Every year now for six years I have been traveling down to the beautiful island of Ometepe on Lago Cocibolca, known to many as lake Nicaragua. "Majestic" is the word that comes to mind every time our ferry or lancha approaches the island where the conical volcán Concepción dominates the vista.
Most years I have gone to volunteer in the ultramarathons and the Survival run that is the brainchild of my brother Josué, but last year I raced the Survival run for the first time. In 2012 I had raced the 50k but until 2016 had not run in the Survival run.
Last year at SR 2016, I made it up to the top of Concepción but was not able to make the time cutoff at the next checkpoint at the bottom.
But since last year, I have upped my training and running game. I lost about 15 pounds, I ran a lot, I ran my first 100 miler, I ran several 50 milers, a 40 miler, a 72 miler and other smaller orienteering races. I rode bike, I did lots of burpees, I did bikram yoga, pilates, planks, kettlebells, squats, pushups, hill repeats, I hiked 178 miles around the Tahoe Rim trail with a super heavy pack in 8 days, and I felt confident that I would either finish and/or definitely get farther than last year!
I have been in grad school which really took up a lot of my time and energy in the weeks leading up to SR 2017 so I didn't really pay attention to the gear list until the night before I was supposed to leave for Nicaragua. At 8:30pm I frantically ran around Home Depot and bought rope, hacksaw blades and glow sticks and crammed waay too much stuff into my bags. 4 am came quickly and we were off to the airport!
Every year my two boys come to Nicaragua and they really look forward to participating in the volunteering and have even climbed the volcanoes themselves. On the plane I finished a test for a grad class then proceeded to read the instructions for the SR, I would have to learn 3 knots for the race and there would be slingshots again.
In the 6 years of going to Ometepe I have come to know the island pretty well and I am not really afraid of going up the volcanoes, but one thing did scare the living daylights out of me and that is the dive tank. In 2016 the tank was used for fish instead of diving, but there had been two years before that racers had to dive down to the bottom and retrieve a rock. In 2015 I had helped set up that task and I saw how deep it was and the truth is, it terrified me! I had recently had a dream that I drowned at the bottom of the tank because my rock was too heavy. So I tried not to think about it because I was pretty sure this would be one of the challenges.
Arriving in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, every year is always such a change because we come from a cold and usually snowy Pennsylvania to a super bright, warm, colorful noisy city. After meeting up with a few racers at Managua hills for the night, we were off early in the morning to the ferry. The taxi ride to the ferry is usually about 2.5 hours from Managua and then another hour once you get on the ferry to Ometepe.
After arriving at finca San Juan and seeing and talking to all the other racers nervously wondering what challenges we would have this year, would there be plantain carry? would there be chickens?
Which volcano would we climb first? Some people were down at the beach practicing slingshot so I joined in for awhile and while I didn't hit every time, I felt confident in my abilities.
"I hope you practiced your slingshot skills"
That's what my brother said to me when I told him he'd better not have another plantain carry repeat this year. I laughed and said I had practiced and was ready. I wish I would have practiced more...
We settled into our room at playa Santo Domingo and I started laying out my gear, planning my nutrition, and mentally preparing for the race start.
We arrived at the race start a few hours before 5pm which is when gear check started.
After the race "meeting" and the gear check we were handed materials to make a slingshot which I did very quickly but in retrospect made some serious errors.
I only singled the rubber when I should have folded it over to give it more resistance and power. Nevertheless, we had 5 shots then we had to move to the back of the line and let another racer go. After you made your shot, you could get your bib number. People kept making shots, and then I was the last female, still trying to make my shot. I shot everything but the target. I even hit the targets next to mine, but not mine!
It took me 40 tries before I made it. Meanwhile, other racers had a chance to earn a 'wild card' bracelet that would allow them to skip a challenge later on in the race.
The race started at 6pm and I decided not to swim because it would have put me way behind the other racers and it would have taken a lot of energy out of me.
The race started promptly at 6pm and we ran off along the beach for about 8 kilometers or maybe less. I guess I was in the front pack but racers caught up to me on the rocky shore. I met up with a fellow racer AJ Juarez who I had met at the Georgia Death Race and we went into the dive tank together. I tried diving down 3 times but did not even get to the bottom before I started panicking and swimming to the surface. I just told myself to get a grip on it and took some slow deep breaths to calm down and thought that if everyone else is doing it, I can do it too.
I got down to the bottom and picked up a rock with my feet, handed it to my hand and swam to the top. That was the best feeling to have that tank dive over with!
I felt such a relief as I jumped down got my first wristband, put my wet pack on and then AJ and I were off to the next challenge.
We ran on some dirt roads for awhile and finally arrived at the tree climb. Super easy no problem, got my two wristbands for that and then AJ and I continued on to the next challenge which was bringing us closer and closer to climbing Maderas. As we ran along the lake shore several other runners joined us and we finally came to the firewood cutting challenge at the base of Maderas. Men had to cut 100 lbs and women 80 lbs, so I grabbed my grain sacks and my machete and wandered into the woods where I could see many headlights and hear the chopping of machetes. My strategy was to just start gathering a bunch of dried pieces of branches laying around the ground. Then I found Johnson Cruz next to a giant fallen tree and Oleg and we all cut large pieces off of it to add more weight to the load. My first load that I took to get weighed was 47 lbs. so I quickly went out and cut another log, but this wood was super hard and it took me waay too long to cut the second log with my small machete.
I noticed less and less headlamps around me and as I picked up my second load, I got disoriented and yelled "hey where is the road, where's the path?", "over here" I heard Matt Dolitsky shout over to my right. So I finally found my way out of the brush with my load and when it was weighed, I was 9 lbs short! For the last load, I just decided to keep finding dry branches on the ground and quickly gathered a large but light load. 12 lbs, whew!
I grabbed my pack and was feeling pretty thirsty so I drank and a bunch of water and grabbed a snack. Someone told me there was a little stand with juice and snacks which I found on my path towards Maderas. I bought two fresh watermelon juices and a coke as Matt Dolitsky flew by me. I kept moving forward up the volcano and was able to recognize parts that I remembered the first time I climbed up that side with my two boys, sister and husband 5 years before. After a while I caught up with Matt and kept turning around hoping for some company but I could not see anyone around. Soon I caught up with Jeff Izzo who I had met in 2016 when he volunteered for SR and the Ultras and he and I stayed together chatting until we caught up to Corinne Kohlen. All three of us descended into the crater together and decided to do the cold, muddy swim across the crater lake to get our next wristband. Luckily, it wasn't as cold as it had been 2 years previous when I had volunteered at that checkpoint and we had one runner get hypothermic. The swim was fast and it was good to have company, then we turned in our wristband for our first FAIL medal. Once we got out of the lake I started shivering uncontrollably so I changed into a long-sleeved shirt and put a buff and gloves and the three of us started climbing out of the crater.
About 10 minutes later I was asking Jeff and Corinne a question and no one answered. I turned around and said "guys, guys?" and no one was there, so I just kept going faster and faster trying to get out of that wet, muddy, windy, cold, foggy world at the top of Maderas. I basically ran and stumbled my way down and caught up to Oleg who kept me company till the bamboo and fencepost challenge. We talked about life, politics and rabid dogs. Which we actually ran into! Well they weren't rabid, but they were trying to attack us so we blew our whistles at them and backed away quickly.
At the fencepost cutting challenge we were told that there were not enough axes to cut the fenceposts so we were sent to the bamboo challenge right down the road to cut a 5 meter piece of bamboo with a hacksaw blade. I picked a bamboo that looked like the top was free enough to where it would fall easily once I cut through the base. It took me about 15-20 minutes to cut through but it would not fall. I climbed and shook that bamboo and it just would not come undone. Pretty soon Oleg left, he told me that the fencepost challenge wasn't going to happen for him so he opted out of that wristband and continued on. Corinne caught up and started her bamboo. People were coming and going so fast I was starting to feel a bit defeated. One racer from the Tahoe area had been there for 3 hours trying to get a bamboo loose from the stand. He said he finally climbed up 5 meters and cut the bamboo from the top to free it from the tangled branches. So I took a cue from him and did the same thing. The bamboo is not forgiving, I had to fight my way up through the thorn-like sharp branches with my machete and finally gave it a few karate kicks to get it out. Tiiiiimber!
Corinne, AJ and I went up to the fence-post cutting challenge and after surveying the logs that were the knottiest I had ever seen decided that we would skip this in the interest of time, plus there were no axes available. We picked up our bamboos and took off down the road towards the bike shop on the other side of Balgue. The instructions said we needed to show an unbroken egg at each checkpoint from now on. The sun was getting high and it was really starting to warm up. We stopped at a few little food stands along the way asking for "huevos" but the previous racers had cleaned out the first few places we stopped at. We did take advantage and bought a few cokes and snacks to fuel us until we finally found a place with some eggs. After what seemed waay longer than the 3 kilometers to the bike shop, we finally made it and presented our unbroken eggs. The instructions were to carry the bamboo and bike across to finca San Juan where we had started the race.
So Corinne and I hung together for a hot long haul back to San Juan. I was so happy to see that long dusty driveway down to the finca!
At the beach we were told that we had to do another slingshot challenge, this time you only had 5 shots with a marble to make one. I practiced for awhile since the first one had not gone so well and kept making it with the stones, but as soon as I started shooting with the marbles I missed completely.
So I was not able to continue on in the race. The next part was to carry the bamboo down the beach and swim out to a different island to retrieve another wristband and get the second medal "I". Corinne had her wild card wristband and was able to continue on and get her second medal. So the race ended for me.
I had a wonderful time and loved all of it. Next year...
The best part was getting to see all of these people!
Photo credits: Kaori Funahashi, Tyler Thomasello, myself, my mom, Corinne Kohlen
