My experiences running in Nicaragua

I am a runner. Perhaps a reluctant, extremely lazy runner, but it's a big part of me, which I haven't attended to particularly well in the last few years, but am trying to rediscover. Given my tendency to be a little bit too intense and possibly masochistic, after running every now and then during training without much enthusiasm or drive, I decided that I would motivate myself by training for a 1/2 Marathon which basically goes straight up Volcan Concepcion on the Island of Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. Whether this was a good or completely insane idea remains to be seen, but you will certainly hear the story either way.

Definitely one thing that's changed about my personality here, and I'm not sure if it's a good one, is that I am sometimes paralyzingly worried about what other people are thinking about me, whereas in the US, especially when living in a place like Boston, I could not have been less interested. Running is a weird thing here. No one really does it. A lot of women go walking, but running, except for people on sports teams, is not the norm. It makes sense: people here have enough physical labor in their lives, even if they don't do farm labor. (See my descriptions of clothes washing for example). So for a while, I didn't go running because I was afraid of weirding people out especially since no-one does things by themselves here. But then during training, I became really stressed out from not having a physical outlet, so I decided it needed to happen. Obviously, running tends to attract some stares, occasionally catcalls (although I don't get catcalled here as much as in Carazo) and stares from dogs. You know you are a freak when the animal kingdom is judging you. It's sort of like a natives confronting Spanish conquistador, worlds colliding what-is-that-thing kind of moment, except instead of wearing armor, I am wearing crappy pants, am dripping with sweat,  and am shockingly red faced. (I've been watching a lot of movies about Columbus lately)

To avoid scaring everyone too much, I have a system: I walk through the center of the town, but then run once I get to the limits of the major settlement. Sort of like how Medieval madmen were perfectly free to roam outside the city limits, I keep my crazy behavior just outside public scrutiny.

San Miguelito is actually pretty ideal for running, with a nice paved 5 mile road and some other paths around to break up the monotony. I suppose I could run through people's fields too, but I'd like to know a little bit more about local standards for the acceptability of trespassing before engaging in that sort of thing. There are a lot of hills that are pretty unavoidable which is great conditioning, especially given the volcano race, but there are also a fair number of sports fields/flat cleared out areas that I can warm up on. It's gorgeous, beautiful trees and birds, and fields, and glimpses of Lake Nicaragua and far off mountains from the tops of the hills. The best part of running is that it is the only time of my day when it is quiet. There is birdsong and nothing else. And we're not talking about rooster song. Glorious. There's also the lake to swim in, which helps with cross training.

There's definitely been a bit of a learning curve. Top lessons: Running after 8 am is a bad idea (too hot), running after 4 pm on weekends is definitely a bad idea (groups of men drinking), running past dogs is a big no-no (chase instinct), running in humid weather is not my favorite but the alternatives are worse...and so on.

Trying to explain to people why I run has been difficult. Everyone tends to assume that I am worried about my weight, and am running to lose weight. I'm not sure if I've gained weight here actually, especially since I didn't have a mirror for 3 months of training, much less a scale, but I was starting to feel less strong. So this is definitely part of the reason. If I continue to eat as much fat as is currently in my diet without exercising, I'm pretty sure I would be shaving years off of my life expectancy unnecessarily. It's awesome that people have a bigger bodied vision of what beauty is here, but I'm not particularly keen on having to lug around a big ole panza.  And as culturally foreign as it might be in terms of women's body types, I would like to be strong and muscular and kick-ass.

 Really though, the biggest reason I like to run is what I call the running-caffeine- sleep un-virtuous cycle. Didn't go for a run? Jittery Emily cannot sleep. After a night of crappy sleep, sad un-endorphinated Emily goes for her backup addiction, caffeine, in an attempt to not spend the entire day like a useless zombie. Which leads to another night of bad sleep, with a wake up time after the 8 am cut off time for running without dying of heat stroke, which leads to more caffeine and soon things are very bad indeed. Trying to explain this would be sort of complicated, so I've just been letting everyone assume that I am obsessed with losing weight and leaving it at that.