São Paulo Brazil International Marathon: June 6, 2007

After a nine hour overnight flight I woke up in South America marveling at the ability to fall asleep on a runway in New York,and wake up in a new hemisphere. It was pouring rain when I arrived in São Paulo, and riding into the city I saw a massive, gray expanse with towers of buildings spreading out in no coherent organization. Coming from New York where the grid structure and island density form a striking and condensed skyline, huge cities like Tokyo and São Paulo seem to spread out forever. I checked into my hotel and set off to “explore,” i.e. try to find registration and my “race kit.” Given my inherent inability to read maps and follow directions in the city I live in, I knew this might take channeling the spirit of Magellan to navigate a huge new place. I was expecting the Vice President of In the Running Dana Worth to join me in his capacity as unofficial coach, photographer, logistics coordinator, In the Running ambassador, and general guru of all things logistics…but his flight was even more delayed than mine so I was on my own the first day.

I did not expect to see many other Americans since the registration website was entirely in Portuguese. When I originally tried to register, I ended up having to make up a Brazilian social security number, Brazilian address, and no offense to my boyfriend, but thought about maybe even making up a Brazilian husband to expedite the registration process. I left for São Paulo not 100 percent sure that I was officially registered for this thing…but sure that I will someday be audited by the Brazilian equivalent of the IRS after making up my Brazilian identity.

I wandered around the third largest city in the world, using a mixture of Portuguese, Spanish and English to find the registration site. While wondering, I stumbled upon a track meet with elite runners and students. They were even running a steeplechase (a two mile race based on an equestrian event with large hurdles and a water pit), which was my favorite event in high school and college. After the diversion, I found my kit and confirmed that I was in fact registered and one of very few Americans in the race. In the weeks prior to my trip I had been exchanging emails with another marathoner named Anri, who is also trying to run seven marathons on seven continents, and happens to live Sao Paulo. She and her husband Dave were nice enough to host me for a delicious pasta dinner at their home in São Paulo. Fully carbo-loaded I returned to the hotel to get to sleep in preparation for race day!

I was expecting rain but woke up to perfect marathon conditions on June 3rd: cool, breezy, and shady. Dana had finally finagled his way on a flight to Brazil, and we set off for the starting line in matching In the Running Brazil shirts. The starting line was in São Paulo’s biggest and nicest park (still no match for Central Park though). The race was very well organized- in fact probably the best organized of my international marathons to date. We had timing chips, were organized at the start by starting time, Petrobras had plastered its logo everywhere as an official race sponsor and there were plenty of port o potties at the start (the real test of organization in my opinion). The start was a colorful array of different tents for all the running clubs and teams, which clearly dominate the Sao Paulo running scene. Dana and I originally hoped one of the clubs would adopt us…but we quickly realized that this would not be the case and took a seat on the curb to wait for the start. Worried about the water situation, I once again wore my water bottle belt as a precautionary hydration measure and like in Beijing, the locals thought this was the funniest thing they had ever seen. One guy actually indicated his belief that they were weapons or grenades, and then made a disapproving comment in Portuguese. The only word I caught from his tirade was “George Bush.”

The gun finally went off and I felt great. If there’s one thing I respect about running marathons, it’s that the marathon is always in control, not you. This is what makes them so risky and challenging. You can train for months…and then just have a twitch in your muscle, a bug in your stomach, or just wake up on the wrong side of the bed and have a rotten day (my experience in a marathon in Cincinnati, Ohio). Or on the other end of the spectrum, you can miss a few of your training runs…but feel supercharged on race day and just gut it out to a great performance (my experience in the New York Marathon). Usually it’s somewhere in between, but there are so many little factors that aggregate over the course of such a long race that any one factor can end up controlling the day. International marathons also present the challenges of jet lag, strange food, language barriers, stress over registration, and in my case, walking all over a city the day before the race to check out a cool new place!

I started out the race in São Paulo and inexplicably lost my respect for the authority of the marathon. I was feeling good, confident in my training, and wanted to PR (personal record). What I didn’t notice was that the 10K runners and 5K runners started the race behind the marathoners, were passing us, and increasing the overall pace in the early miles. What I also didn’t notice was that there were some very aggressive down hills in the early sections of the race.

I chugged along quickly until mile 13 when I started to feel things start to tighten up a bit. I ignored it and did a little fist-pump at mile 13.1 because this represented the half-way point of my seven continent quest…only 3.5 marathons to go at this point! I thought the pain I was feeling would be temporary but pretty soon that familiar total body shutdown started happening. I couldn’t believe it…I was hitting the wall at mile 14! I can run 14 miles no problem any day of the week during the course of a normal run at home. I immediately realized my error- in my eighth marathon I had made the novice mistake of going out too fast. By the half-way point my legs were trashed from a fast early pace, successive down hills, a long flight with little sleep 24 hours before, and an increasing temperature. It was a long way home to the finish line from there, especially getting passed by people who were smart enough to preview the race course and not go out to fast. I just couldn’t lift my legs. My mind and breathing were strong…but the engines were overheated!

I stumbled along enjoying the race course despite carrying what felt like leaden legs. São Paulo in general is a car culture that is very congested and difficult to get around. From talking to others, I knew this going in, but ultimately choose São Paulo over Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, or Santiago because I thought it would give me insight into a mysterious and hard to access place, in addition to the requisite scheduling complications that result from a job at a finance firm and a desire to take a lot of days off to run around the world. South America was actually the most difficult continent on which to pick a marathon. It has fewer marathons than any other continent (Antartica excluded, of course). One of the parts of running international marathons that I like the most is the intimate and unique view it gives you of the host city. In São Paulo, we passed through the University and a few parks, and to be honest, more highway tunnels than I would have liked. ,Crowd support was sporadic but devoted. At long last I approached the finish line where Dana told me I looked great (a blatant lie) and cheered me through the finish chute along with Anri and Dave.

I crossed the line in 3:52 happy to be 1. finished and 2. under four hours - not always a sure bet in an international marathon! I felt much better than after the Kilimanjaro finish and didn’t have to lie on the ground in pain for an hour recovering from heat and dehydration. After a hard-earned post-race lunch I said goodbye to Sao Paulo, spent two more days of semi-relaxation exploring nearby environs in Brazil, and returned to New York for a hot and muggy summer of morning training runs!

Next up is Ireland. It’s going to be awesome. We’re going to spend the summer working on awareness and fundraising for In the Running (oh and I’ll be training of course). Dana debuts with his first half-marathon in Park City, Utah August (did I mention everyone at In the Running is starting to run?), and then he’ll be running for ITR in the half-marathon in Antarctica next March. We have officially partnered with our sponsored organization in Ireland to produce an ITR team and weekend of events for the Dublin Marathon. Let’s just say in Ireland we’re definitely going to put the “Guinness” into Guinness Book of World Records Holder…stay tuned and contact us if you want to get involved!