Ahh, February: the perfect month to run straight up a mountain

Posted on by stanleyobando

I’ve recently discovered a new favorite genre: documentaries about people performing wince-inducing physical feats. In that vein, I’d like someone to make a feature-length film about the race that unites batshit-crazy badass superheroes every February in Costa Rica. That’s right. It’s the Carrera Internacional Ecológica Cerro Chirripó.

To put this in perspective, I may need to italicize, and possibly hit the caps lock button. You see, people in fairly good shape often train to make sure they’ll be successful when they walk up Chirripó, Costa Rica’s highest peak, over multiple days. The competitors in this race run up – and then down  – a total of 34 kilometers, ascending and then descending 2,050 meters along the way. Yes, caps lock required. That’s running up the Empire State Building MORE THAN FIVE TIMES OVER, and then descending that same knee-jarring distance, except on uneven terrain and at high altitudes. All in a little over three hours, if you’re in the lead.

I would tell you more about the way the race links runners to local communities, homegrown food and regional traditions, but just writing about it has worn me out. I’ll be over on the couch, hoping that a documentarian is interviewing Saturday’s racers as we speak and preparing to strap cameras to their singlets so we can see just how they manage this extraordinary feat. Best of luck, you superhumans. May the road rise to meet you. I have a funny feeling it will.

I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook! Each month in 2020 has a monthly theme, and February’s is marriage equality, so scroll back through the month to see several posts highlighting people and organizations working on behalf of this issue in Costa Rica. 

 

Day 36: All hail the conquerer, Amy Palmiero-Winters

Posted on by stanleyobando
Endurance athlete Amy Palmiero Winters

Do you have a busy week ahead of you? Me, too. But you know what gives me a little more energy? Keeping in mind that a woman who endured the amputation of one of her legs (and the reconstruction of her other foot!) in her youth just rode her bike through the killer mountains of Costa Rica, tackling one of the toughest adventure races in the world.

The wide-eyed story I saw about Amy Palmiero-Winters in Costa Rica’s newspaper of record, La Nación, over the weekend made it sound as if this might have been her first rodeo. She joked in the interview about having to have words with her sponsor because the race turned out to be much harder than she expected, and I think the journalist took her too seriously. When I Googled her, I discovered that she is an international phenomenon. She’s run gut-wrenching ultramarathons, became the first amputee ever to qualify for the grueling Western States, and, in her free time, pushes wheelchairs for participants in other races, according to the New York Times.

Screenshot from The New York Times

What’s more, that same NYT article tells the story of how – after a car driver skipped a stop sign and hit her motorcycle, but before her left leg was amputated – she ran a marathon in Columbus, Ohio. That’s right. She ran a marathon with one leg atrophied, having been subjected to more than 25 operations. She ran the marathon, and then went in for her amputation.

No wonder she tackled the mountains of Costa Rica, inspiring yet another country with her steely nerve.

Whatever we’ve got on our plates this week: we’ve got this. Just ask Amy.

Want to read omre about the Ruta? I never tire of my friend Jill Replogle’s amazing piece about the Colorado man who literally fell off of the route and spent 30 hours shoeless and lost in the Costa Rican jungle. Check it out here.

I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook! You can also find me churning out small, square poems on any topic under the sun (here on the site, on Instagram or Twitter). 

Day 16: In just 12.64 seconds, she opened doors

Posted on by stanleyobando
Costa Rican athlete Andrea Vargas

I spend a lot of time thinking about the big changes that need to happen in order for my daughter to inherit a Costa Rica and a world where women are treated better than they are today. Yesterday, I was reminded that sometimes, those changes get made through sheer individual achievement. Doors can be smashed open by, say, one woman who runs like hell.

How improbable is it for a Costa Rican athlete to become the fifth-fastest woman in world? As a friend pointed out after Andrea Carolina Vargas Mena broke her own records to secure her spot among the world’s best at the World Athletics Championships, not to mention becoming the first athlete from her country ever to qualify for an open-area athletics final, you have to take her context into account – and not just the tininess of her country, five million strong. It’s the lack of support, both official and societal, for female athletes. The lack of enthusiasm for any sport aside from soccer. I am reasonably interested in sports and very interested in women’s sports, and had never heard of her until this weekend. Many people here are still unaware, especially since she ran her final at the same time that Saprissa and Alajuela were facing off on the football pitch.

All of this is to say that when Andrea Vargas blazed her way down the track, she overcame not only the limits of her own legs and lungs but also layer upon layer of disinterest, of low expectations, of what have surely been many pulls and distractions and calls to give up and do something considered more sensible or appropriate. She showed us what it means to power through. Without any doubt, she gave new hope and surely attracted new resources to women athletes of all ages in Costa Rica – including women who are mothers, as she is.

Andrea won many hearts in just 12.64. She definitely won mine:

I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook! You can also find me churning out small, square poems on any topic under the sun (here on the site, on Instagram or Twitter).