Accra International Marathon and Half Marathon…

Every half marathon I’ve ever run (that would be 21 to be exact) has been extremely well organized… no matter the number of people, the location, and the weather, the race crew is on top of everything allowing for us runners to be smooth sailing (or rather smooth running) for the duration of the race.

The Accra International Marathon and Half Marathon is great in the terms of cross cultural education, teaching Ghanaians that other nationalities love to put their endurance to the test and run for 13.1 or 26.2 miles in grueling conditions assuming that the race crew will be there for full support. It taught us patients, and was a good reminder that we are in still in Africa (yes we still sometimes need reminders after a year).

Six Ghana PCV’s decided to run the race… 5 running the half (not willing to subject ourselves to pure insanity), and one lucky contestant running the whole marathon (purely insane). Some of us started the training months ago, and others just decided the week before to run. The day before the race we all gathered in Accra to get our ‘race packets’ (just a bib and t-shirt… although I was running to just get the shirt). We were invited over to our Country Director’s house for an amazing carbo-loaded dinner of pasta, homemade sauce, bread with real butter, salad and Rice Krisppy treats for dessert. Purely amazing American-ness to gear us up for race day.

Our alarms went off a bit to early as we were told that the shuttle bus to get to the race start would leave at ten till five, for a 6 am race start. The taxi that we pre arranged to take us to catch the shuttle was right on time (a bit out of the norm), and we arrived to catch the shuttle to find no shuttle waiting. Some lady from the race crew said that she would give us a ride in her car, yet she had no idea where the start to the half marathon actually was (we still had plenty of time, but I was getting rather nervous). Eventually we find the start, and the waiting begins till the race starts.

There are no bathrooms, and no other people waiting for the race… everything is just a bit out of place, but hey this is Ghana. We find out that there was no shuttle, so we are lucky that we caught a ride with the lady, and we start to beg for someone to take us to a gas station with a toilet, otherwise there is going to be a lot of us OD (open defecating) at the race start.

6:00 comes and goes, and there are still hardly any people. 6:30 rolls around and the guys that are racing in wheelchairs arrive along with some random shuttle filled with other racers. And 6:40 the gun goes off while we are all still talking and not expecting the race to start.

1 hour and 53 minutes later I finished the race to be greeted with oranges and freshly cracked open coconuts. The sky was clear and the sun was shinning with such intensity that I was nervous for all the marathon runners that I knew were probably still 2 plus hours out. I was 10^th women over-all to finish (not sure our of how many). And completely stoked to have run a race in Africa (it just sounds so cool to say.)

the runners