The Couscous Chronicles: Yallah! Making efforts at the Marrakesh half-marathon

Given that none of the previous months’ blog posts have included accounts of hyperactive flip-outs, it’s an accurate assumption that I’ve been able to continue running here in Morocco.

Indeed, apart from the car exhaust and occasional garbage-burning-on-the-side-of-the-road fumes, my morning runs are a pleasure. I’ve found some really pretty routes just outside the city where the landscape turns downright rural. Almost no one says anything to me, and often the interactions I do have are a huge kick: getting hollered at by an entire teenaged boys’ soccer team crossing the street or exchanging approving nods with a group of portly middle-aged women out power-walking in track suits and headscarves. And I think people are getting used to seeing me. Once when I was headed somewhere in the afternoon in regular street clothes, I even had a taxi driver ask me if I was that girl who runs in the area.

It’s not often, though, that I see other people out exercising. I suspect that they are merely absent from the streets, choosing to work out in more established sports areas, like stadiums and gyms. Still, I was curious to see proof of them at this marathon event in Marrakesh.

As per usual, the excursion was Rod’s idea. He got six of us to sign up: himself, me, Lauren (another Fulbrighter), Josh (another student at ALIF), Jesse (student at ALIF, Oregonian, ex-Marine, one of my best friends here) and his wife Cherry. We were joined by four other friends along for moral support: Cath, Sam, Kristen (all Fulbrighters) and Jackie (ALIF student).

Now, I can’t imagine what kind of images a marathon in North Africa conjures up in all y’all’s heads, but I’ll have you know that this was a legitimate athletic competition. As the English translation on the website declares, “The international Marathon of Marrakesh is not only expected to reconquer the prime position among the world most prestigious Marathon's, but also is likely to become the obvious International meeting to the marathon's biggest stars.”

Sorry. Too easy to take potshots at hackjob translations. It actually is true that the flat course in Marrakesh attracts professional runners looking to hit a PR. The winner, for example, was a guy from Ethiopia who ran a 2:10:16. Not bad, right?

General legitimacy aside, several aspects of the event weren’t quite pulled together, although the truth is that they made things all the more entertaining.

Let’s start with medical certificates. None of us runners had ever seen such a demand before, but the website made it quite clear that in order to pick up our numbers at registration, we would have to present a document from a doctor asserting that – as far as we could tell – we weren’t likely to keel over and die in the middle of the race.

To get this prereq taken care of, those of us in Fes (i.e. everyone but Rod, who moved to Rabat two weeks ago) made an appointment with Dr. Tazi, whose phone number ALIF hands out as an English-speaking general practitioner. Cath and our friend Abby had both gone to see her in the fall, regarding stomach problems and blood work respectively; both underwent an ultrasound. So. We really weren’t sure what to expect from this marathon appointment.

Dr. Tazi’s office is underlit and covered, wall-to-ceiling, with the kind of dark woodwork that you’d expect to find in some Victorian-age boys’ club smoking room. The myriad bookshelves are bare, and a picture of the late king, Hassan II, hangs prominently on the wall. As for the good doctor, she greeted us warmly in stilted English, short curly mad-scientist hair bouncing everywhere. (Part of the advice she had given Cath was to eat a tablespoon of argan oil every day – and also to use it in her hair, where it can do wonders. Check.)

We were hoping that she would take one look at us – young, slim, full of vim and vigor – and jot out a couple certificates, sans problem. Not to be. “I am going to ask you each to do some efforts, okay? To make sure you are ready for the sports. Who wants to go first?”Cherry volunteered, while the rest of us listened curiously to the beeping that emerged from the back room into which they’d disappeared.

I was next. Dr. Tazi had me lay down on the examining table, blanketed in familiar crinkly doctor’s office paper, and took my blood pressure. Then came the efforts. She demonstrated: twenty squats, arms stretched out horizontally. I executed them while she counted breathily to twenty in French and climbed again onto the table for a second blood pressure reading. “Your numbers is very good for someone who is making the sport,” she announced. Alhamdoulillah. Praise be to God.

The race was on Sunday morning, and we decided to leave Fez on Friday – Saturday morning, really – at 2:30 am: get in at 10:00 am, have the day to register, explore, rest, etc. Probably not the best course of action in terms of being well-rested for a half-marathon, but these are the things that you get to do in your twenties, right?

Spandex-clad bottoms greeted us immediately on arrival in Marrakesh, where the January weather boasted sunny skies and temperatures climbing into the mid-sixties. We followed said spandex to the registration area. Zero medical certificates requested. Typical.

We received t-shirts. Those of us signing up on site got the desperate-times-call-for-desperate measures edition, with a cool palm tree logo underscored by a strip of green ink with white letters announcing 21ème Marathon International de Marrakech – clearly screened on top of similar lettering for the 20ème Marathon. Last year’s shirts, revamped. Typical. And so great.

Post-registration, we checked into the hotel and went out to a nearby kebab stand for lunch, saying a little prayer to the food poisoning gods that they look kindly on us. Wandered around the medina. Got lost. Found ourselves stuck paying some little soccer-playing kids to guide us to the wrong place. Made it back to the hotel. Fell into a coma-like nap and woke up in time for an amazing dinner at a vegetarian restaurant. (HaHA, just TRY and find us here, food poisoning gods!)

Sunday morning broke clear and beautiful. The starting line was incredibly crowded, as the organizers for some reason had the full-marathoners and halfers both taking off at 8:30. No bathrooms provided, either at the start or along the course, meaning I saw many a hunched male back that morning. (Although perhaps no more than I do on a daily basis here: let’s just say that if you’re a Moroccan man, the world is your urinal.)

The usual pre-race festive-ness was in the air, with people calling out and chatting in all kinds of languages, mainly Arabic, French and Spanish. It took our group a good two minutes after the starting gun went off to work our way with this multilingual pack across the starting line.

A fun race. Unbelievably flat course. I felt good and left the group (most of whom, admittedly, had “trained” for approximately two weeks) after a couple minutes, only to find myself in increasingly male company as the kilometers went by. The throngs of onlookers found my presence a source of great enthusiasm, yelling “la femme!” and “allez mademoiselle!”

Toward the end, I passed our little cheer squad, whose hearty cheers and homemade t-shirts reading (in Arabic script) yallah! (let’s go!) were invigorating and much-appreciated, especially as the last kilometers seemed never-ending, thanks to the lack of signage on the course. (Again, it’s legitimate. Just in a Moroccan-y kind of way.)

For those of you number-heads (read: David Longmuir), I finished in 1:40 (subtracting the two, fight-across-the-start-line minutes), which placed me thirty-second among the 424 women who ran the half. You can check out the results here: http://www.marathon-marrakech.com/resultats.html. Mainly I just get a huge kick out of seeing my name in with all the Arabic and French ones.

Everyone else felt good too, and I think we all really enjoyed ourselves. The eight-hour train ride back to Fez three hours after running 20 kilometers left my knee pretty cramped up, but hopefully in a day or two it will relax and be similarly filed away into the things-we-can-get-away-with-in-our-twenties category – alongside one more in this string of great memories I am so fortunate to be creating here.

Stretching out in front of one of the three remaining minarets from the Almohad dynasty (think 12th and 13th centuries AD). The other two are in Rabat and Sevilla, Spain, although at the latter site the minaret is – unsurprisingly – no longer a minaret but simply a retired watchtower.