It was hot when we touched down in Managua, like
outrageously hot. For a pasty English boy coming in from Colorado, the
potential for a meltdown at the weekend's
Fuego y Agua 100km run on the
twin-conned volcanic island of Ometepe was significant.
In Managua, I met up with
Yassine Diboun and Dave James, in addition to a
couple of others who would be participating in the Survival Run, a 70km event with a host of natural obstacles and challenges that needed to be overcome in addition to the running.
The day after our arrival in Managua we were off to Ometepe
where the pace of life was serene, the brews were flowing, and the hot tropical sun was tempered ever so slightly by a pleasant lake breeze. A short
run after lunch on a sandy dirt track confirmed that, yes, indeed, it was
incredibly hot. The views of Concepcion, the largest and most symmetrical of
the isalnd’s two volcanoes, were huge and somewhat intimidating. Not intimidating because of the size and grade of the vertical
relief necessarily, but more because of the strength of the sun and the exposed nature of
the slopes.
Life on the ground moved slowly. Elderly ranchers on
horseback looked on in a bemused manner as our little crew of lunchtime runners
dodged cows, horses and dogs in the lane. Meanwhile trash and slash piles would
smolder gently, releasing an odor that comes to typify the nose space of
Nicaragua, and one that exists thanks to the non-existent garbage collection
services in the country.
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| Yassine checking out a burn in Managua. Sharmanator |
Some good meals, more than a few Tonas – Nicaragua’s omnipresent
brew of choice – and all of a sudden, alarms are blaring telling me that
it’s three O’clock on Saturday morning: time to race. My roommates for the trip
– Dave James and Alex Kurt – are milling around performing their pre-race
rituals: some nip lubing here, some pocket stuffing there and sunscreen
slathering everywhere. Dave has come in from a stage race in Costa Rica a
couple of weeks before and is sporting an Adonis-like tan so opts for the topless racing option. Ginger-Alex and I on the other hand favor more
modest racing attire as we prepare for a day battling the tropical sun.
In terms of participant numbers, the race is really quite
small. Between the 50k, the 100k and the Survival Run there aren’t much more than a hundred starters lined up for the 4:00am start; nonetheless, the race is a big deal
for Nicaragua, and for the island’s businesses especially this is one of the
busiest and most important weekends of the year. For Josue and Paula, the race
organizers, the challenges of pulling off the four events are significant to say the very least.
Given the incredibly relaxing pace of island
life to this point I have little to no anxiety as I
stand on the start line waiting for the starting gun. Quite comically, the
survival runners start their day carrying a chicken for the first five
miles, and not surprisingly they are all immediately left behind as the race
gets underway. Alex, Dave,Yassine, myself and a few others form a lead pack as
we head out of town, working together to find course markings in the dark of
night. We roll on the sandy dirt track we had previewed a few days previously,
enjoying the mild pre-dawn temperatures as we settle into a steady race rhythm.
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| Race start: Sharmanator |
After four to five miles of dirt road we find ourselves on
the brick road that circles the island connecting the volcanoes and surrounding
towns; it is a road that we will see intermittently throughout the day. A few
faster paced miles on the road and then it is a right turn onto a rocky
dirt road heading down to the beach. Dave is up ahead being molested by
dogs, I’m stumbling around kicking rocks, while Yassine and
the others have chosen to take their foot of the accelerator in anticipation of
the long, hot day ahead. As Dave and I hit the beach for the first time, the
sun is still yet to come up, and it continues to be something of a struggle to
find the course markings. A couple of miles down the beach and we hit a dead
end with an unmarked dirt road heading off the left. Dave wants to take it, but
I’m pretty sure we’ve missed a turn. A couple of islanders on horseback come
trotting by and after a broken conversation and much gesticulation it is
semi-confirmed that I am right. Not long thereafter, a Guatemalan runner
catches up to us and fully confirms after a brief conversation with the locals
that we are indeed too far down the beach. Kindly, the herders lead us to the
turn we should have taken some 15 minutes earlier.
Getting off course has become such a regular occurrence in
my racing history that I’m barely phased by the turn of events. I’m running through a
banana plantation on a volcanic island in a country that I’ve never visited
before: life is pretty damn good and by crickey I’ve got all day to catch back
up to those that passed through while we were wandering around on the beach.
Dave seems a little more anxious however and
I can sense that he wants to catch back up as quickly as possible after
being informed by locals coming the other way that we’re about five runners
back. So, after a mile of faster-paced running I let Dave get on with it,
slowing back down to my all-day pacing effort.
It is still dark as I pass through the aid station at the
Ojo de Agua natural spring on the isthmus connecting the two volcanoes. Coming
out of Ojo, I am soon back on the brick road and almost as soon I am
accompanied by
Ian Sharman who is squeaking around the race course on a rented
and beaten up old pedal bike. Sunlight is just starting to illuminate the
shoulder of Maderas, our first volcano of the day, and I can see that it is
shrouded in a dense cloud above about 1,000 feet. Ian shoots a couple
of pictures before I am quickly directed back onto the beach for a couple of
the most stunning miles of running that I’ve ever had the pleasure of enjoying.
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| Pic: Sharmanator |
The sun is now breaking over the horizon behind Maderas, I
am running on sand beautifully packed down by the gently breaking lake waves,
while headed straight for a lush and mysterious volcano obscured by a cloud of its own making with the
sounds of monkeys and tropical birds pulling me in. Even better, I will soon be climbing
4,500 feet of vertical relief to the caldera at the top of the volcano; I can’t
help but holler out in joy. I can see Dave a third of a mile ahead up the beach, but I’m
not sure if I can make out any other runners beyond that. Either way I am not in
the least bit concerned as I figure I’ll make up plenty of ground on the
ascent.
Soon after being directed off the beach I make a left turn
which marks the beginning of the Maderas climb. It begins on a wide double
track trail, which quickly leads to the Porvenir aid station. I take my time hydrating at the aid, as I've decided to maintain the one-bottle
MBS Twitch setup that I’ve been using up until now, so I can keep both hands free to help
with the steep, slippery and rooted climb ahead. As I pull out, I’m surprised
to hear that the lead pack of five is just two minutes ahead and running as a
group.
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| Ah, yes. Pic: Sharmanator |
Immediately upon exiting the aid station, the terrain becomes
very rocky, and no more than a kilometer up the mountain I take my first – but
by no means last – digger of the day on what would end up being an unusually clumsy
run for me. Just below cloud level before hitting the jungle proper there are a
couple of metal benches set out, so I take the time to look back to check out
the views of the isthmus and the lake, which predictably enough are gob-smackingly stunning. I roar again and the monkeys yell back; good god this is fun.
No more than a fifth of the way into the climb I catch sight
of Sean Meissner, with Yassine a quarter mile ahead of him. I quickly go past
Sean but lose sight of Yassine as we re-enter the thick canopy. Then I hit a junction,
make a wrong turn, run out of trail, retrace my steps, make the correct turn and
then five minutes later re-pass a bemused Sean. Ho hum. The trail has really
steepened up by this point and it‘s into full-on, hands-on-knees power-hike mode.
It takes me another 20 minutes to pick up Yassine again, and
as always he is in great spirits clearly enjoying his morning as much as I am.
He lets me by but matches my pace, so we work up the mountain together checking
out the monkeys and relishing this wonderful experience. As we ascend, the air
thickens with moisture and the ground turns to mud, while the roots become
somewhat treacherous underfoot. As we go past Jamil Coury, running in the 50k
race, I decide to err on the side of caution and let Yassine take off while I watch him put his northwest
mud running chops to good use.
After some good slogging, I hit the rim of the crater and
drop into the caldera marveling at the dense forest and beautiful crater lake.
Yassine is just pulling out of the caldera aid area as I slide in. I take my
time hydrating, filling my bottle and chomping on fruit and chocolate, all the
time eyeing the bottle of rum quietly calling to me from the tree branch it is
set up on. I think better of it and scuttle up the other side of the crater in
search of Yassine. At a break in the trees on some good exposed rock I catch
back up and once again Yassine and I navigate together seeking the rim and the
traverse section through the aptly named 'jungle gym.'
The roots and branches up here are so thick there is zero
hope of running. We are now crawling, jumping, swinging and ducking our away along
the course; once again the fun level is raised to new highs. It takes some time to work our
way through the thick, thick canopy but eventually we begin to descend and once
again I let Yassine do his thing through the higher elevation slip and slide
terrain. I am grabbing onto branches with every step to stay upright,
negotiating massive step downs cautiously and beginning to wish for dry trail.
After about 1,500 feet of descent things dry out enough that I finally regain
some confidence in my foot placements and begin to let it roll.
Nearing the bottom of the steep stuff, I catch back up to
Yassine and once again we go stride for stride on our way to the 50k turnaround
on the beach at ‘monkey island.’ We see Nick Coury coming back at us as we
approach the 50k finish, followed a couple of minutes later by Dave. We roll in
a full six minutes behind Nick, 5:15 into the race after taking just under three hours to negotiate Maderas. The sun by now is high enough in the sky that
the morning has become legitimately hot and it is clear that the remainder of
this race will mostly be about heat management and dogged perseverance. Running
in this kind of heat and humidity is rarely pretty and almost never fast. I
pick up a second bottle, chomp on a banana, hydrate aggressively and then get
back to it.
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| 50k Finish, 100k turn. Pic: Sharman |
Running out of Medina, the small town we are now in, there is absolutely
nowhere to hide from the sun, but Yassine and I seem to both be rolling well,
surging past each other every ten minutes as our staggered sugar highs kick in
gel hit after gel hit. Within two miles we are already reeling in Nick, and
then another mile down the road Dave comes into sight. He stops at the turn we
had made to get on Maderas earlier in the morning amid a bit of confusion with the course
directions. The four of us regroup and figure out that we’re supposed to head straight
to the beach, and soon we are back on that beautifully hard packed sand running
away from the volcano with the sun at our back.
The Survival runners are there heading towards Maderas
dragging or floating logs along the beach as one of their additional
challenges. Meanwhile Yassine and I begin to build a lead at the
front of the field. Again, our pacing is somewhat erratic and we surge on and
off with the spikes in our blood sugar. I begin to crave the natural pool at
the Ojo de Agua spring that is now just a few miles down the track. We pull off the
beach, run a mile of road, return through the cow pasture, jig through the
banana plantation and then jump into the gloriously cool Ojo pool. I take my
time, making sure to really bring down my core body temperature. This allows
Dave to catch back up, and he and Yassine get out of the aid station a good
minute or two before me. Again, I am not concerned.
Leaving Ojo I find myself back on the brick road, really
quite unsure where exactly I am headed. I can see Concepcion off in the
distance, but have no idea how long it will take to get there or indeed what
the route will be. It takes about 20 minutes to catch back up to Dave, and
another 10 to pick up Yassine. Dave is not interested in latching onto my pace,
but Yassine and I once again fall into the same funky rhythm we’ve been hitting on and off since the turnaround, surging past each other all the way to the next town down
the road. There is a small aid station set up in a little park and again I
hydrate aggressively, eating fruit and letting Yassine take off first.
I figure that the Concepcion climb is nearing so plan on trying to build a real lead there. As it turns out, I would pass Yassine once and for
all a few minutes past the aid station and he would end up calling it quits at
the next aid station due to kidney pains that thankfully turned out not to be
serious. The road to La Flor, the penultimate aid station, is one that I am in
no hurry to ever see – let alone run on – again; in fact, I’m pretty sure that it’s
the dictionary definition of ‘endless.’ Slogging away on this beastly road in
the intense late-morning sun with shade to be found nowhere, the runner has a view of
Concepcion that somehow never seems to get any closer. I am now reduced to a
pathetic shuffle desperately trying to conserve what little energy and drive I
have left for the 3,000 foot climb up to the aid station on the shoulder
plateau of the Concepcion ridge that I am endlessly being taunted by.
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| Aid station location is on the hump. Sharman |
Finally, and I do mean finally, the aid station
materializes. I check the watch and note that I’m 7:18 into the run, meaning
that I have 3 hours and 40 minutes to get up, down and back into town if I am
to breach the 11 hour barrier that I have arbitrarily set for myself as a time
goal. But I’m not that motivated. It’s just too hot to find motivation and that
section of road has almost sapped me of my will to live. I am just thankful
that the racing aspect of the run appears to be over. Nonetheless, the change
of grade – from gradual to ridiculous – on Concepcion is welcome, as is the
canopy and breeze, so I steadily make my way up the mountain and to the ridge
aid station where I am welcomed by a very strong wind. I take some time to get
in a couple of oranges and bananas, somewhat dreading the very steep descent
down the mountain in the direction of Moyogalpa and the finish line, which is clearly
visible from this great vantage point on the volcano. In my tired state, it
looks ridiculously far away.
The descent is loose, steep and incredibly bruising. The
course transitions back into the trees, onto singletrack, then doubletrack, I
see a house, two, trash on the side of the road, concrete, town, the finish
line banner … oh, thank the sweet baby Jesus. I cross in 10:35 for a new course
record, but find more satisfaction in the cold Tona that is promptly thrust
into my hand. My post-race stomach is in unusually fine fettle and I eat a
slice of pizza, drink another beer and then just like that I am back to reality
and loving life again.
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| Pic: Sharman |
Thank you Josue, Paula, and everyone on the island of
Ometepe. Agua Y Fuego is a truly unique event that is about so much more than
racing 25, 50, 75 or 100 kilometers; it’s about community, bridging cultures
and promoting travel opportunities in a beautiful country with a very kind heart.
Go visit Nicaragua! You’ll be glad you did.
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| Tona! Pic: Amy Perez (International Superstar) |
Gear:
First Endurance Trucker Hat
Black Diamond Spot Headlamp
Fuel:
6-7 x oranges
4-5 slices watermelon
2 slices pineapple
10-11 cups of Tang
Bottle
Ultragen post race
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| Paula, myself, Jamil, Alex, and Nick hanging at the 100k finish. Sharman. |
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| At packet pickup. Sharman. |
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| Ferry ride over. HAIR! Pics: Yassine |
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| Checking out Ometepe |
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| Killing time waiting (all day) for a ferry that never came. Pic: Margaret Schlacter |
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