Marathon, Jen's Birthday

Carter's school had their big annual carnival on Saturday, with rides and booths and a giant stage with a video screen. Carter was due on stage with his tae-kwan-do group, but I had misunderstood the time (the Spanish for 12:30 and 2:30 sound very similar...dohsayeemehdio vs dohseemehdio). Luckily we wandered in just in time for Carter to hear the announcement and see his fellows going up on stage. I slapped his uniform on over his clothes and he slid in from offstage just in time for his routine. Afterwards, we had fun on the rides and even ran into a Peace Corps volunteer there to do a Frisbee Ultimate exhibition game.

Jen was registered for the Lima marathon on Sunday, but she was not the only one from Peace Corps. Several volunteers had trained at their sites and were all coming in to the city for it. We took the opportunity to have them all over for the pre-race carb loading, about 30 of them, with a big pasta dinner. Mariza had prepped several sauces and Jen made a couple of big pans of mac and cheese. In addition to serving them a taste of home with the macaroni, it was also fun to provide a taste of things impossible to get anywhere but at the embassy commissary: root beer, diet ginger ale, Nutter Butters and Fig Newtons. Perhaps sweetest of all was when the simple green salad came out and they all exclaimed "Vegetables!" I guess it's mostly starches out where they are stationed.



On a misty Sunday morning, Jen started the Lima marathon at 7am. It was also her 46th birthday. Carter and I rolled around Lima on the Trail-a-bike to watch, leapfrogging Jennifer's progress, and even riding with her for 5km. Most of the runners wore the official yellow race shirt, and it was fun to follow the route. The marathon itself is an illustration of the transition from old-Peru to new-Peru: the fact that Lima could be secure enough for an event like this is telling (particularly in light of the horror in Boston). At one big intersection where Carter and I waited, the tension between old and new was almost comically played out as the permanently honking traffic-snarl crossed the yellow river of runners. The police had it in hand, but at some points runners literally dodged cars. And it was more than simple frustration on those drivers' faces, it was incomprehension, like "What the hell is this?!" Lima is changing, but it's a slow process, one public work at a time, one public event at a time.



Jen ran well and the course isn't easy, with a long steady uphill at the end. After the finish, she felt pretty rough for a while but was buoyed by Maureen and Julio and Julito sweetly coming to the finish to congratulate her and wish her a happy birthday. We saw some of the other Peace Corps runners and hung around the finish line which, as with all marathons, is permeated by the good vibes of thousands of people proud of themselves and proud of each other. We finished Jen's birthday by getting her a burger and having a quiet movie night at home.