Good Samaritans of Cairo

This afternoon we set out for a walk down to Road 9, one of the local shopping districts. On the agenda were a haircut, a stop at a jeweler's and a visit to the green grocer. We almost made it.

After agreeing where we would meet up after the haircut, Seth took one step off the curb and onto a shard of glass. I heard the signature pop glass makes when it cracks under pressure and saw him immediately pull up. He took off his sandal and stood on one foot among the garbage. As I pried the glass out of the sole and Seth held his foot of the ground blood began to drip and then flow.

He looked at me and said, "OK, where do we go? Think." Before either of us had time to decide a man came jogging over with a fully stocked first aid kit that he unfurled on the hood of a car next to us. Stunned, we both thanked him and Seth maneuvered to the curb to sit down, while Good Samaritan #1 began pulling out gauze pads, scissors, and tape.

Several other man gathered around as we wrapped the foot securely enough to get us home. One of the men asked if we needed a ride. I looked up and saw that he, himself, had one arm in a sling and a Band-Aid on his forehead. I said, "No, we'll take a cab, thanks. You're hurt too." He assured us that he was OK and that his car was an automatic, so we took him up on his offer and hopped in.

Good Samaritan #2 drove us right back to our apartment, where we got to work cleaning out the wound and bandaging it up again. Seth is resting on the couch, along with Jager, a 3-year old German Shepard that we are dog sitting. After we got the bleeding under control we both commented on the displays of selfless kindess we were on the receiving end of today. In a time of economic dispair, neither of the men would accept any money for their assistance.

Life is good. Pay it forward.

The Gauntlet

We're fairly used to seeing unusual things during our Friday morning cycling group rides around Cairo, but this morning was a first. One of the 2 loops our group rides regularly takes us through the streets of a village called Mokkatam. There is a market area on the main drag that I have dubbed "The Gauntlet" because you need to have all of your antennae up and ready for anything when you pass through. We've had guys on scooters zoom up along side and pace us for a mile or so, weaving in an out. We've had kids run out, waving their arms and yelling hello, and we've had cars cut us off at intersections. But nothing like today.

This morning, as we approached "The Gauntlet", a man was sitting atop a beautiful horse on the median. We rode by as he was trying to get the horse down on to the road. A few seconds later I heard the unmistakable sound of a horse at full gallop coming up from behind. He tore passed on my right and I thought, "OK, we're showing off...I get it." Then I watched as this man ran his out of control stallion directly into the back of another cyclist 30 feet in front of me. I could not believe what I was seeing. He lined up directly behind the rider and was probably planning to pass him on the right, when a minibus pulled away from the curb closing the gap. The horse plowed right into the back of the cyclist giving him the mother of all pushes and then continued to run right on passed. Unbelievable.

We pulled over to make sure the rider was OK. Miraculously he had not fallen. Just as we continued on with our ride a small group of kids came running out from the side of the road and commenced target practice on my legs with any rock they could find. I've got a nice bruise blooming on the inside of my left knee. I turned and screamed, "NO! Shame!" in Arabic, it was all that came to me at the time. I don't understand why children from some cultures find it fun to throw rocks at innocent passers by. What does this say about their upbringing and what they are taught about respecting and caring for others? Growing up in up-state New York I know we threw a snowball at a car once or twice in the winter, but even that seemed like we were dancing a very fine line and we knew it was wrong. That was a machine. To throw a rock at a person with the intent to harm as a source of entertainment is just crazy to me.

We gave each other a quick look that said, "Let's get the hell out of here." and took off for the end of town. Just as we crossed the last intersection a fruit and vegetable vendor called out, "Welcome to Egypt!" Indeed.

A Mountain Marathon

I will never be "fast" and, in my opinion, road races are designed for speed. Map out a course of a prescribed distance, run on pavement, maybe with some "hills", and see how quickly you can cross the finish line. For me, this has little appeal or excitement. It's hard for me to get jazzed about pounding pavement through city streets. Now, start me off in the middle of a cow pasture and point me toward a mountain pass on a trail that borders raging streams, skirts a glacier and has volunteers standing at high points asking each runner if he or she is OK to go on before they hand out a plastic poncho for the wind and sleet you are about to turn in to, and I'm your Huckleberry. This was my kind of marathon.



I did not adhere to a strict training regimen in preparation for this race. While Seth had spreadsheets of how many miles he needed to log each day to build for his 78K, I followed a more relaxed (some would say reckless) approach to my training. Battling with some nagging injuries early on, my longest run in preparation for this alpine marathon was 12 miles. Now, I know what your thinking, I'm either a super athlete who can pull out a 26 mile run with over 9,000 ft. of elevation gain with minimal training or an idiot. My race plan, if one can call it that, was to "crawl up the climbs, fall down the descents and walk the flats with pride." In truth, it turned out to be a much better experience than I expected.



The start was in a small village called Bergun (seen in the photo above). It was a 40 minute train ride from Davos, where both of our races would finish. While waiting on the platform I met a woman who had done this race several times in the past, but this was her first time running it since beating Leukemia. We rode the train together and she told me about the course. As I walked through the village to the starting area I heard a voice ask, "Meg?" I turned around to see a friend from my teacher training program at George Mason University. Lisa was in Switzerland with her boyfriend and they were visiting his sister who happened to live in this small mountain town. We looked at each other, dumb struck for a moment and then did the requisite squealing and "Oh my God-ing". She walked with me to the start and, at one point, looked at what I was wearing and asked, "You know that it's cold at the top right?"



The photo on the left above is the left hand turn onto the trail where the elevation began to rise dramatically. You can see in the second photo that everyone has been reduced to a hiking pace. We're all trying our best to keep the cadence high and move with strength. It continued like this, a slow and steady climb to the top of the Ketsch Pass where announcers in a mountain hut called out runner's names and a photographer was hunkered down under a tarp snapping flattering shots of exhausted people like this:



This was the spot where volunteers handed out cups of chicken broth, asked if you were OK to go on (but in German so: Alles gut?) and then promptly handed you a tightly folded plastic poncho. Everyone else seemed to be putting them on so I figured I'd follow suit. Oh man, am I glad I did.



The two photos above were taken just before I stepped over the top of the pass and began the descent into a wind blown sleet storm. You can see that we are up in the clouds at this point. It took me 2 hours and 37 minutes to get here, which was only 16K into my 42K race and we were far from finished with the climbing. The descent was tricky what with the poncho plastic blowing around your legs, slick rocks from the rain, mud and cow patties and the rocky single track making it tough to get around people. I started to hear a low, muffled sound gong, ding, gong, gong and looked up to see a herd of cattle grazzing along side the trail with their monster cow bells serenading us through the muck. I started to laugh out loud, is this cool or what?! I mean seriously, where am I?



The trail eventually flattened out a bit and I began to pick up some speed, running more consistently now. As we curved right around an alpine lake I looked up to see a line of orange ponchos disappearing into the low hanging clouds. I actually said, "Oh. My. God." out loud. I wish I had dug my camera out of my Camelbak to capture that image for you but it was under my poncho and that thing wasn't coming off for the world. Above you can see the very end of the climb and the aid station at the top. From here it was all pretty much down hill. I did manage to turn around and take a photo of the climb from the top looking back at where we had just come from (notice the drop off):



To put it in perspective this second climb peaked at 21K, that is half way through the marathon. It sounds pretty sweet to have the second half all down hill, unless you are my quadriceps that is. I began bounding down the trail, taking it as fast as I dared. I was feeling good aside form an occasional calf cramp that threatened to become more than a fleeting twinge but never materialized into a full blown cramp.

With around 15K to go my "relaxed approach" to training for this race promptly reared up and bit me in the ass. My muscles, who had been thoroughly prepared to run 12 miles had performed admirably and even exceeded their preparation and, with 15K to go, said "Aaaaaaand, we're done." At which point my tendons were charged with the task of stabilizing my knees that my muscles no longer could. Now tendons, they're right nasty little buggers and quite adept at performing feats of strength in short bursts. But ask them to shoulder the burden over the last 9 miles and I can tell you, they will give you more than just 1 piece of their minds. My IT bands both gave me the finger and began twisting their sharp little knife points into the sides of my knees. I know this pain, and I know what it means. So I relent and I walk down the hills. It is a strange thing when your body would rather run up hill than down, but that is how I made it through the last 9 miles. Fortunately we were able to play on some glorious single track that was relatively flat and I was able to maintain a consistent jog.

The day before the race I received an e-mail from my friend Becky in which she gave me some sage advice for how to approach the run: "Enjoy the views, regardless of how you get there and enjoy what you are capable of doing." Good advice for life. I wrote this on the back of my race number and said it out loud to myself several times along this spectacular course. I was, yet again, reminded how lucky I am to keep waking up everyday.

My First 50 Miler

Meg & I just got back from the Swiss Alpine Marathon and there are so many ways I could title this, and yet this seems to be the most appropriate. One would think "last" or "only" 50 miler would be better terms to use, and even then plenty of people would think I was crazy. And yet.. I chose "first." We'll see if that is an appropriate choice later.

The Quick Summary

We spent a 4 day weekend traveling to/from the Alps to run a 78K for me and a 42K (Marathon) for Meg. The course was great, the temperatures were perfect, we got some cold rain on the top of a 8500 ft mountain pass, but overall it was beautiful. It was a fantastic trip and we both had a GREAT time! Both of our legs are very sore now and my left foot is injured. X-rays appear to be negative but walking is very painful.

The Swiss Alpine Marathon

In April, we went skiing and one of our instructors put the idea of this race into my head. A 78K in Alps would be pretty epic. And there are shorter options so Meg can run too or in case training doesn't work out as much as I'd like in Egypt. Meg has repeatedly expressed interest in seeing/hiking the Alps in the summertime rather than only ski them in the winter. I don't understand this desire, but I'll cater to her whims from time to time. :) The race is a quick flight from Cairo and in the same timezone, so we won't have to deal with jet lag and break the bank too much. So an idea was born.

Getting There

It was not quite as easy to get to this race as it initially seemed. Switzerland is a pretty small country with a great train system. How hard could it be to get to the start of this race? Well.... 

Our plan was to fly into Geneva and take the train to Davos Platz. This would be a 5.5 hour train ride, but it was significantly less expensive than flying to Zucich directly, and a similar priced ticket with a layover meant the same amount of travel time. We discovered later that the race included free train passes from the airports, that was a big win! So after leaving the house at 7:15am on Thursday, we arrived at our hotel in Davos at 9:00pm. It was raining, it was cold (mid-50s), and we were smiling.

Friday was spent wandering around Davos, going to packet pickup, getting some coffee, lunch, and generally enjoying the town and a quiet vacation day. A street festival was taking place a few blocks from our hotel and we watched as kids climbed crates, had a bratwurst, and soaked in the show. We went to bed early to get ready for a big day.

Saturday. Race Day

The K78 started at 7am which seemed very reasonable for a race like this. At the same start times were the C42 (marathon in the valley) and the K30. There were several thousand people at the race start, more than I'd ever seen at the start of any ultra-race before. Clearly, most of them were not in the K78, but who's who? Race numbers were color coded, but it's hard to tell from inside the crowd. With so many people, the organizers were smart to start us out on several miles of roads. After a while the run through town turned into running through the Alps. Especially for the first half of the day, this meant a lot of single lane roads through farm areas, some dirt roads, some fire roads, and the occasional patch of single track. For the most part, unless it went up, it was wide enough to fit a car through which was probably for the best with the crowds. When it ticked uphill, the single track was beautiful, and I was moving slow enough to enjoy it.

However, 20K into this race, my left foot started acting up. I've been fighting off a bit of a pain at the end of my 5th metatarsal for a little while, probably since the Highlands 40 miler about a month ago. Nothing major, but it was there at the start of the race. By 20K in, there was no question this guy was going to be an issue today. Running was starting to be painful. There was an option to bail at the 30K mark. I was still mostly running (except for the uphills), so within 3 hrs I had finished 19 miles and decided to keep going.

A little after the 40K marker we found a bag drop where I changed the sweat soaked arm armers, shirt and shoes for dry options prior to hitting the mountains. Shortly after that, the K78 course joined the K42 course. Meg's race took off at 11:30 so she got a 15 minute head start as I passed through at 11:45. The run goes about 10K of rollers and gradual uphills. It's hard to say exactly when, but the "gradual" up started going steep up and everyone (at least around me) was walking as the trail goes up 1700m over 5km. By the time we got to the Ketch hut at about 8500 ft, it was in the 40s and raining. Thankfully, the organizers were handing out ponchos or I probably would have been hypothermic.

After walking most of the 15km uphill, I was anxious to run some to get the legs moving down the slopes into this alpine valley and get those splits down to make the cut off times. However, the left foot wasn't cooperating and while I did run quite a bit, it was with a healthy dose of Ibuprofen and guts to make it happen. After a few kilometers of that, the trail turns up again and gains nearly 600 feet in about a mile. (Average about 15-20% grade.) Wow that was hard. 

Going down the backside of it, was slippery and cautious but not too bad. I found a guy from Davos running his second marathon (K42 participant) and we ran together down hill for a few miles. Once we got into the valley, the rain stopped and the temperatures were pleasant again and I stopped to take the poncho off while he ran on. I power-walked most of the remaining 15K home with a 12-15 minute pace and managed to come in at 11:54. I'm certain if my foot wasn't so injured I could have trimmed an hour or more off it, but sub-12 ain't too shabby all considered. Meg finished about an hour infront of me, finishing her marathon in 6:36 and was waiting at the finish line for me with a big smile on her face.

Post-Race

After the race, Meg & I walked up the hill to our hotel room. Well, Meg shuffled and I hobbled. We grabbed a shower, ate some dinner in town, then passed out. At 6am the alarm went off so that we could finish packing to get back on the trains. We were in Geneva by 1:30 for our checkin, but the plane got delayed for 6 hours. Our 7pm arrival in Cairo turned into 4am, but everything made it in once piece. X-rays show the foot seems to be in intact and I will follow up with more medical care. 

Overall it was a great time, even with the foot issues, and I hate to say it, but I would consider doing a 50 miler again on the right course and without pre-existing injuries.