{"id":37784,"date":"2020-02-23T15:39:34","date_gmt":"2020-02-23T20:39:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/?p=37784"},"modified":"2020-02-23T15:40:33","modified_gmt":"2020-02-23T20:40:33","slug":"february-23-2020-the-zurich-maratona-de-sevilla-aka-the-seville-marathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=37784","title":{"rendered":"February 23, 2020 – The Zurich Maratona de Sevilla (AKA The Seville Marathon)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been here before… but not on foot.<\/p>\n

A lot of the Seville Marathon course followed the “Hop On, Hop Off” Bus Route of yore… with “yore” being specifically yesterday.\u00a0 It would’ve been fresh in my head anyway… but because I had actively sought to be IN-active yesterday, I actually rode the HoHo twice… once in the morning and once in the afternoon.\u00a0 It was a 24-hour pass and had I finished the race faster I might have been able to squeeze in a third ride… albeit I suspect it would’ve been a truncated tour given that the roads were jammed with marathon paraphernalia.<\/p>\n

Two German fellows, Arten and Oliver, arrived at the AirBNB yesterday to run this morning so we all walked down together.\u00a0 I said I knew where we were going as I had walked it on Friday… but I was still relieved when we came across other runners going in the same direction.\u00a0 I didn’t want to be responsible for leading the Germans astray.<\/p>\n

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It’s always a little surreal running in a foreign country when you don’t speak the language… I was yelled at repeatedly by security guards for apparently going the wrong way, something their words didn’t click for me but their tone and flailing hand gestures made abundantly clear.\u00a0 To be fair, there weren’t any signs, and I just happened to wander down to the start line… unaware that the countless other runners doing it were doing so without regard to the rent-a-cop’s warnings.\u00a0 And when I tried to then exit back the way I had come, I was again yelled at … I guess he wanted me to go straight down the now-barricaded course even though there was literally no reason for doing that.\u00a0 But I can’t say I blame foreigners not exactly loving the Americans at the moment.\u00a0 Hell, I was kinda glad my nationality got messed up in registration and my bib had a Spanish flag on it rather than the stars and stripes.\u00a0 I love my country… I just don’t love what’s happening at the top governmental levels at the moment.<\/p>\n

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Anyhoo, I made it to the start by following the crowds… not the crowds going the way I had been going but the crowds going parallel to the way I had been going but on the other side of the median… which I could only access by effectively going all the way back to the beginning, a human-sized version of “Sorry!”\u00a0 Again, whatever, man.\u00a0 I’m not bitter.\u00a0 Maybe just a pale ale as opposed to an IPA.\u00a0 Is that right, beer aficionados?\u00a0 I’m not a big beer guy.\u00a0 Ask me the gradations of Diet Soda and I’m just huckleberry; ask me about wines and I can tell you if it’s red or white; ask me if it’s beer, I can usually just tell you, “meh… not for me.”<\/p>\n

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As for the race itself, I was feeling the phantom-shark-bite throughout most of the opening miles… but it kidna settled down as the day wore on.\u00a0 I felt the ball of my foot a bit more… and just a general exhaustion that comes from jetlag.<\/p>\n

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Hey, look!\u00a0 It’s the Torre de Oro!\u00a0 And the Bullring!<\/p>\n

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Like a Spike Lee commercial of old, it’s gotta be the shoes.\u00a0 I think my expensive walking around shoes, which have special orthopedic insoles I got from a podiatrist one time, are not helping.\u00a0 These $30 Chinese produced red shoes I first bought as a pair for my Greatest American Hero costume and now buy in bulk from Amazon seem to work better for running.\u00a0 Maybe I should get a pair for walking around in.\u00a0 I often subscribed to a friend’s advice that cheap things no good and good things no cheap… but these shoes seem to be the exception that proves the rule.<\/p>\n