The Inaugural “Inca Dash” Road Race: The Joy of Running Reaches the Highlands of Peru

This entry does not describe my competitive distance running adventures for a change.  It’s about something much more meaningful.  It describes my experience as a volunteer at a not-your typical road race (for kids from 4-11 yrs. old and their moms) in a not-your-typical road race destination (Cusco, Peru).  The experience was an inspiring and memorable grassroots undertaking.  For example, it’s not every day that you see a handmade, bilingual start and finish line banner suspended with the assistance of a handmade “escalera” (ladder), about 10 feet of spare rope, and some spit and a prayer:

This event was the joint brainchild of Rosa Gutierrez, the founder and director of Helping Hands School and Pharmacy, http://omprakash.org/partner_profile/p/49  and my wife, Nigara, co-founder and co-director of The Pebble Foundation, www.pebblefoundation.org,  an organization that promotes grassroots outreach and cross-cultural exchange for children and adults.

Rosa Gutierrez maintains order during pre-race registration.

Race director, Alek Abate, used his trusty Garmin running watch to precisely measure a 500-meter course for the 4-5 year olds, the 6-8 year olds, and the moms.  The 9-11 year olds faced the challenge of an “Alek-certified” 1500-meter course.  I should mention that Cusco is perched at 11,000 ft. (yes, that’s 3,000 ft. higher than where we stayed in Ethiopia where there was barely enough oxygen to walk, let alone run).  The 1500-meter course also featured a brutally steep hill that was more challenging than any I had faced in 30+ years of competitive running in the states.

Perhaps the most daunting challenge of all for the race organizers and the participants was the plethora of stray dogs that flooded the course.  And this was despite the valiant efforts of a young Peruvian boy who ran through the streets prior to the race with a megaphone declaring in Spanish to the local residents:  “Take your dogs inside so we can run our race.”  But the dogs apparently hold several seats on the Cusco City Council because they basically run the city and do as they please at all times (kind of like “Planet of the Apes” with dogs).  In light of this grim reality, we almost succumbed to adding a canine category for the race and affixing bib numbers to their cold, wet noses so they could do something other than chase cars and people for a change of pace.  But they probably would have eaten their finisher medals, which would have exceeded their recommended daily intake of iron, even at this high altitude.  Fortunately, there was only one incident in which one of our brave volunteers had to whisk away a rabid pack of dogs engaged in a tornado of a fight to make sure that our tiny dashers didn’t lose any limbs en route to completing their first road race.

Three of the approximately 10 dogs on this short course are pictured here.  Whooo let the dogs out?  Who, who, who, who, who?

We had many cheerful and helpful race volunteers from all over the world (Austria, England, Ireland, Australia, Peru, and the U.S.) that helped make the race a big success. The tireless efforts of Teresa Schwartz from Austria and Alicia from Australia were indispensable in ensuring the success of the event.  They were actively involved in pre-race and race-day planning with registering runners and coordinating race logistics from beginning to end.   I was assigned the nearly impossible task of trying to keep traffic off the race course.  Having to rely on what little Spanish I could speak, it’s a good thing that hand gestures are universally understood.  No, we didn’t have the luxury of a police escort on motorcycles for our lead runners and a course closed to traffic by the local police department.  Instead, we had race director Alek who served as the “rabbit” (front runner escort) for the 9-11 yr. old race.  And I have to say he wasn’t looking like the ‘Energizer Bunny” by the end of the race as he struggled to hold off the front runner in the 9-11 year old age group (who looked more like 13 years old) who was well adjusted to the extreme altitude as a Cusco native.

Alek has his hands full with hills, altitude, and a fast 11-year-old breathing down his back.

Teresa sets a lightning-fast pace as the rabbit for the 500-meter moms’ race.

Keeping track of who finished in what place was challenging to say the least.  As you guessed, we didn’t have the benefit of electronic chip timing.  So, in a continuing effort to be as resourceful as possible, Alek assembled a tightly spindled string of masking tape in which he would hand me the detachable part of the bib number with the runner’s name and age group information on it and I would slide those onto the string of masking tape using the pin hole on the number as if I were making a charm bracelet.  This way we could keep track of the order of the finishers and have their age group information handy.  Pretty clever tactic, eh?  That’s why Alek is the race director.  While I was receiving several of these “detachables” from Alek, one of the other volunteers gave me a detachable for another runner who somehow missed our makeshift finish line “chute.”  This interruption distracted me and caused me to let go of the end of the charm bracelet and all of the “charms” fell to the ground.  Alek was quick to call me a “bonehead” for that momentary lapse of reason on my part, but I only have two hands.  Not surprisingly, I was promptly demoted to traffic control duty after that screw up.

Somehow we generated results for all age groups (though we couldn’t swear by their accuracy).  The top three finishers in each age group for boys and girls were summoned to a makeshift “awards podium” to receive a certificate, medal, and photo.

All of the runners (approximately 120) received a t-shirt, a medal, and a parting gift (from a truckload of nice toys, dolls, and soccer balls in the gift tent).  I suspect that most of these underprivileged children will remember this day for many years to come.  It was rewarding to see the gleam of appreciation in their eyes.

The event would not have been such a success without the generous race-related donations from 1^st Place Sports in Jacksonville, Florida.  They provided more than 100 new race t-shirts, bib numbers, and medals for our event.  1^st Place Sports also provided us with a generous supply of new race shirts and used sneakers for our trip to the Running Across Borders Training Camp in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in July 2010.  We are grateful for their continued support of these worthy causes to promote running across the globe.  For more information about 1^st Place Sports, consistently ranked as one of the top 50 running stores in the United States, please visit their website at www.1stplacesports.com.

Race director Alek is already making plans for next year’s event, which will be bigger and better than the first.  This year’s ambitious undertaking only involved about two months of planning from idea to execution.  With a full year to plan, the second annual Inca Dash promises to be a huge success.

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