The Panama Canal – Running Spoken Here

Uli H.

It was dark. The palm trees were swaying in the damp wind when we climbed into the taxi. A red-white-and blue flag swung from the rear-view mirror.

“Clayton, por favor.”

“Clayton??” The driver shrugged as we showed him our map.

“Proximo del canal.” Next to the canal. The canal.

“Ahh, Clay-ton.” Eric V. and I looked at each other and back at the driver. Then he shifted his little Toyota into gear and we were thrown back against the seat as we pulled out of the hotel parking lot. Today was our first wedding anniversary.

We drove along the rain-slicked streets of Panama City, lined with muddy construction sites and high-rises that rivaled Manhattan’s and then past blocks of concrete apartments with bars over the windows and colorful fabrics fluttering from balcony railings. As we left the city limits, the street narrowed to two lanes, unlit and empty, and framed by dark foliage hanging over the road. It was 5:45 and not yet light out when we saw a bright flash in the distance – something reflecting off the headlights of the taxi. Running shoes! As we came closer we saw a handful of runners gathered near a folding table and knew we were in the right place.

“Esta aqui,” we told the driver, then handed him a twenty.

It was too dark to see, but we knew the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal were just past the grassy field to our left. Completed in 1914, the Panama Canal is a 48 mile waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific. It can take a cargo ship 24 hours and two hundred thousand dollars or more in tolls to traverse the Canal, but it would take the same ship a week and a million dollars in crew wages and fuel to sail down and around the tip of South America instead. We were there, before dawn on our wedding anniversary, for more modest reasons – to run the Reto Powerade 5k, organized by one of Panama City's oldest running clubs, Corredores del Istmo, or the Isthmus Roadrunners.

Since my normal race concerns are just to finish the race and to not be last, and since only fifty runners had registered for this race by the night before, I resigned myself to being ultima and looked for substitute worries. Not a problem as there was plenty for me to get worked up about: though we had succeeded in actually getting to the race site – and early, no less – I wondered what would happen if no one understood my request for agua, por favor? and I passed out from the heat. Or what if I urgently needed a baño and didn’t understand the directions to get to one? And it remained to be seen whether Eric and I had succeeded, with our combined Spanish vocabulary of about three dozen words, to register for the 5k and not the 15k being held at the same time...

We stood around a bit awkwardly as the sun came out, me with a worried look on my face, until a man named Salvador spotted our NY Flyers t-shirts and came to talk to us. In English. Sal was an ethnic Panamanian from Indiana, via Central Park West, whose U.S. Embassy job brought him to Panama City for months at a time. He was training for his first NYC Marathon and Eric and I shared our experiences. As we spoke, I kept looking around; probably because there were fewer recreational runners here than in the U.S., everyone looked pretty fit. Yep, I would definitely be last, though I was relieved to see bib numbers in the triple digits – it looked like quite a few more runners had signed up for the race that morning.

Eric and I suspected that, being so close to the equator, the race wouldn’t begin on time. Indeed, at 6:15 – just fifteen minutes before the scheduled start of the race, the sponsor was still inflating the starting-line floaty thingy. The race start time came and went as we chatted with Sal. Eventually we lined up, and after some last-minute instructions we didn’t understand, the race began – about 20 minutes late.

The course took us through the former Panama Canal U.S. military base, past white stucco buildings with terracotta roofs that now housed business start-ups and relief organizations like the Red Cross and Unicef. Determined not to be left behind right away, I started out strong and my legs felt good. We quickly reached the first distance marker – too quickly I thought, until I realized it was for kilometers, not miles. When I passed a few walkers I relaxed and eased my pace a bit, and when I turned around, there were still plenty of people behind me. I would not be la ultima!

Scenery of Panama

After running past former officers’ quarters I saw the front-runners of the 5k heading back towards the finish and managed to slap Eric’s hand as he ran by, not too far behind the leaders. The look on his face reminded me that I was still heading down the hill I would have to struggle with on the way back. It was thus with mixed feelings that I saw the race turnaround and a water station ahead of me.

And then I actually saw the water. From a distance I thought they were little bottles, but no, they were sealed pouches, like clear little water balloons or those cute juice pouches I always wanted as a kid and my mother wouldn’t let me have. Except these had no straws. Hmmm... I had been hearing popping sounds all around me so I figured I needed to squeeze the pouch, but I didn’t want the water to explode all over me. (For the record, I cannot operate a juice-box without injury.) I tried pulling it open, but the plastic was too tough. Using my nails to tear the plastic open didn't work either. Or my teeth. Finally, frustrated and embarrassed, not to mention thirsty, I squeezed as hard as I could with both hands and the pouch expanded like a bubble and then burst in my face, leaving only a few sips for me to drink. That was enough, though, and my struggle with the reluctant plastic bag had distracted me from the beginning of the long hill.

Once deep into it, I compared the hill, as I do all race inclines, to Harlem Hill, and, as most hills do, this one failed to measure up; I could handle it. Along the course, giant versions of what we consider exotic houseplants in the U.S. grew wild on the side of the road. I distracted myself by trying to calculate how much the colorful Birds of Paradise blooming all around me would fetch at a florist’s in NYC.

Soon I was back on the flat stretch where the race had started and I could see the finish line in the distance. Eric, who was long-since done, ran with me for a little bit and then pulled off to the side to let me finish without confusing the race results; there were no chips or timing mats, but no tear-off tabs on our race bibs either. Instead, a volunteer stood on either side of the finish and entered a runner’s bib number into a device that looked like an adding machine just as the runner crossed the line. These tabulators were connected to the giant digital race clock; I suspected they could spit out the complete and accurate race results in a stream of paper tape once the last runner crossed the line.

We all got medals as we finished. Then I grabbed a cup of blue Powerade and walked for a few minutes as the sweat poured down my face. It was still early morning, but the equatorial air was oppressive and I regretted not having brought a towel. After we cooled down a bit, Eric and I spotted Pablo, one of the race organizers. With a combination of languages and hand gestures we managed to compare running injuries and tell him how much we’d enjoyed the race. He congratulated us on our anniversary and introduced us to his wife and daughter, who were also volunteering there. Then we chatted with Carlos, who we had seen at the registration desk the night before. They all spoke in broken English, we in broken Spanish. Still, we all managed to be understood.

Eric V. and Uli H., post-race

It turns out I was far from last, though this was my slowest 5k on record. And Eric fared even better, coming in 1st in his age group. (They always say the competition's not as tough outside NYC!) The best prize from this race though, was the experience; connecting with a community far away where the language presented a challenge, but a shared love of running made communicating easy. - Uli H.