Sprinting in Costa Rica

So March 11th marked my one year “anniversary” in Costa Rica, and the end of May will be one year here in Guatuso….its been a little surreal to think about those milestones and all that has happened since I arrived at the airport in San Jose. And while it was a big deal, I’m not going to reflect back on my first year of Peace Corps service…this blog is going to be about sprinting in Costa Rica…

So you may be thinking, why am I writing about that? Well I have been trying very hard (especially since arriving in site) to stay in shape. And since there is nothing that would even resemble a gym here, I’ve had to go “old school” to do cardio. So I do sprints 3x a week on the relatively quiet street in front of the Catholic church. Flashbacks to track practice in high school and Mr. Dobry yelling at us are common. Normally there would be nothing noteworthy about this, but here in Costa Rica, of course, it’s a little different and there are lots of obstacles I have to confront in order to get my sprints in.

It starts before I even get out of bed. First, I have to fight with the weather. As I have said before, in Guatuso, if it’s not f’in hot, its raining…so I need to check the weather before I get ready to go. If its raining, well, I’m basically screwed…I tried to sprint once in the rain…it was not fun and basically not worth getting soaked. You try being out in the rain and then coming back home just to take a COLD shower. And if its not raining it will be pretty f’in hot by about 6 or 6:30am…so this means that I need to get my sprints in before that if I don’t want to faint from heat exhaustion. There is also a lot less traffic before 6am, which I will explain shortly. So my alarm goes off at 5am…I roll out of bed, fight with my mosquito net and find my flip flops. Then I turn on the light and look for cockroaches. Why, you ask? Well, not that long ago, there was one in my room while I was getting ready to run. The f*in thing hid all over the place so it took me like 45 minutes to kill it!!! And of course, by then it was after 6am…and I was so frustrated and mad that I didn’t even do my sprints. So cockroaches are the newest obstacles to my sprinting.

If it’s not raining and there are no cockroaches in my room, I’m good to go by 5:30/5:45am – perfect timing to get all my sprints in before the sun really comes up. But I’m still not in the clear. The street itself where I do sprints basically doesn’t have traffic, but it’s right in front of the main road/highway to the next closest city to the north. So, there’s a good amount of traffic that goes by and I also have to fight with that. First, there are a lot of fields out that way and so a good number of farm workers head out about the same time I am sprinting. So I get random cat calls from men on bikes or in the back of trucks…not so bad though, and I think by now a lot of them are used to seeing me so they don’t really say anything.

My other obstacle is all the trucks that go by as well since anything going north-south or south-north has to pass through Guatuso. I sprint from the dead-end side of the street to the opposite corner…however this intersection is the one that all the truck, cars, guys on bikes go through on their way to wherever. So I also have to time my sprints so I don’t end up “running into” a giant truck or, worse, a man on a bike. When I first started sprinting, I didn’t know this, so I didn’t pay attention if there was a truck coming or anything. Twice it happened that I freaked the crap out of a guy on a bike and another time a truck driver because they didn’t know if I was going to stop or not before the intersection. So they slammed on the brakes and then gave me weird/annoyed looks when I stopped before getting into the intersection. So timing is important.

My last obstacle to sprinting is something that is common all over Costa Rica: stray dogs. Costa Rica has a lot of them and Guatuso is no exception. Usually there aren’t that many where I sprint and the ones that are there don’t really bother me. But this past Wednesday I had to fight with a dog (I think he actually belongs to the church, so not really a stray) and that day he won. I woke up late so it was about 6am when I went out to sprint…and when I went out to the street there was random dog sitting in the middle of where I normally run. So I thought, no big deal…there’s another dog that sometimes hangs around there and he never even moves while I’m sprinting. So I do my first sprint fine, just a little off from my normal path because of the dog. But, while I am sprinting my second set, as I pass random dog, he leaps/jumps over at me. He doesn’t get close enough to bite me or anything like that, and it wasn’t an attack-type leap…just more of a curious what-are-you-doing thing. But of course it startles the crap out of me and I make this huge swerve in the middle of my sprint (I’m sure it looked really funny if anyone had been watching). Random dog totally messes up that sprint. So I think, ok, whatever, now he’ll go somewhere else….not a chance. He sits downs exactly where he was before and actually looks a me for a while, like he’s waiting for me to sprint again so he can play too. I do another sprint and thankfully don’t have to swerve or anything, but decide to call it a day anyway…it was “late” (lol almost 6:30am!) and I didn’t feel like fighting with random dog anymore…like I said, he won that battle.

These are the obstacles I confront 3 times a week when I go out to sprint. Thankfully, the other 3 days a week that I exercise, I can do so in my apartment so my only obstacles are getting out of bed and looking for cockroaches – a piece of cake basically. Considering all that, I think it’s almost a miracle I actually get my cardio in...

This week is Holy Week, or Semana Santa, here in Costa Rica it means VACATION!!! If not the whole week, at least starting Wednesday night, pretty much everyone is OUT. And there is no school all week for anyone so you know what that means lol...I will be at the beach Tuesday-Friday :D

Hope everyone has a joyous Easter (if you celebrate it) and otherwise have a great end of March/beginning of April!