I’m a handful of subjects behind in the recaps department. My apologies, although we’ve not been asleep on the job. Maya’s deep into her school soccer tryouts (6am start for today’s practice). We’ve endured more than our fair share of Addis-y reality curveballs (e.g. who knew ATMs could re-boot and swallow a card mid-transaction?). Sarah pulled serious stage time at this year’s meeting for the Ethiopian Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ESOG). Ethiopia finally put their national election on the calendar (in soggy late August…more on this in my next post). So there are various stories to spiel out, as we roll by our “six months abroad” signpost.
Before doing most of that a solid, I’ll revisit a recent road race. And our continuing love for running in Ethiopia.
The Hawassa Half Marathon was the Sunday before last. Pardon the end zone dance - it went extremely well for us and our training partners. We endured enough high-altitude training on the weekends and dusty, gritty city runs to cross the line uninjured and satisfied. Running’s always been more than just exercise for me. It allows the time and often enough a crystalline view of the places through which we’re traveling. The time we’ve spent running in and around Addis allowed me to measure more than my physical progress along the way. It provides the link needed to make sense of more than just the road ahead.
Look no further than the title we chose for this family blog - Living Entoto. To restate the somewhat obvious, it was inspired by our first trip to Ethiopia just over a year ago and our first run on the trails surrounding Mount Entoto. On that first visit last February, our friends, Melissa and Margot, introduced Sarah and me to the hills around Addis. As luck would have it, they took us along on their last high altitude training run before last year’s Hawassa Half Marathon. We were hooked immediately. When we moved here in August with Maya and a useful sliver of our worldly possessions, the runs continued and a plan formed to get down to Hawassa for the next one. Melissa, Margot and their husbands (Jay and Mark, respectively), formed the core of our Sunday running group. Others came along. Our marathoner superhero guide, Mezgebu Alemu Molla, and Margot and Mark’s dog, Pluto, led the weekly charge up into the verdant, challenging hills around Addis. If it were logistically possible, I would be up there daily. Nonetheless, it is where I live and breathe deeply while here, for a short stretch almost every Sunday. Long after we’re gone, a part of me will continue living vicariously up there.
The pics below (currently) offer a confusing mash-up of the past year’s runs, with a heavy dose of Hawassa race-weekend images included. I’ll try to sort it out. Or maybe just leave the muddle unsorted (especially since Squarespace has some bugs and Ethiopia’s internet is utter trash as of late). Please pardon my redundant eye and re-posted faves. So goes the slideshow of a distance runner with an iPhone in his hand.
To do things justice, I’ll lay out a bit more of our Hawassa trip. I won’t be offended if you jump forward to the pics and skip the shtick. There’s always more to say about the training process and race days. Fair warning if you ever engage a runner on that hobby - you’ll get what might seem a step-by-step recap of the miles covered. This won’t be that kind of “and then my nipples started to bleed…” recap. Because that would be a lie. We all crossed the line mercifully free of such contusions and unmentionably grody stuff.
Hawassa is a city of around 300,000 that lies in the southern Rift Valley, about 270km from Addis. It’s the youngest city in Ethiopia (planned and built under Haile Selassie’s rule in the late-1950s). It had been known as Awasa previously, and it lies on the shores of Lake Hawassa in a cluster of large, shallow-ish bodies of water teeming with angry hippos, freshwater fish and freakishly unique bird species by the dozens. The elevation of Hawassa is about half that of Mount Entoto, but still lies higher than all but the tippiest tops of Denver (around 1700m or 5600 feet for both places). I’d heard of Hawassa thanks to its recently built industrial park, which inspires much debate (check back for a later post on the soft goods trade in Ethiopia and how a luxury goods industry CEO back in America clued me in on what happens in Hawassa). Hawassa is also known as the location of the first hotel started by Ethiopia’s most famous and charismatic Two-time Olympic Gold Medalist and World Champion runner, Haile Gebrselassie’s. The opening of that hotel - just known as the Haile Resort - coincided with the first running of the Hawassa Half Marathon back in 2010. This year’s installment was the 9th running of the Hawassa races (now a 21 km, a 7 km, and a kids race). They didn’t have races in 2015 and 2016 when sponsor interest waned. The construction of the Hawassa Industrial Park, however, brought businesses hungry for good PR. TAL Apparel is the current main sponsor. They make dress shirts for 80 companies you definitely recognize. In fact, the last assistant manager you asked a question was wearing one. I’ll wait for a different post on the evolving biz of manufacturing in Ethiopia to make more jokes in that vein.
The race itself started early (6:30am), ran cleanly (aside from the occasional garbage fire along the route), and pleased us greatly with its results. Our whole training crew essentially came in at their challenging targets. I’ve shaved a decent pile of kilos off since arriving in Ethiopia - the equivalent of a full-grown male beagle. Yet we’re all a work in progress, striving toward something. As one running guide told me a few months back, “you’re fat, but strong.” Considering that he weighed less than I did in middle school, I took that as a compliment and largely ran with it.
Speaking for myself, a successful race in Hawassa leads to plans for what’s next. I’ll find out next week if I made the NYC Marathon lottery. That was my last marathon (back in 2016). If don’t get an entry in that one, maybe I’ll head back to the Twin Cities (Minnesota) Marathon. I ran that one back in 2010, as my second ever and a return to the idiocy of regular racing. Even though every marathon sucks mightily in its own way, I’m in. Thanks in no small part to running in Hawassa, and the training that got us there.
Without another race on our remaining calendar for Ethiopia, there’s (hopefully) still mile after high-altitude mile ahead. I certainly don’t head outside every day. Far from it, given the unforgiving nature of the city itself. Many days are spent on the treadmill in our upstairs gym…a luxury we still enjoy often…looking out at the AU Campus and toward the Entoto hills in the rising distance beyond. But I was out there before dawn this morning with my mental map of open manholes and avoidable yet still rabid-adjacent dogs. I did the math of what I have left here in hopes of getting myself ready for whatever marathon comes back in America this fall. Barring the unforeseen, I’ll run somewhere between 720 to 820 km (450 and 510 miles) before we hit the road for other travels in June. I don’t expect that I’ll run every one of those illusory kilometers or make them super special. Yet I’m thankful for every single one I’m able to complete here in Addis. Just like every single notch in that belt to come, somewhere down the road. Ciao.
