Two and a half years ago, I traveled to Antarctica with Marathon Tours & Travel. Our itinerary included three days in Buenos Aires before flying to Ushuaia to board our ship. I ran a marathon in Antarctica, but I didn’t run a marathon during my time in Argentina.
Six months ago, a friend
of mine did that same trip to run the Antarctica Marathon. When I saw her photos from Buenos Aires, it
reminded me how much I liked that city.
That was the motivation I needed to go back to Buenos Aires to run a
marathon there.
Before I could register
for the race, I needed to get a medical certificate signed by my doctor. I’ve done other marathons in countries that
required a medical certificate, but you didn’t need to provide the certificate
until packet pickup. In Argentina, you
need to upload a copy of your medical certificate as part of the registration
process. I checked to see how soon I
could get a doctor appointment. As luck
would have it, I was able to get an appointment that same day.
When I was here with
Marathon Tours & Travel, we stayed at a hotel in the Puerto Madero waterfront
area. I loved that neighborhood, but
hotels there are expensive. Also, it’s a
long distance from where the marathon starts and finishes. This time, I stayed at a hotel that was
outside that neighborhood, but still close enough that I could easily walk
there. I was a little closer to where
the race starts, and the rate was much more affordable.
Thursday, September 18
When I fly overseas for a
race, I usually arrive at least three days before the race. For a Sunday race, I’ll typically leave on
Wednesday and arrive on Thursday. Since
I had been to Buenos Aires before, I decided to leave on Thursday instead. That would give me enough time, provided I
didn’t have any major flight delays.
Naturally, I did.
I was on my flight to
Atlanta when I found out that my flight from Atlanta to Buenos Aires was going
to be delayed. It was originally
scheduled to depart at 11:00 PM. When I
got to Atlanta, they were saying it wouldn’t leave until 12:30 AM. Later, they pushed it back to 1:55 AM. After I had been waiting in the Atlanta airport
for three hours, they finally announced that the flight wouldn’t leave until
8:00 AM Friday morning. It would’ve been
nice to know that a few hours earlier.
I checked into a hotel
for the night, but I didn’t get there until midnight. I tried to get to sleep, but I was too wound
up to relax. I had been avoiding
caffeine since leaving Minneapolis, but I still felt like I had 10 cups of
coffee.
Friday, September 19
I kept trying to sleep
until 4:30. Then I had to get up to get
back to the airport. I wanted to allow
plenty of time to get through security.
It can take much longer in Atlanta than it does in Minneapolis.
When I tried to go
through security, I had a new problem.
TSA wouldn’t let me through, because my boarding pass had the wrong
date. I went to the Delta counter, where
they told me my boarding pass was good, but I couldn’t use TSA pre-check. They said I would need to use the general
boarding lane. I have Clear, so I asked
if there was a lane for Clear without pre-check, and if I could use that
lane. There was, and I could, but it was
on the other side of the terminal. I
eventually got through using that lane.
While I was eating
breakfast in the airport, I learned that my flight was delayed another hour to
9:00. I didn’t know why it kept getting
delayed, so I had to wonder if there would be more delays. Sure enough, they delayed it 9:40 AM, then
11:00 AM, then noon, then 12:30, then 1:00, and finally 1:46. They were nickel and diming me to death. If I knew the full extent of the delay
sooner, I wouldn’t have needed to get to the airport so early. Instead, I got no sleep, and I was waiting in
the airport for hours, seemingly without end.
After we finally boarded,
the pilot announced that the weather along our route had changed since the
cargo was loaded, and they would need to rearrange the cargo to distribute the
weight differently. He said it would
take 15-20 minutes. It took two hours! When we finally pulled away form the gate, we
were 17 hours behind schedule. I spent
most of that time at the airport, and I didn’t get any sleep.
I rarely try to sleep on
flights, but I knew I wouldn’t have much time to sleep when I got to my hotel,
so I was desperate. As soon as the meal
service was done, I tried to get to sleep.
I was about as
comfortable as I’ve ever been while trying to sleep on an airplane, but it took
almost six hours to fall asleep. We had
turbulence for most of the flight, and the bumpy ride made falling asleep
almost impossible. Later in the flight,
things smoothed out a bit, and I got a brief nap.
I was originally
scheduled to arrive in Buenos Aires at 9:45 AM on Friday. Because of all the delays, I didn’t get there
until 2:45 AM on Saturday.
Saturday, September 20
I had a bad experience
with a taxi the last time I traveled to South America, so this time I booked an
airport transfer before I arrived. That
was before I knew about the flight delays.
I had to contact the taxi company more than once to let them know my
flight was delayed. It took about 30
minutes to get through the line for passport control, but when I was done, I
spotted my driver.
It took about an hour to
get to my hotel. I had contacted the
hotel before my flight to let them know I would be arriving late. I also asked them to have the temperature
turned down in my room. When I got
there, my room was nice and cold. I
immediately climbed into bed to take a nap.
It took me about an hour
to get to sleep. I got enough of a nap
to be able to function. Then I had
breakfast.
I lost a whole day, so
everything I was planning to do on Friday got pushed to Saturday instead. That included packet pickup for the
marathon. The earliest I could do that
on Saturday was 10:00. In the meantime,
I did a workout in the fitness room.
Packet pickup was held in
a park that was on the other side of the city.
I could get most of the way there on the Subte (subway), but I had to
walk the last mile.
To pick up my race
packet, I needed my passport and a QR code that they emailed to me. I didn’t know if I would need my medical
certificate, but I brought it just in case.
The race shirt was a tank
top, which is always nice, since I don’t get as many of those. Besides my race bib and shirt, my race packet
included several product samples. Some
were useful, such as protein bars and other food. Others were not so useful, like a half-liter
bottle of mouthwash. One interesting
item was a package of maté, which is an Argentine herbal drink that has its own
subculture.
It took me an hour to get
to the park and another hour to get back.
When I got back, it was lunchtime, but I decided to skip lunch in favor
of going for a run and then having an early dinner. Ideally, I would’ve run on Friday and rested
Saturday, but I spent Friday in an airport and on a plane.
From my hotel, I ran
through Puerto Madero to reach an ecological reserve that has some trails. That’s the same place where I went for runs
the first time I visited Buenos Aires. I
was hoping to run a trail loop, but the reserve was closed. Instead, I ran out and back on a wide
sidewalk that’s adjacent to the reserve.
I wanted to get to bed
early, so I had an early dinner. In
Argentina, people often don’t eat dinner until 9:00. Restaurants often don’t open until 7:30. I knew there were restaurants in Puerto Madero
that are open all afternoon, so that’s where I went for dinner. Argentina has a large Italian minority, so it
wasn’t hard to find a restaurant with pizza.
I’m happy to say I slept
well that night. I really needed that
after getting so little sleep the previous two nights.
Sunday, September 21
Sunday was race day. The race started at 7:00 AM. The only negative about my hotel is that it
was four miles from where the race starts.
Buenos Aires has good public transportation, but race morning was
problematic. The subway system doesn’t
operate that early on a Sunday morning.
There’s a bus route that goes right there, but I didn’t know if that
route would be affected by road closures.
Without knowing for sure if the bus would be running, I decided to just
walk. I had to leave early, but my route
was fairly direct.
I left the hotel at 5:00. It was still dark, but I was following
streets that were well-lit. Leaving that
early gave me enough time that I could walk at a casual pace and still get to
the start area with plenty of time to make it through the bathroom lines. Along the way, I passed a few landmarks.
With about a mile to go, I
started to see other runners who were walking or running to the start
area. I saw two runners getting out of a
taxi. I assume the driver got them as close
as he could, but couldn’t go all the way because of road closures.
After making a bathroom stop, I
tried to figure out where the start corrals were. The start area was huge, and there wasn’t any
signage. I never saw a map of the start
area on the race website, so I just had to find my way around.
When I spotted the starting
line, I was on the wrong side of it.
There were barricades on both sides of the street, so I had to take a
circuitous route to get to the entrance to the start corrals. Making matters worse, it had rained during
the night, so I had to detour around several large puddles.
I never walked through a
puddle, but I did a lot of walking on wet grass. By the time I found the entrance to my
corral, my shoes and socks were wet.
Shortly after I entered my
corral, my watch informed me that I had reached its arbitrary goal of 10,000
steps. That’s a lot of walking to do
before the race even starts.
I was in corral F, which was
for runners with estimated finish times between 3:46 and 4:00. I was puzzled when I saw a runner at the back
of corral E with a sign that read, “5.30.”
I assumed he was the leader of a pace group, but if his target time was
5:30, he shouldn’t have been in corral E.
Then I wondered if 5:30 was the
time limit, and he was the sweeper. If
that was the case, he should have been in the last corral. He eventually moved to the front of corral F,
but that still didn’t make sense.
Sometimes when I run in a
foreign country, I experience a different pre-race ritual. As we were waiting for the race to start, I
saw a large sheet passing over the runners in front of me. As it reached us, we each reached up and
grabbed it to help pull it back. Then,
as it passed over us, we kept our arms extended, so it glided over our
fingertips.
This sheet was as wide as the
street, and it was more than a block long.
It took so long to pass over us, that it may have been two blocks
long. It was divided into three stripes
of equal width. The outer two stripes
were light blue and the middle stripe was while. Those are the colors of Argentina’s flag.
When the elite runners started,
I heard a loud cheer. I was so far from
the starting line that I couldn’t even see it.
It would be several minutes before my corral started.
Before my corral started, I
started to feel a fine drizzle. The
temperature was in the 50s, but I opted to wear tights, knowing it would be
windy. With the drizzle, I felt more
confident in that decision. I also put
my gloves on.
In front of each corral, there
were two lines of volunteers holding hands to create a barrier across the
road. They waited until the corral in
front of them had started before they let the next corral move up. Then they brought us forward slowly, ensuring
a stagger of at least a minute between corrals.
By the time my corral was allowed to cross the starting line, seven or
eight minutes had already elapsed since the first runners started.
I was near the front of my
corral. As soon as I crossed the
starting line, I was able to run at my own pace. The stagger between corrals was sufficient to
give us plenty of space to run.
At first, the runners around me
were all going at the same pace.
Eventually, we caught up to runners from the back of corral E, even
though they started at least a minute ahead of us. Now, I had to start passing people, but it
wasn’t that difficult to get around them.
This is a huge race, but we
were starting on a road that was six lanes wide. The stagger between corral starts was enough
to ensure that we got spread out a bit before we caught up to the corral in
front of us. Most of the people in that
corral were faster, but not everyone starts at the same pace, and some people
start in a corral that’s too fast for them.
A certain amount of congestion is inevitable, but we weren’t packed in
like sardines.
I felt like I might be starting
fast, but I didn’t know for sure until I got a split from my watch. I ran the first mile in 8:37. That was fast, but not crazy fast.
As we got mixed in with runners
from other corrals, I had to run at my own pace and not at the pace of the
runners right in front of me. In the
first few miles, I did a good job of that.
My next two splits were 8:38 and 8:37.
At 5K, we reached the first
hydration station. This one just had
water, and it was in bottles. I grabbed
a bottle, removed the cap, and drank about half of it. It was a large bottle, and I couldn’t drink
that much at once. When I couldn’t drink
any more, I tossed the bottle to the side of a road, where I saw a volunteer
collecting the discarded bottles in a trash bag.
My next mile was a little
slower. I attributed that mostly to
slowing down at the aid station.
The next time I reached an aid
station, they had Gatorade in paper cups.
That station didn’t have any water.
Drinking a cup of Gatorade was easier, but that mile was slower than the
previous one.
My pace was getting
erratic. The runners around me were
still going at different paces. How fast
I ran in any particular mile seemed to depend on who I was following and how fast
they were going. I was no longer doing a
good job of running at my own pace.
After running mile five in 8:59, I sped up to 8:23 in mile six. The scary thing is that my pace felt about
the same in both of those miles.
At 10K, there was another aid
station with water bottles. I decided to
skip that one. The aid stations were
frequent enough that I didn’t need to drink at all of them.
I eventually noticed a
pattern. Every 5K, they had a water
station. Halfway between those they had
Gatorade stations. For most of the race,
I only drank at the Gatorade stations.
We started out running west,
but we eventually looped back and returned to the same park where we
started. This time, we were on the other
side of a divided street.
By now, the drizzle had
stopped. I briefly saw the sun come out,
but it wasn’t long before it was overcast again. Thankfully, the drizzle never returned.
More than half of the runners
were wearing their green race shirts. At
times, the runners in front of me looked like a sea of green. I can’t say or even think “sea of green”
without getting the song “Yellow Submarine” in my head. It didn’t stay there for long. Shortly after passing through the
start/finish area, I heard a large sound system blasting “Don’t Stop Me Now” by
Queen. If you know me well, you know I
sped up in that mile.
We occasionally passed major
landmarks of the city. I had my phone
with me, so I could’ve taken pictures, but I didn’t want to stop or slow
down. I started at a fast pace, and I
wanted to keep that going.
As we were approaching 17K, I
started to see large office buildings ahead of us. I thought we were heading into the downtown
area, but then we turned.
Right after turning, we started
up a hill. This course is mostly
flat. Up until now, the only hill was
the ramp leading up to a bridge. The
hill in front of me wasn’t steep, but it was long enough that I had to be
careful not to tire myself out. I kept
running with the same effort. I didn’t
worry if that mile was a little slower.
After the hill, I spotted the
obelisk, which is another major landmark.
As we reached the obelisk, we turned right. Then we had a nice downhill.
At 20K, we reached another
water station, but they also had bananas.
As soon as I noticed that, I moved to the other side of the street. The last thing I wanted was to step on a
banana peel. It was bad enough that some
runners were dropping water bottles in the middle of the street.
After a couple more turns, we
were running toward the obelisk again, but from a different direction. This was an out-and-back section. We ran toward the obelisk, but before we reached
it, we made a U-turn.
Along this street, there were
people in the crowd in all kinds of colorful costumes. One guy was on stilts. There was a whole group dressed in yellow
from head to toe and twirling yellow flags.
Shortly after the turnaround, I
spotted the guy with the “5.30” sign. He
was only a minute or two behind me. If
he was a sweeper or someone with a target time of “5:30,” he shouldn’t be just
a minute behind me. I was on pace for a
time well under four hours.
Then it dawned on me that 5:30
might be a pace rather than a target time.
I didn’t go the math precisely, but it occurred that a pace of 5:30 per
kilometer would work out to roughly 8:40 per mile. That was pretty close to my pace.
I got a split from my watch at
13 miles, but I never noticed the 21K banner.
I also didn’t see anything marking the halfway point. If didn’t occur to me that I was more than half
done until I reached the 22K sign. My
time there was under two hours, so I was clearly on pace to break four hours by
a wide margin. I started somewhat fast,
but my only goal was to break four hours.
For the next several
kilometers, I didn’t know which neighborhood we were in. I was beginning to slow down, but I could
afford that. To break four hours, I
needed to average 9:09 per mile. Through
the first 17 miles, all of my mile times were under nine minutes. Then in mile 18, I slowed to 9:12.
If I ran that pace for the rest
of the race, I would easily break four hours.
My fear was that I would keep slowing down. I lit a fire under myself to keep up with the
runners around me. In mile 19, I sped up
to 8:42.
We were almost to 31K when I
saw a fountain I recognized. We were in
Puerto Madero. I knew we would run
through this neighborhood, but we entered it from an unfamiliar direction.
After two more turns, we were
on a familiar street. It’s the one that
borders the ecological reserve. I ran
along here on Saturday, but I was on the sidewalk. Now, I was running in the street.
My race packet included a
gel. I had been keeping it in my fanny
pack since the beginning of the race.
When I saw that I was approaching a water station, I took it out and
quickly ate it. Then I grabbed a bottle
of water and drank just enough to wash it down.
I didn’t know our route through
Puerto Madero, but I knew everything would look familiar. Two years ago, I spent three days in this
neighborhood. It’s the only part of
Buenos Aires that was already familiar to me.
That made the next four
kilometers easier. By the time we left
that neighborhood, we only had 7K to go.
That was roughly the same distance I walked to get to the start of the race,
but our route would be different. When I
was walking, it seemed to take forever.
Running, it would take less than half as long to cover that distance.
I had been skipping most of the
water stations, but at 35K, I was thirsty.
I didn’t want to wait for the next Gatorade station. I didn’t like drinking from bottles, but I
drank water at this aid station.
Next, we run underneath a
highway. For roughly two kilometers,
there was another roadway above us. Now,
I couldn’t trust splits from my watch. I
didn’t have a direct line of sight to the satellites, so my watch couldn’t tell
where I was. It would extrapolate from
my last known location, but it couldn’t tell me if my pace changed.
When we got back out into the
open again, I had roughly 5K to go. Up
until now, I had kept every mile but one under nine minutes. From here on out, I slowed down, but I was
able to limit the damage.
Buenos Aires has two
airports. I flew into the large
international airport. Now, we were
running near the smaller domestic airport.
I could see planes taking off.
We ran another out-and-back
section. I saw the 5.30 guy again. If that was his pace in minutes per
kilometer, it was reassuring that I was still ahead of him.
At 41K, we made our final
turn. Now we were heading toward the
finish line, but I wouldn’t see it until the last 100 meters. It was be hidden behind a bend, just as it
was when I was lined up in the start corrals.
When I finally got close enough
to see the finish line, I saw the clock.
By the time I got there, it read “4:01:05.” That was the elapsed time since the elite
runners started. I knew my time would be
several minutes faster.
I finished in 3:52:40. Then I kept moving through the finish area as
quickly as I could.
I saw volunteers handing out
water bottles. I walked past them to get
to other volunteers with Gatorade bottles.
I grabbed a bottle of Gatorade, and then I saw a volunteer with
bananas. I started eating a banana as I
continued moving forward. I was
expecting to eventually see volunteers handing out finisher medals.
Soon, everyone ahead of me
stopped moving. There was a traffic
jam. When I reached the volunteers with
medals, I understood what was causing the bottleneck. We had tear-off tags at the bottom of our
race bibs. I didn’t know what those were
for. The volunteers had to collect those
when they handed us our medals.
The design on the medal
features the obelisk. It was also
featured on the shirts.
I had more options for getting
back to hotel, because the subway was now running. I had to get out of the finish area before I
could get a good enough connection to use the maps app on my phone. I already knew that I would need to walk for
about a mile to get to the nearest Subte station. When I pulled up transit directions to see
how to get there, I noticed that it would take about an hour to get back to my
hotel with a combination of walking and subway.
Just walking back would take an hour and 15 minutes.
Then it occurred to me that I
had a third option that was faster. I
could run back to the hotel. Additional
running, at this point, would be a slow shuffle. I also needed to take occasional walking
breaks, as running was too tiring.
Still, it was the fastest way back to the hotel, so that’s what I did.
When I got back to the hotel, I
was a train wreck. I didn’t feel like
going anywhere for lunch, so I ate the remaining food samples from my race
packet.
When it was time for dinner, I
still didn’t feel like going out. That
made it easier to decide where to eat. I
had dinner at the hotel’s restaurant. I
didn’t feel like I gave up anything.
It’s a good restaurant, and they had some local foods, as well as local
beer and wine.
I slept well that night.
Monday, September 22
I flew home on Monday, but it
was an evening departure, so I still had some time for sightseeing. After breakfast, I did a workout at the
hotel. Then I headed out to see a few
things that were within walking distance of my hotel.
My first stop was the
Metropolitan Cathedral. I didn’t have
time to visit this church when I was here in 2023.
The cathedral is next to Plaza
de Mayo.
Casa Rosada (the government
building) is at the other end of the plaza.
From there, it was a short walk
to the obelisk.
The most colorful neighborhood
in Buenos Aires is La Boca. I would’ve
loved to visit that neighborhood again, but walking there would’ve taken too
long, and there isn’t a Subte line that goes there. Instead, I walked over to Puerto Madero,
where I had lunch.
After lunch, I relaxed at the hotel until it was time to go to the airport. My flight back to Atlanta is another overnight flight. Hopefully this one will be on time.
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