When you’re not allowed to finish (or even start) a marathon, what do you do? Why you pick one the next month and enter it, of course.
The thirteenth month of my service saw my visa get renewed and a lot of planning take place. Then we had a bunch of holidays, and then a really awesome and productive trip to Issyk-Kul where I taught health lessons in a bunch of schools before running a marathon. Let’s dive in.
May starts with a series of holidays: May Day, Constitution Day, and Victory Day (all about which I recently posted). Now, behind the scenes of all these days up in the hills and exploring, I actually was doing a bunch of work training and planning for my third trip to Issyk-Kul. From where I live in Osh to where the marathon was going to be, it would take me an entire day of travel to get to, at my own expense, so I decided that it made sense for me to do actual work for a bit while I was there, both to break up the travel but also to help people.
So, on Victory Day, I flew to Bishkek, then headed to Balykchy, the first town on Issyk-Kul, where two of my good friends live. I had been working with them for some time to do trainings at two schools and a youth center there, and so we began, with me teaching seminars on hand-washing, HIV/AIDS, and nutrition to a variety of classes and ages.
The seminars went very well, and with the resources I left behind, they and their counterparts will continue working on hygiene (to prevent the cold/flu and Hepatitis A) with the students. Definitely a great win!
I hopped over to Kochkor, Naryn Oblast on Thursday (a 45 minute drive from Balykchy) to visit two good friends of mine and to also give more sessions at their schools. With two hand-washing sessions at each, both of them were able to learn how to give the trainings themselves, and so I headed back to Balykchy feeling happy and accomplished.
In all, the trainings I gave helped 25 teachers and 313 students. It was the best bit of math to do right before heading to the start line of a minor international marathon, the 5th annual Run The Silk Road marathon held outside of Bosteri, Kyrgyzstan.
After dropping my stuff with my friends at their apartment in Cholpon-Ata (located midway along Issyk-Kul), we piled into a marshrutka and drove to Bosteri, the next town up the lake, where we picked up our bibs and watched a children’s 5k relay supported by the Embassy of Japan. Running is a big sport in Japan, and the Embassy has been a big supporter of running and this marathon.
Bib pickup is always exciting for me. The entire ritual of race preparation is great, and for the first time since 2014, I was doing it with good friends who would be running the half-marathon the next day too. We got our bibs, snapped photos, and cooked a big pasta dinner complete with olive oil and Parmiola, which is a Kyrgyz-produced cheese that tastes just like Parmesan.
The next day we all got dressed, pinned on our bibs, and made our way to the start line. I was SO excited, even though I knew it would be a hard race – Issyk Kul is at 5,200 feet of elevation, and the forecast was for the low 70’s and sunny. I was brought into the very front corral for the marathoners. There were probably about 100 of us in total, of all ages from many different countries. At 9:00 AM sharp, they fired the gun and off we went!
The course was beautiful, which made up for the fact that it was a hot and high race. Even though there were rolling hills and one straightaway that was several miles long, I still loved the race. I did have to walk about 5 miles of it because of the altitude, and my pace was definitely weaker than normal (I was almost 90 minutes off my PR), but considering that I train at 2,300 feet in Osh, and on exactly one training run had barely reached 5,000 feet in a pass, I was pretty thrilled.
I was one of the last people to finish, but it was my 6th marathon, and a marathon right here in Kyrgyzstan. I couldn’t be prouder of the way that I chose to celebrate the end of my first year in country.
As one dear friend of mine put it:
