I used to run a lot. The autumn before my arrival in the DR was a good competitive season; I logged respectable finishes in a dozen regional road races and survived the Philadelphia marathon. Still uncertain of my future at that point, I was able to delude myself into thinking I could be a successful amateur on the Vermont circuit. Then the fateful Peace Corps invite arrived and I shipped out to the tropics, hoping that I would find a way to keep up the momentum.
But it’s hot here. And that’s only one of the obstacles to running, as so many of us exercise-addicted volunteers have discovered. The culture – despite having a resident world 400m-hurdles champion – is chronically averse to non-work-related sweat. Unfriendly dogs proliferate on all suitable roads. The few organized races start hours late, foiling any attempts at warming up.
I encountered these difficulties as I continued to run through pre-service training, but my site presented a whole new dimension of challenge. Due to a quirk of local topography and drainage, the only path in my village (excluding those that climb out of the valley at a twenty percent incline) winds its way alongside the Rio Nagua, crossing it every few hundred meters. Adding to the difficulty was an annual rainfall of two and a half meters, which churns every stretch of trail into knee-deep mud for ten months at a time. It is not a location conducive to running.
But I was determined. In my first week I measured the nearest section of trail between river crossings (425 meters!) and set out to train for the 2003 Hispaniola half-marathon through a regimen of laps. Twelve lengths was a safe five kilometers, twenty-four made 10K, and fifty approximated a half-marathon. When conditions got muddy, I continued slogging. When my schedule forced me to roll miles under the midday sun, I would pound two liters of water and pass out immediately after finishing.
My mind would work curious tricks under the gun of such unpleasantness. The monotony of the terrain (“There goes that rock again”) lent itself to tangential thinking punctuated by a cruel, recycling algebra. While running, I would try to plan projects, write letters and formulate schedules in my head. But at the same time I would be dogged by the increment count: Three down, twenty-one up. One-eighth finished. Two seconds off pace. Fourteen down, ten up. So it would go.
After two months of this I went to Santo Domingo and ran the race, clocking my slowest-ever time in a half-marathon. Clearly my training method was not working. Resolving halfheartedly to continue, I dragged myself through the laps until – one soggy day in November – I broke. The rain had started as soon as I had laced my shoes, and it was on roughly the 2000th squishy footfall of the afternoon that I stopped in my tracks. Running wasn’t fun this way. It wasn’t even rewarding anymore. In that moment I realized that the athleticism I had hoped for was not compatible with my Peace Corps experience, and I walked away. I returned to my shack, dried off and sat down with a copy of Lake Wobegon Days, leaving my shoes to gather mold in the corner.
* * *
I will not be the first volunteer to equate the tour of duty with the running of a marathon. Endurance. Pain. Monotony. Hell, even the numbers are the same: 26.2 months and 26.2 miles. But in the running of those laps in the campo, I often noticed another point of similarity: incrementalism [an invented word]. Much in the same way that I would constantly apprise myself of the percentage completed and that left to go while running, I would track the days gone by and the days remaining in my Peace Corps service. Five months down, two discounting training. Twenty-two months to go. One-twelfth of the way through. I suspect it’s unhealthy to be so constantly aware of one’s place in the stream of time. It doesn’t amount to the vaunted state of “Living in the moment,” but rather it’s an acute fixation with past and future. I hope that I am one of only a few who have suffered from this in the Peace Corps, though I know it afflicts many in the realm of endurance sports.
But there is another way to stride through either. Athletes will speak in hushed, reverent tones about “The Zone” – about the state in which you don’t notice the passing of the miles, the pain in the legs or the sun overhead. It is a meditation in motion, buoyed by serious physical preparedness and mental acuity. It is not easily invoked, and it has not happened to me very often in running. However, there came a point in my Peace Corps service when I realized that I was in that same Zone – when I awoke one day to find that more than half my time here had already rolled by, and the remainder would not only be tangible but fleeting. It was an accident, but a fortunate one.
* * *
The Hispaniola half-marathon happened again this year, on August 7th, and I ran it alongside two other volunteers who had given in to my wheedling pleas for company. I was in awful shape, but it was worth it. I did count the kilometers zealously, and I was constantly aware of the increments of the course. But I consider it one payment on a plan that will return me to the Zone one race in the future. For now I am content to be swiftly and pleasantly rolling the remaining days of my tour in the DR.
But it’s hot here. And that’s only one of the obstacles to running, as so many of us exercise-addicted volunteers have discovered. The culture – despite having a resident world 400m-hurdles champion – is chronically averse to non-work-related sweat. Unfriendly dogs proliferate on all suitable roads. The few organized races start hours late, foiling any attempts at warming up.
I encountered these difficulties as I continued to run through pre-service training, but my site presented a whole new dimension of challenge. Due to a quirk of local topography and drainage, the only path in my village (excluding those that climb out of the valley at a twenty percent incline) winds its way alongside the Rio Nagua, crossing it every few hundred meters. Adding to the difficulty was an annual rainfall of two and a half meters, which churns every stretch of trail into knee-deep mud for ten months at a time. It is not a location conducive to running.
But I was determined. In my first week I measured the nearest section of trail between river crossings (425 meters!) and set out to train for the 2003 Hispaniola half-marathon through a regimen of laps. Twelve lengths was a safe five kilometers, twenty-four made 10K, and fifty approximated a half-marathon. When conditions got muddy, I continued slogging. When my schedule forced me to roll miles under the midday sun, I would pound two liters of water and pass out immediately after finishing.
My mind would work curious tricks under the gun of such unpleasantness. The monotony of the terrain (“There goes that rock again”) lent itself to tangential thinking punctuated by a cruel, recycling algebra. While running, I would try to plan projects, write letters and formulate schedules in my head. But at the same time I would be dogged by the increment count: Three down, twenty-one up. One-eighth finished. Two seconds off pace. Fourteen down, ten up. So it would go.
After two months of this I went to Santo Domingo and ran the race, clocking my slowest-ever time in a half-marathon. Clearly my training method was not working. Resolving halfheartedly to continue, I dragged myself through the laps until – one soggy day in November – I broke. The rain had started as soon as I had laced my shoes, and it was on roughly the 2000th squishy footfall of the afternoon that I stopped in my tracks. Running wasn’t fun this way. It wasn’t even rewarding anymore. In that moment I realized that the athleticism I had hoped for was not compatible with my Peace Corps experience, and I walked away. I returned to my shack, dried off and sat down with a copy of Lake Wobegon Days, leaving my shoes to gather mold in the corner.
* * *
I will not be the first volunteer to equate the tour of duty with the running of a marathon. Endurance. Pain. Monotony. Hell, even the numbers are the same: 26.2 months and 26.2 miles. But in the running of those laps in the campo, I often noticed another point of similarity: incrementalism [an invented word]. Much in the same way that I would constantly apprise myself of the percentage completed and that left to go while running, I would track the days gone by and the days remaining in my Peace Corps service. Five months down, two discounting training. Twenty-two months to go. One-twelfth of the way through. I suspect it’s unhealthy to be so constantly aware of one’s place in the stream of time. It doesn’t amount to the vaunted state of “Living in the moment,” but rather it’s an acute fixation with past and future. I hope that I am one of only a few who have suffered from this in the Peace Corps, though I know it afflicts many in the realm of endurance sports.
But there is another way to stride through either. Athletes will speak in hushed, reverent tones about “The Zone” – about the state in which you don’t notice the passing of the miles, the pain in the legs or the sun overhead. It is a meditation in motion, buoyed by serious physical preparedness and mental acuity. It is not easily invoked, and it has not happened to me very often in running. However, there came a point in my Peace Corps service when I realized that I was in that same Zone – when I awoke one day to find that more than half my time here had already rolled by, and the remainder would not only be tangible but fleeting. It was an accident, but a fortunate one.
* * *
The Hispaniola half-marathon happened again this year, on August 7th, and I ran it alongside two other volunteers who had given in to my wheedling pleas for company. I was in awful shape, but it was worth it. I did count the kilometers zealously, and I was constantly aware of the increments of the course. But I consider it one payment on a plan that will return me to the Zone one race in the future. For now I am content to be swiftly and pleasantly rolling the remaining days of my tour in the DR.
