Roundtrip run to Ghana

One of the things that I wanted to do ever since I came to Togo was do a big run...my friend Ginger had told us how she ran a half-marathon last year when the ship was in Benin, so we looked into it to see if there would be any half-marathons in Togo this year...no such luck. During the outreach, I had a few friends who decided they would run to Ghana (the country west of us) since the border is only about 10 Kilometers away. I thought it would be fun to do, but didn't finally attempt it until  last week. My friend Tania and I ran the 10 Kilometers together and had a lot of fun! It was a great bonding experience!

Running in Africa is always such an adventure! As Tania and I were running along, we had lots of people on the road cheering us on.."Tres bien" (very good), "Di courage" (a saying that they like to say to runners on the street...it more or less means take courage or keep going from what I understand)...Lots of people were encouraging us and cheering for us as we ran by!

The path we took was right along the beach road, so even  though we weren't actually running on the beach, we could see the ocean for most of the run. There were all kinds of other sights, sounds, and smells (oh the smells of Africa!!)...there were lots of cars and zemis out on the road already. In fact, we actually saw an accident happen right in front of us as we were running! A motor-taxi hit a woman running across the street with a bucket of apples on her head! The apples went everywhere, the motorcylce went down, and the woman fell over right onto the sidewalk in front of us, along with the two guys who had been riding the motorbike..thankfully, everyone was alright...we asked them if they were ok and made sure they could move everything ok....As we were standing there, a crowd formed and it got a little crazy. I was shocked that some people started shouting at the woman and telling her she shouldn't be running across the street in front of the motor-taxis...I admit it's a good point, but seriously bad timing to discuss it...I mean, come on, the lady just got hit by a motorcycle!! Pointing fingers and yelling at her probably wasn't the best way to handle it!
Anyway, we stayed for a minute to make sure everyone was ok...then, when the crowd formed, we decided to move on, as there were no apparent major injuries and there were now people attending to the situation...

We continued running along and soon enough, we found ourselves at the Ghana border! After buying a little extra water, we walked over to the ocean and just stretched and relaxed for a bit...it was a nice feeling to just take in the beauty of the ocean and realize I'd just ran to another country! I mean, I know it wasn't that long of a run, but it still  felt like a nice accomplishment!

We started out with Aleah...

But only Tania and I finished together

(with our red faces and bags of water at the end)

A couple days later, my friend Becca asked if I wanted to do the roundtrip run with her...all the way to the Ghana border and all the way back! I was a bit nervous that it would be a little too long since I hadn't done a ton of recent training with long runs...but I thought I'd give it a shot...

So, today we got up early and headed out....all we brought with us was our I-pods (yes, I know it's not smart to run with them in Lome, but I just had to take that chance...I mean, it's about 12 miles and I wasn't  gonna run that far without music!), water, emergency taxi money, and Lok (well, actually he was already coming with us...but it was nice to have one of our gierkas aka security guards running alongside us!).

Once again, there were lots of exciting things to see along the way...but thankfully, no accidents! There were quite a few Africans out running as well, since it was a Saturday morning and lots of people here tend to run on the weekends...we even saw a dad running with his three little children (one looked like he was only about 5 years old!)...I think my favorite part of the run was when my roommates and Stefan (my "German dad" as I call him) passed by in a Landrover (they were heading into Ghana today)...They honked and waved as they passed us...funny that we almost made it to the border before they did :)

We didn't end up needing our "emergency taxi money," which I was happy about because I definitely would've been disappointed if we hadn't finished the run! But, I have to say, as we passed by all the taxi drivers lined up along the side of the road every couple of miles, there were a few times that my legs just felt tired and I stole a longing glance at the comfortable taxi, accompanied by the nice taxi drivers calling us over for a ride...it made me think about life and how there is always the temptation to "take the easy way out" instead of running the race that God intended for us. Tempation is always there for us along the road and it would be so easy to just get in and be selfish, but we would be missing out for God's perfect plan for our lives (I don't know, I like analogies and every now and then, I get those deep thoughts when I'm running). So, every time I saw those taxi drivers motioning me over, I would  just think to myself, "Nope, I'm definitely not taking the easy way out!"

But the run honestly didn't turn out to be as difficult as I had expected...sure, there were times when my legs felt tired, but it wasn't really until the last mile or two that I really wanted to stop running and just walk. But, we kept encouraging each other and finished strong! We ended up finishing the entire run in almost exactly two hours, which we were happy about...we got back around 8 am and I thought to myself, "Wow, I definitely don't usually accomplish this much by 8:00 in the morning!" It was a nice feeling of accomplishment!

So, even though we didn't get our half-marathon this year, we got our 12+ mile-run and a great experience together!

Becca, Lok, and I at the end of the run