{"id":25670,"date":"2018-06-24T10:51:32","date_gmt":"2018-06-24T14:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/?p=25670"},"modified":"2018-06-24T10:51:32","modified_gmt":"2018-06-24T14:51:32","slug":"june-24-2018-the-27th-make-that-the-28th-annual-mt-kilimanjaro-marathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=25670","title":{"rendered":"June 24, 2018 – The 27th\u2026 Make That the 28th Annual Mt. Kilimanjaro Marathon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year Marie Frances forgot the bibs for the 27th<\/sup> Annual race so rather than let them go to waste, she used them for this, the 28th<\/sup> Anniversary event.\u00a0 Which is why my bib says I\u2019m running the 27th<\/sup> Anniversary event.\u00a0 There\u2019s no date on it so it\u2019s not a huge thing\u2026 and the race shirts, a white sorta cotton blend tee, have the right information.\u00a0 So, ya know, close enough.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure what to write here.\u00a0 There\u2019s a long, self-pitying but all-too-accurate piece I wrote in my head during the event that I\u2019m debating about putting \u201cout there.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m just not sure it\u2019s either interesting or useful to others.\u00a0 Perhaps it\u2019s just some self-discovery truth that should be kept on the inside.\u00a0 The truth is, this was a harder event than I thought it would be when we drove the course yesterday.\u00a0 There were two short hills I was mentally prepared for, if not exactly in peak physical condition given the prior week\u2019s climb shenanigans.\u00a0 But there was a long, gradual incline that just kept sapping my energy each loop, such that I was worn out by the cumulative effects of time, space, and distance.\u00a0 Again, I\u2019m not sure I\u2019m ready to go into what epiphany I had on the course\u2026 which wasn\u2019t really an epiphany and more of a confirmation of my fears.\u00a0 So I\u2019ll put a pin in this paragraph and hit the ol\u2019 carriage return to start a new thought.<\/p>\n

Do kids even know what a carriage return means?\u00a0 Is it like the 3.5\u201d Floppy Disk icon for saving a file when they have no idea what a floppy disk is anymore?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the starting line photo with 15 kids in front running a 5K or 10K and then a mixture of Marie Frances\u2019s foreign runners with locals<\/p>\n

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The locals were blazingly fast\u2026 though I kept up with them for the opening few feet.\u00a0 It helped that within three steps off the proverbial starting blocks, one runner cramped up and caused the kind of pile up that you\u2019d normally only see in a Michael Bay movie.<\/p>\n

Yeesh — That\u2019s a terrible turn of phrase.\u00a0 I hate it but I\u2019m too tired to try and fix it.<\/p>\n

I wound up not taking a whole lot of photos as my phone suffered from surprisingly high humidity and resultant sweat that made trying to slide to open the camera app akin to trying to walk in a straight line on the Yellow Brick Road.<\/p>\n

Seriously?\u00a0 This is just a terrible post.<\/p>\n

Anyway, here\u2019s some shots from along the way.\u00a0 Ed snapped my photo soon after the first turn around as he was hot on my heels, thus I tried to take some photos of my fellow Americans as we went round and round the loops.\u00a0 It took me a while to figure out I should be taking photo bursts to try and get at least one shot in focus, thus earlier attempts are more blurry and later ones suffer from humidity on the lens giving a lot of things that glowing soft focus you might see in pictorials of a soft-core nature\u2026<\/p>\n

Sweet Pete!\u00a0 What is up with me today?<\/p>\n

Anyhoo, a few guest stars on Run Kevin Run Dot Com:<\/p>\n

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And here\u2019s a few stories from the round:<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t enough water on the course, despite there being 10 water stops on the 10K loop.\u00a0 They just simply ran out\u2026 and I heard from Marie Frances later that she went out and bought more to restock as best she could.<\/p>\n

In my opening loop, I and a Tanzania runner were trading off positions as we came to an intersection.\u00a0 A motorcycle taking the turn onto our road nearly took us both out.\u00a0 The traffic cop manning the area tossed his nightstick at the fleeing bike to try and, I don\u2019t know?\u00a0 Do this?<\/p>\n