had already run a good 12km before arriving.
In the end it was a fun morning run. We were escorted by a horde of people on motorcycles and even more kids leading the way on their bicycles. Once we made it into town, we did a victory lap through all of the streets and everyone was out of their houses with flags and yelling. It is amazing how people can get behind an activity and just take it all in. The best part was I was back up in my house by 10am and got to finish it all off with a nice pancake and bacon breakfast.
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