EDIT: I’ve posted pics from both Halloween and my trip to Athens to run the Marathon. Find them here:
http://gallery.deepgrey.net/Koubi/bulgaria_001/bulgarianexperience/
And here:
http://gallery.deepgrey.net/Koubi/bulgaria_001/parties/
At the moment I am sitting back home in my apartment in Zavet, Bulgaria, while taking taking a break from washing dishes. It’s 12:30 on a Friday and I just returned here yesterday night after an extra-long bus ride (we had mechanical problems apparently). It’s been a long, wonderful week. I can’t remember the last time I really felt this fulfilled, accomplished, and confident. Marathons are amazing. So is Athens. Hell, the way I feel right now, so am I.
The trip all started on Tuesday, October 31st. I was already in a great mood after having attended the annual Halloween party the weekend before, and I had the trip to Athens to look forward to as well. That day I had to go to Razgrad in order to pick up my new Lichna Karta. This is a Bulgarian identity card issued to permanent residents. As a long time worker, I get issued one every year. My old one expired on the 31st, so I had to get a new one or risk a fine and a lot of extra paperwork. I had applied a few weeks before, but had not received my promised phone call to inform me it was ready (typical Bulgarska rabota, or “Bulgarian work,” meaning style or method), so I was a little worried that it would not be there waiting for me, meaning I would have to go through the extra headache of having my passport stamped and getting a letter saying that I had applied but it wasn’t finished yet, blah blah blah. The good news is that it was ready. After lunch at the Italian place in Razgrad with John and Alana (two volunteers in that town), I got a bus to Sofia, as the next day I had a dentist appointment. On the way I called Ben, my buddy from Shumen who was in Sofia already for a conference, only to find he was backtracking himself because he forgot to renew his Lichna Karta and had to go back to his local immigration office to do all the stuff to make sure he wasn’t fined and possibly arrested. So that was a bummer, but I arrived in Sofia nonetheless and ended up going out with some other hostel guests to Murphey’s Irish Pub, where they had a live cover band for a Halloween party. It was fun, if not a little strange. I went home fairly early, in the end, as I knew I needed my rest.
The next day, Wednesday the first, I ended up going to watch the new film “The Departed” with another hostel guest at Arena West, a large, American-style, movie theatre in Sofia. It was a great film and I certainly recommend it. I was particularly impressed with Leonardo Dicaprio’s performance, but I also enjoyed seeing some personal favorites like Mark Wahlberg and Martin Sheen shine on the screen (no pun intended). Afterwards I went to my dentist appointment and essentially puttered around after. Eventually fellow PCV Tim showed up and we just hung out at the hostel while he worked on his SPA (Small Projects Assistance, a grant program within PC) proposal and we both warched the Narnia movie on TV. We both wen to bed fairly early.
On Thursday the second I really didn’t have much to do except go down to the PCHQ and drop off some stuff to my program office. While there I also hit up PC Medical for some aspirin to take the morning of the race and a spare knee brace (for my left knee), but ended up giving it to Tim because he needed it for his knee more than I did. After the office we all went out to a super-market to stock up on groceries for ther night-train to Athens. Andy and I also picked up some second hand clothes for cheap that we could wear at the marathon start and just throw away after we warmed up. After sending Tim and Andy away on their train I met up with some other volunteers in town for a VAC (Volunteer Action Committee, our reps to the PC administration) meeting and for the flight down to Athens the next day. We ate dinner at a pizza and pasta place that’s popular in Sofia before some of us went to “The Apartment,” a hip bar that is set up like an apartment, meaning you order from a fridge in a kitchen, sit on sofas, etc. We went there to meet up with my friend Margarita, who was entertaining a couple of Polish girls in town on an exchange (Margarita is Polish/Bulgarian and speaks both languages – as well as English and some German – and lives and both countries). Carey and I ended up finishing the night with the two Polish girls at Lucianno’s, a beer hall, before I decided it was bed time for me, as three days later I had a marathon to run.
This brings us to Friday the third, the day I was to fly to Athens. Unfortunately, that did not happen. I was incorrect about my flight time and by the time I double checked I was only able to make it to the airport in time to hear the last boarding call (this was before I had to go to a back-room, unmarked office to retrieve my paper ticket. So I missed my flight. I was very angry and hated myself for a few hours, but I bought a ticket for the night train and was on my way by 5:30pm anyway. The train was actually remarkably comfortable, and in the end all I missed was one an evening in Athens and about $50 for a train ticket, which in some ways could be seen as about how much money I would have spent on a night at the hostel and on going out with other marathoners anyway.
On Saturday morning I pulled into the Athens train station at about 6am or so and made my way to the hostel via the Athens Metro. It is impossible for me to praise how efficient this city’s public transportation services are. Buses are everywhere, there are metro stops all over the place, and it’s all supplemented by a tram service. I love it. Anyway, once at the hostel I puttered around for a few hours reading and trying to locate the others. I eventually ran into some, and we all went to the off-site studios operated by the hostel in order to have our pre-marathon meeting, where we were able to distribute our marathon gear that a couple of other volunteers picked up the evening before (bib, t-shirt, shoe-clip, etc.). After that some of us went up to the Acropolis and explored around. A few were concerned about doing any such physical activity before the race, so some stayed home and others did it as lightly as possible. Not me. After the Acropolis I went and climbed the muse hill too. At 4:00pm we all met to go to the opening ceremony in order to score the free food (all you can eat pasta) and see what was there to be seen. They had a cool ceremony, with a band, choir, etc., but there was too much Greek to really be interesting. The coolest part was a video shown of the marathon through the years. We all carbed-up and ate our fill before returning to our beds. I finished the night with a single beer with Ian, a Londoner running his 19th marathon in so many months who was in the next to mine in the hostel. He’s using marathons as a training scheme for running The Race in the Dessert, a gruelling, week-long run through the Moroccan Sahara.
The next morning it was game time. I woke at 5:00am to put on my marathon gear (briefs, track pants, socks, running shoes, long sleeve under-armour shirt, running shirt over it, bandanna, throw-away cap, throw-away sweat-shirt, throw-away scarf, runner’s gloves) and went down to breakfast, which was held early for the occasion. By 6 we were on our way to the 1896 Olympic Stadium to load up on the buses to marathon. The ride took forever. First we were all tired but also excited, so that didn’t help. Secondly, it’s a long way. Think about it. Busing 3,000 people 26 miles away in a caravan of buses through a densely populated area. We got there around 7:30am or so. It just got more exciting from there. After stretching, hydrating, and peeing all that we could, it was getting time to line up at the start. We had a group all together, but once that starting pistol went off it was each man for himself, at least for the time being. Then it happened: the pistol went off. We placed one foot in front of the other, something that some of us would be doing for a little over five hours straight. It had begun. We were running a marathon.
I quickly lost track of everyone else. First off you’re in a sea of 3,000 people, and everyone is running forward, and you have to consciously set your pace or else you’ll go too fast in the excitement and doom yourself to performing miserably after only a few more kilometers. Aside from the one guy I saw running way ahead of me during a section of the race that had runners doubling back, I saw no-one from my group until about half-way through, when I passed up Jack. For the first half of the marathon I felt really amazing. I had energy. I didn’t walk at all, I was setting a really good pace aside from all those damn stops to take a pee. I passed up kilometer markers with a smile on my face. 4K… 10K… 16K… By 21.1K I had passed up Jack and kept going, soon passing some others (who I would end up playing leap frog with constantly). Then at 30K, right when they say you will, I hit “the wall.” “The wall” is what marathoners call the moment that your body runs out of readily available energy that you have from having carbed-up the previous week and begins to consume energy from stored fat alone, a process much less efficient. Your energy level goes down, so start going slower, taking breaks to walk, and just feeling exhausted knowing you have another 10K+ to run. At 32K there was a large hill that seemed to go straight up into infinity. I know this was the last of the large uphills that I had been conquering easily since the 20K mark or so, but this one was different. This one came after the wall. I walked it. Then I rand downhill again, then I walked on the flats for a while, then I ran, and walked, and ran, and walked… The last 10K went on forever. I thought that they would never end, and that I was wasting so much time on them that I would never get a decent time. Finally I hit 40K… I started to get excited. Sure, I was still walking some (ok, a lot), but I had the knowledge that I was almost there, and I picked up my pace. By 41K I was running again exclusively. Then I saw it: the stadium. The one we had bussed from that very morning. I was almost at the finish line. The path is set up so that you have to pass the stadium and then double back. The entry way to the stadium is at exactly 42K this way, meaning that you only have .195K left to run… Only 200 meters… As I entered the stadium I was listening to KMFDM’s song “Ultra,” a track I saved specifically for this moment. If any song will give you the energy to run your guts out, it’s this one. After a few seconds I heard my marathon nick-name comeing from the side of the track. “Koubosse!!!” I looked left and saw Andy and Adrea, and who knows who else. It was time to go absolutely crazy. I ripped off my headphones, threw my arms up in the air, started screaming “WOOOO WOO WOO WOOOOO!!!!!!!!” at the top of my lungs and just bolted the last 150 meters or so at top speed. Apparently I startled other runners around me as I passed them up. The think the crowd responded with cheers, but I was too high on adrenaline, endorphins, and my own willer zur macht to know for sure. All I know is that a few seconds later I had crossed the finish line and it was over. I had run my marathon in 4 hours, 54 minutes, and 27 seconds, and I felt like a god.
A severely limping, weak, tired, and hungry god anyway. After a few moments of not-running I felt the pain start. I took some Ibuprofen immediately, but my knees, ankles, feet, and groin were all sore. Every part of my lower body that involved movement or stress absorption was begging for it all to stop. After turning in my shoe clip I put on a laurel wreath made the previous day, lit up my cigar which I saved for this moment, and cracked open a beer supplied by Ronda, Jack’s wife. Folks apparently thought this was rather too good to not get on film, and I posed with my post-marathon rewards for some people nearby. After a little while I noticed some girls from New Orleans who I met earlier and who had run the race for the city. I got a picture with them shortly before the last of our group crossed the finish line. After a couple of group photos it was time to eat. After a marathon eating is probably the thing your think about most, aside from the pain you’re feeling in your lower body. You’ve just run 26.2 miles, and all of your energy is gone. ALL of it. You need protein, carbs, amino acids, water, salt… Everything you had in you is gone. After a quick shower I put on my PCBulgaria marathon shirt, my medal, and my wreath to head out to the Hard Rock Cafe, Athens. We went there for one thing: burgers. Meat and bread. Protein and carbs. Add in chicken wings, potato skins, onion rings, and a milk shake and you have my meal. I could have eaten more. That night at the hostel I did eat more, buying a bowl of their soup and drinking beer. Beer is actually a wonderful post-marathon drink. It gives you carbs and, when paired with water and salts, helps you rehydrate your body by making the cycle run faster. Then I crashed.
Before moving onto Monday I want to say something about a marathon. It is 42.195 Kilometers of 26.2 miles. Many of you might not think this is too terribly long, thinking “hey, I’ve run ten miles, it was not that bad.” Well, you’re wrong. Yes, ten miles is easy, but that’s because it’s physically possible to store enough energy in you to run it before hitting the wall. It marathons were only 30K, for instance, they would be easy. Marathons are not easy. Marathons are difficult. To put the distance I ran into perspective, I want you to imagine you are in your car on a state highway. You are driving 52 miles an hour on cruise control. You do this for half an hour. That’s how far I ran. I ran the distance you would travel in a car going a decent speed for half an hour. Think about that. Then think about what your car does on cruise control when it hits a hill: it gives itself more gas. I had to take a lot of hills.
The next day I woke up sore and tired, but I couldn’t let that get to me. I had a field trip to go on. At 9:00am we got breakfast before 16 of us piled into a micro-bus hired by the hostel to take us to Delphi, home to the famous oracle. It was very interesting and fun, but we were all very tired. The walk up to the top of Delphi and the walk around its stadium was all hard work for a man who had legs as sore as mine were, as all of ours were. On the way back to Athens we stopped in a Greek mountain town that is famous for furs, olive oil, and honey, as well as quaint traditional architecture. After that it was the long drive home. We didn’t return until late in the evening. Carey, Jack, Rhonda, and their friends John and Lita, and I all went out to dinner at a hole in the wall place in the Athen’s meat market, which was yummy. That night a bunch of us went out to a bar in Athens, which was way to expensive for my taste, so I went to the hostel and went to bed since I was tired still anyway (though it took Carey and I a long time to find our way back since the metro was closed).
Tuesday I was still sore, but it was time for me to go and meet up with Denise and Elena, two Greek girls I met in Macedonia earlier in the year. Courtney, who also met them with me in Macedonia, and our friend Andy and his friend Jeremy joined us. We went to get some traditional Greek food (gyros sandwiches) for lunch and then ended up at a cafe on the top floor of a large department store. Seeing the girls was fun, and we made plans to go out that night together. Due to some communication involving a broken phone and an occupied line, that didn’t happen, so I hung out at the hostel with some other travellers, which was a lot of fun. The hostel is a pretty crazy place (Athens Backpackers’, by the way), and I could not keep up with all the action going on there, but I still had fun.
The next morning I got in touch with the Greek girls again, and we said our goodbyes over coffee. They may end up visiting Bulgaria in January, so I will have to wait and see. They apparently met with Andy shortly after me, and he’s pretty excited about them coming too. After having coffee I high-tailed it to the airport (I was not going to miss the flight back too!) on the metro (again, I love the metro!) for my 2:20 flight. By 4:00 I was back in Sofia’s center. I ended up staying at my friend Margarita’s apartment with fellow PCV marathoner Courtney. Courtney treated us to ordered in Indian food from Taj Mahal, which was really tasty. I love that place. Following dinner I ended up going out to Studenski Grad for a real night out (since I had been so tired and sore to do so after the marathon and too concerned about the marathon to do so before hand). I met up with the two Polish girls that I had met the previous week through Margarita and we all partied till about 4:30am. They were a lot of fun, and I now have a place to crash in Krakow if I ever visit.
That brings us to Thursday, which was yesterday. I pretty much slept till around noon and then packed my stuff. After a quick lunch with Margarita I was on a bus bound for Zavet. As I said it took a while to get home this time, but once I did I was glad to be there. As great as my vacation was, it was expensive and taxing. And so here I am, still needing to finish washing my dishes, washing my clothes, and cleaning my apartment. In a week I have an Anti-Trafficking in Persons conference to go to for a weekend, and then it’s Thanksgiving. Looks like my life is still as busy as ever. Hope all of you are well, and thanks for all the support on the marathon. I plan on doing another one someday, just not anytime soon!
Love,
Koubi
