This was by far my most memorable, grueling “run” for the year. I just finished a 5.5 mile run in a town called WhiteHouse in Westmoreland, Jamaica. This by far was the most challenging, yet most entertaining run I have had in quite some time. We are currently staying at a house that is situated on a hill about 500 feet above sea level. This might not be a big deal for many of you, but being a Florida boy that considers speed bumps as rolling hills, this felt like I was climbing Mount Everest. I knew that I wanted to get at least 5 miles in, and I really had no idea where I should start running, so I figured that I would just stay in the hills and round around the streets where it would be safer, and not go on the main roads. Well..that didn’t work out too well at all. As I left the house and started to run down a hill, I had to basically brake myself by running down the hill sideways. I looked at my Garmin and after .50 miles, it said I was running at a 10:30 min/mile pace. I thought going downhill was supposed to be faster?? I think I just didn’t know what the heck I was doing… I felt like I was going to fall down and make a big mess of myself. So I decided to go against my wife and mother-in-laws advice and I ran on the main roads. I was able to get into a nice groove, and I was running around 8:15-8:45 pace.
So here was the fun part…. There are no trails around here.. no sidewalks…the roads in this area of Jamaica are quite bad and they are very narrow. There’s a lot of overtaking of mini-buses, crazy taxi drivers and very narrow lanes… which makes for a very interesting run. The other thing that was quite ironic was the fact that people were taking some interest in what I was doing. I had a few spectators as I ran through the town…. when I ran by the town market, one older lady (probably in her 80′s) said to me, “Kick up yuh arm dem and run haad!!!” in other words, Kick up your arms and run harder! A few other people were cheering me on… because I don’t think that they are used to seeing people train and run unless they are training…like a Usain Bolt… in other words, “Why the hell would you run if you aren’t actually getting paid to do this?” So I think they either thought
a. I was part of a team of some sorts training for some event
or
b. I am some freak that finds running enjoyable (which they would find frighteningly amusing)
Either way, I have never had that many people take interest in me running 5 miles…so that was cool .
The plan was for me to go out for 5 miles, but as I started feeling more comfortable with my surroundings and how to navigate by the cars, etc. I decided to go a bit further… so I actually was doing an out and back run, and I went out 3 miles. Apparently, I ran out of the town of Whitehouse and into the next town, St. Elizabeth. At the border of many towns in Jamaica, they have people usually selling food or other goods (in this case, they were selling fish, bammy and other Jamaican treats). This is how it looks:
The problem was that when I hit 5.3 miles, I had to come back into the housing development that we were staying at and trek back up that hill… so if you can imagine that it was about 10:30 min/mile pace as I was running down the hill because it was so steep… imagine what it was like actually going back up it after running 5 miles… so I basically stopped the watch, and decided to walk it. I barely made it to the top…that .50 miles was 2x as hard as the other 5 miles that I ran. I have had some experience with hills, as I did run the San Francisco marathon in 2009.. and there were parts of that race that were quite hilly… but nothing was quite as steep as what I dealt with this morning. So, I finally made it back to the house, took a cold shower, and chowed down a wonderful Jamaican breakfast (Ackee and saltfish, breadfruit, jamaican bread and coffee)…. yummy!!!!
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