Where Has Jones Been?

I know, I know! Where have I been? It has been almost 4 years since my last post. Did I retire from running or lose the drive and enthusiasm for the sport? Not yet! I know it has been a while since my last post but I am still here. A lot has changed since 2018 when I last blogged about the Malibu Creek 21K. For one, we have been in global pandemic with the COVID-19 virus that kicked into gear in March of 2020. I guess that is where I should pick back up but actually let me pick up just a bit before that in 2019. In 2019, my LA Marathon streak was very much still alive. I had run my 16th consecutive race and I was having really one of my best running years or at least the most productive. I don’t know what it was about 2019, but things were coming together and after the LA Marathon, I knew I wanted to do something different. For years, I said I wanted to travel to Cuba and I knew they had a marathon and half marathon there. What better way to get to know a place than to run there and in 2018, I watched Will Smith live out his bucket list dream which was to run a half marathon and it just so happened that he did it in Cuba. I remember seeing a 2-3 minute video of him running the race and the one distinct thing I recall was how drenched he looked throughout the race and after the race. I knew that meant that Cuba was just as humid as Miami and I tried running in Miami once while on vacation and it sucked! Nevertheless, I said to myself, this was my year! I did all my research and scoping out the information and found my way to the registration page. Seemed a little sketchy because the process was through what looked like a 3rd party registration site but I was registered which was the easy part. Everything else was the mystery; where would I stay, what about getting around, what could I take, what couldn’t I take? I had plenty of time to work it all out but if know me, I never do anything easy. For the previous few years, I had run the Vegas Rock N Roll half marathon always scheduled in November. Now registered for the Havana half marathon, I figured “How cool would it be to run the Havana race on November 12th and turn around and run the Rock n Roll race on the 19th”. Ideas like these always seem realistic and feasible until you are in the midst of the actions and realize life is so much easier when you stick to being practical but I was determined to make this happen. I even added more to the pot by registering for the Malibu half marathon on November 2nd. My thought was that I would have the Malibu half marathon to get myself warmed up for Havana and Vegas. I think I had been listening to David Goggins way too much and just believed I was superhuman and could do anything but I quickly came to my senses a few weeks before the Malibu race and decided what would be best is to focus on Havana and Vegas. Afterall, Malibu was here in my town and I could run that any time. I am pretty obsessive when it comes to my hotel or place to stay in proximity to the race start, so I did all kinds of google map searches, trying to see how far certain airbnb’s were to the race start and bib pickup. I knew that there was talk about not being able to access internet in Cuba so I wanted to have as much knowledge as I could before going. I found an Airbnb that was less than a mile from the start of the race and super close to the bib pick up. I booked my flight, got my visa and I was set with one caveat. I am frightened as hell about what to eat before a race and what my options would be, especially in another country but I knew there was only so much I could do about that. I feared that if I tried bringing tons of stuff, they would confiscate what I had so I brought 2 packs of oatmeal, 3 protein bars and my hydration tablets. I had 3 pairs of shoes and all the running gear imaginable along with 2-3 trash bags that I instinctively brought with me which were tremendously helpful and you will hear why soon. I would like this to be about my Cuba experience as a whole but I will try to stick to running on this one and talk about Cuba itself another time. Running out of state always seems like twice the headache because of the prep and adding travel to the mix but running in another country is on another level and this was Cuba I was traveling to run a race. You cannot just get what you want. There are no REI’s stores or Whole Foods or 7-11 to grab a Gatorade and whatever else. You make do with what you have. I learned that right away. I arrived pretty late on Friday night. The race was Sunday morning at 6am. I got a little bit of sleep, awoke and headed to get my bib about a mile away. While there, I saw a guy who was on my flight from New York. He was also running the race. He and I linked up with some locals and walked to the free meal they arranged for runners. This was not something I wanted to do especially because the location of this free meal was 6 miles away and the humidity that day was killer and my mind was on saving my energy and relaxing and trying to hydrate but here I was on a journey through HAVANA! All in all, we walked 8 miles that day! 8 miles the day before a half marathon in intense humidity and oh yea; it was not so easy to just grab water. We found a mall which was about 3 miles from my Airbnb that had 2-liter bottles of water and because you want to be considerate, we only bought two each. By the time I had a chance to sit down, it was around 3-4pm and I had been up at 9 that morning thinking I was just going to go grab my bib and walk back and chill. I sat in my Airbnb which had an engine like sounding AC in the bedroom but only regular fans in the living room which provided a false sense of relief from the humidity. I knew there would be no way I would be able to go the remainder of the day without dinner or something, so around 6pm, I stepped outside and walked up and down the streets of Havana trying to scope out a place to eat but in came my fear as I was now really too close to the race but then my judgment went south. I saw a guy outside a hotel and he greeted me and asked where I was from and said come and have a drink on him. Turned out to be a really cool guy named Chris who was Cuban but lived in Miami and he was in Havana on business. He bought me a few beers and I decided at that point it was time to go and try to hydrate or find something to eat. Why oh why did I decide to buy two ham and cheese sandwiches from a shop off the block near my airbnb? Hunger and poor judgement overcame my pre-race meal rules and common sense. I knew from the first bite that the cheese had an odd taste but I kept on eating and before long, they were gone. I decided I would try to get some sleep and I would like to say it was the pouring rain that got me out of bed, but those two ham and cheese sandwiches came calling. I spent over an hour running back and forth to the toilet and that is all I will say about that. I recall looking at the time and it was about 2am, then 3am and the rain was still coming down and I was dizzy and feeling dehydrated and miserable at the same time. At that moment, I figured with the pouring rain, there would be no race and the way I felt, I did not care. I said f this and went back to bed and still had my alarm on for 5am. I got up and said, “if it’s still raining, we are skipping this race” but when I opened the windows to the balcony, I saw people in running gear walking down the street and no rain. I knew that I would be at that start line regardless of how miserable I felt. I opened my packets of oatmeal, and thankfully I was able to keep it down, I drank some water and took a protein bar with me and out the door I went. Something happens once I get to the race. I know that if I just show up, the energy and adrenaline will most definitely get me pumped enough to where I believe I can do it no matter what. Once the race starts, that is a whole other matter! It was a beautiful overcast morning with clouds still looming in the air but it was perfect because my fear had been the sun blazing and humidity sucking the life out of me with each step but I was just overjoyed to be on that start line. I had no idea about the course. I knew that it started by the capital and ended by the capital and away we went. I felt cool and calm and surprisingly, I felt great! There is no race that has better views for the first 1-5 miles which start at the capital and then along the Malecon which is this long stretch of road by the ocean in Havana. The Malecon has a long short wall which people sit on at night and hang out with friends, drink and just enjoy the beautiful atmosphere. At certain parts, the water from the Ocean crashes up on the rocks and over onto the sidewalk splashing anyone who dares to get that close. A rainbow that morning shined bright in the distance. It was such a beautiful scene that I had to stop and take a picture and of course try to capture myself in a selfie and a kind Cuban gentleman offered to take the photo for me. After my treacherous night, this could not be a better start to a race. It was truly magical and this is where every story comes has a but, followed by how thing went off the rails. My but comes in at mile 6 and this is also where those trash bags I brought along came in as well. We had perfect weather to a perfect backdrop and at the flip of a coin, it began to sprinkle, which quickly turned into a downpour which quickly turned the street of Havana into a monsoon. I had the trash bag I brought with me in my running pouch. I took it out and put some holes in it and put it on. Most looked at me as if I were crazy but I was dry with the exception of the race bib. They used a bib that I had never seen before. Almost like it was made of regular paper. I had mines pinned to my shorts and once it got wet, it just ripped away. Each time I tried pinning it again, it just ripped. There wasn’t a timing chip attached to it, it was just a number and there were people at various points writing down the numbers of those in the race. What was I supposed to do? I was wearing a visor and I folded the bib and tucked it into my visor and looked crazy but there was nothing else I could do. This is also a good time to point out that about 75% of the people were running the 10k, 20% of us were doing the half marathon and 5% were running the full marathon so when we hit a certain point where the 10k folks turned around, it was relatively a small batch of runners out there. From mile 7-11, it was like running in a river. I mean the rain poured. There was a street that had a long uphill and the water streamed down and there literally was no part of that street you could run without having water ankle high. Every race I have run, has a few guys out there running without a shirt no matter the temperature, and I recall a guy with no shirt running over to the gas station asking them for anything he could use to cover himself. I ran over to the same area just so I could stay dry for a second and try to change the songs on my iphone. The rain was coming down so hard that my hands were wet and my phone screen wouldn’t move. I decided at this point of the race, that I would just do whatever I could to survive because everyone around me just kept pushing forward and wouldn’t you now it, around mile 11, the rain stopped and the sun started to shine through and it brought its friend Mr. Humidity! I could not catch a break! But there were only 2 miles left and this was where there were literally 200 to 300 feet between me and the next runner. It felt like you were out there alone and most Cubans were just going about their day. This was not much of a crowd cheering and roaring kind of event so you had to stay focused and just run and when I crossed that finish line, I think it took me a few minutes to process the whole race. It was like I had been through 2-3 separate races with multiple weather changes and yet I weathered the storm! When I was done, I gave one of my favorite pairs of running shoes to a Cuban runner who I promised them to before the race. I then walked back through the streets of Havana barefoot, drenched and proud with a race medal around my neck! This experience is much more than these few pages but I will pick this story back up again when I talk about the week after when I made it to Vegas for the Rock n Roll Half Marathon! Stay tuned!