Havana Marathon 2015

Amanda B

After seeing a Facebook post about the Havana Marathon I thought it would be an interesting event to attend, given that the US-Cuban relations had simmered somewhat and there was a good chance there would be a larger than normal field given that many more Americans would have been able to legally participate this year for the first time in the 28 year history of the event.

I registered for the event seven months out from the day and made an accommodation booking at the same time just in case there was an influx of visitors to the city closer to the event. Four months later when I went to book my flights, I had to check the hotel accommodation booking to get the address for my airline and much to my horror I realized I had actually booked for a hotel by the same name as the one I thought I had booked in Havana but this one was in Spain! Fortunately I was able to cancel the booking without any charge so I then made sure I found the one I was meant to book in the first place. Unfortunately the websites always make the establishments look better than they actually are and I would later find out that this was certainly the case with the place I ended up staying in. 

Three months out from the race I started getting emails from my New York Flyers friend Howard Choi and a steady stream of emails started to flow between other New York Flyers who were planning to do the race. With talk of getting a special New York Flyers singlet made up for the event I thought it was time I make my Flyers status official and register as a bona fide New York Flyer. Now I really felt like part of the team! The constant flow of emails between Pei A, Maggie Schwartz, Howard Choi, Michael Rabin and Heather M while planning the trip, helped build the excitement leading up to race day. Even though I was on the other side of the world I felt like I was almost in NYC as well.

It was around this time that I realized how difficult a trip to Cuba can be and as I’d never known anyone to go there or heard anything about the place I just assumed it was like travelling to any other place – you know, you pay extra to your phone company so you can access cell phone and data use while in another country and you just travel and pay for everything with your credit card when you get there. I’d travelled to some extremely remote and third-world countries in recent years and cell phone coverage and credit card use was always accessible so I ignorantly took these things for granted. It was only when I started seeing the emails from the Flyers that I realized this wasn’t the case. I was even so naïve to assume it was just a cheap and easy flight from the nearest US city of Miami, like I had done for the Bahamas Marathon earlier in the year, so I booked flights from Australia going from Brisbane to LA and then through Miami. There didn’t seem to be any flights to Havana mentioned so I thought I’d just book them later as there must be several a day for such a short trip. Again I was in for a rude shock. A few weeks later when I went to book the flights to Havana from Miami I found out it wasn’t going to be easy - or cheap! It was time I did what I should have done in the first place and done some serious online blogging research and found out exactly what I was getting myself in to.

I realized after reading some online forums that it’s best to travel through Mexico rather than the US so I changed my LA to Miami flight for a LA to Cancun flight and this gave me the ability to easily get a Cuban visitors visa before entering the country. It seemed, from the flow of emails from the NYC delegates, that it’s still not easy to travel to Cuba from the US and everyone seemed to be making different travel plans according to their own situation.

Departure day arrived and once I got to Brisbane airport I purchased enough Canadian dollars to get me through the four days I would be spending in Havana. From the forums I had read it seemed Canadian dollars and Euros were the safest currency to take over and get exchanged into Cuban pesos without any dramas. I was just a bit concerned about what happens if you run out of cash and have to get more once you are over there. I just had to make sure this didn’t happen!

The trip to Cancun took nearly 24 hours with transit time in LA so I was glad to be staying in a hotel and not having to get onto another flight by the time I got there. I decided to have an early night and have a look around Cancun the next day as I wasn’t flying out until mid afternoon so had all morning to wander around. The view from my hotel room in the daylight didn’t look too impressive – no golden beaches like I had imagined – so I decided to find a gym and do a workout instead of walking around the less-than-impressive looking city centre.

Flyers Chilling In Cancun?

Once I got to the Cancun airport I had a hassle-free check-in and paid US$20 for a Cuban visitors permit and also another US$25 for a Cuban tax, which I later found out was a departure tax that you’re required to pay before departing Cuba.

On arrival in Havana my priority was to exchange the Canadian dollars for the local currency, which ordinarily would be an easy task in any other country – but not so here!  I had to walk outside the terminal building to the currency exchange booth which only allows for the people who are being served to be inside the air-conditioned office while everyone else has to queue up outside in the heat. I would find out over the next few days that this was the case with all the currency exchange offices in the city of Havana as well with long queues out on the sidewalks at every one I came across.

After finally exchanging my cash and ready to hit the streets of Havana I had to then find a taxi to take me to my accommodation. A man approached me and asked if I was looking for a taxi and when I replied that I was he offered to drive me to the accommodation that I showed him on the printed reservation confirmation that I was carrying with me. He enthusiastically directed me to follow him and led me through the airport and up to another exit on the first level of the terminal building. After being led outside I was shocked to see him lead me to a derelict-looking old car at the end of the driveway. By now I was starting to get concerned I was “being taken for a ride” in more ways than one and had to fight the urge to walk (no run!) in the other direction. But he seemed so nice…so I decided to just go with it and embrace the unconventional mode of transport.

As it turned out, he really was a nice man and spoke enough English to make the conversation enjoyable as he attempted to fill the awkward moments of silence with local tourist information. The ride reminded me of when I was a young child riding in the back seat of my Grandfather’s FJ holden – I had never even remembered that before now and was amazed at how the ride had dug up such a repressed image from my memory!

It was 7pm by the time I got to my apartment and now I was in for the next shock – a Cuban budget hotel. The “Hotel 4 Mosqueteros” was an old run-down building in the back streets of inner Havana. After wandering inside the front door a couple of times and seeing no reception desk and thinking I was in the wrong place I decided to climb the winding staircase and hope there was someone up there who could help me. I was relieved to be greeted by a very good-looking young black-Cuban man who was in charge of the apartments. He spoke virtually no English but his good looks were enough to ease my travel-weary brain into a state of unconditional acceptance of lowering my standards and accepting whatever I had to in order to appreciate the rustic appeal of a city untouched by not only the 21^st century but also the second half of the 20^th century!

I had organised to meet the rest of the Flyers at a restaurant at 7:30pm so after dropping my bags off in the hotel room I asked the manager if it was possible to get a taxi. After finally getting my request across (I should have taken a Spanish dictionary with me!) he pulled out his cell phone and made a call and then said it would take about 15 minutes before the car would arrive. I thanked him and walked down to the street to wait for the ride, wondering what sort of car I was supposed to be on the lookout for – I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be anything that resembled the kind of taxi I was used to getting into. It wasn’t long before a very old-model small car pulled up and a young guy motioned for me to get in. I just accepted that in Cuba I was going to have to abandon all sense of western-style conventions and just go with your gut feeling because there really wasn’t any way of telling if these guys were genuine taxi drivers or local thugs intent on driving you to an isolated location and robbing you of all your possessions – or worse! I tried not to let my imagination get carried away and just hoped I wasn’t misplacing my trust in this kid in the drivers seat who spoke absolutely no English. Fortunately, again, I had a printed sheet showing the restaurant that Pei had made the reservation for in advance of our arrival and this would be the first of many occasions when I would be eternally grateful to Pei for the outstanding job she did of preparing the incredible itinerary that would be the blueprint for everyone in the Flyers group to follow in lieu of digital communications. We were staying in four different accommodation venues between the group of us so it was back to the old-school method of stating a time and venue to meet up at different times of the day in order to catch up with each other. We all printed the itinerary details before leaving home so we had them with us while trying to navigate our way around Havana.

After 48 hours of travelling since I left home I finally arrived at the restaurant we had organized to meet at for our first night together in Havana. I’ve never been so glad to see some familiar faces when I walked into the restaurant in a dark back street in Havana city and be able to let my nervous guard down and relax. Over the past three years I had joined New York Flyers member Howard Choi in marathons in Antarctica, my hometown marathon on the Gold Coast (Australia), and then at his hometown run, the NYC Marathon, and it was great to be meeting up with him in another location around the world and spending the next few days catching up again. During my trip to NYC in 2014 for the marathon I had been introduced to many other New York Flyers and friends of Howard’s and now I finally got to meet the other Flyers who had been in the email chain leading up to the trip to Cuba. I was the last of the group to arrive at the restaurant so after giving Howard a big reunion hug I was introduced to Pei, Maggie, Michael and Heather. The rustic décor of the San Cristobal Paladar restaurant made for an excellent backdrop to the start of our Havana experience, complete with complimentary after-dinner rum and cigars!

After a lovely dinner the waiter called the taxi driver who had delivered me to the restaurant and he soon arrived to take me back to my hotel. As Howard, Pei and myself had organized to meet for a run the next morning I asked the taxi driver to pick me up again the next morning and drive me to the Capitolio building. It took a few minutes to get him to understand the request but we both eventually smiled and nodded excitedly at the fact the message was finally understood. I had survived my first day in Cuba!

Saturday morning we agreed to meet where the start of the marathon would be the next morning so we could do a dry run on meeting up before the start of the race. Again, with no cell phones it would be very easy to miss each other in the large crowd that would be at the start line if we didn’t have a plan to follow. I managed to find Howard first and then a few minutes later Pei joined us. We jogged down the centre plantation of the Paseo de Marti and turned left onto the Malecon where we jogged on the path next to the sea wall. The sun was out and the humidity was suffocatingly high so it was a scary introduction to what we could expect the next day during the marathon. The five or so miles we casually jogged was a struggle and I was quietly wondering how I was going to run over 26 miles in this heat and humidity the next morning?!

After showering we headed over to the Hotel Melia Cohiba where we were to pick up our race bibs. While we were there I ran into the only other Australian woman competing in the marathon...and I knew her! It was a huge surprise when we ran into each other and had a quick catch-up while we waited in line. After already running 32 marathons this was the first time I had seen the finishers medal in our bag with our finishers T-shirt at the bib pick up prior to the race. We all had a laugh about that and decided we would have to carry them with us during the race so we could get a finish line photo with our medal.

We left the hotel and walked along the Malecon to the historical Hotel Nacional. Every famous person who’s ever visited Havana has stayed at this grand hotel and it gave you a sense of what life in Havana must have been like in the height of its prosperous years. The hotel is perched high up on a hill and has rolling lawns out the back with tropical vistas looking over the sea. It felt as if we were catching a glimpse of a bygone era where time has stood still. The post-apocalyptic-like city of old Havana lay in stark contrast to the atmosphere that still existed on the lawns behind the Hotel Nacional. We enjoyed a lovely meal in the restaurant out in the gardens followed by a cocktail while relaxing in the balmy afternoon breeze. A moment of decadence in an otherwise impoverished city.  

I was happy to call it a day and head back to my hotel room so I could rest up before an early start the next morning for the running of the marathon. We all agreed to meet in front of the Capitolio building at 6:30am the next morning in time for a quick group photo before the start of the race at 7am.

RACE DAY

We all managed to meet up at the start line despite the 400 competitors running the full marathon, 1,500 running the half marathon, and around 1,700 competing in the 10km event. The full marathon would be two laps of the half marathon course. Porta-potties were rather scarce with only two of them behind the start line (and none of them along the course) so I was glad I didn’t have to go. With the Flyers group photo taken it was time to get this race underway. It was quite overcast so conditions were good for a comfortable start at least; only time would tell if the sun would come out later and torture us on the streets of Havana.

The race plan was for most of us to stay together although Maggie wanted to take it a bit easier so opted to start behind the rest of us. Maggie and Pei were doing the half marathon and me, Howard, Michael and Heather were all doing the full distance so Pei decided to run with us up until she crossed the finish line and we would then all continue on our second lap of the course. We knew the heat and humidity would be punishing so we planned to run at a relaxed pace for an estimated finishing time of 4 hours and 45 minutes for the full marathon. 

Michael, Heather, Howard and Amanda Having Fun!

We included walk breaks at the drink stops to help maintain a good level of hydration throughout the race. The drink stations were very frequent, at least every 2km, and were well manned and had convenient sealed plastic bags of both water and fruit juice at each station. The plastic bags proved much more practical than the regular plastic cups of water because you could continue to run with them and sip on them as you needed it or pour it over yourself. After tearing a small opening in a corner of the bag with your teeth you could use it as slowly or quickly as you wanted.

The second lap of the course slowly started to take it’s toll on us but we were very lucky with the weather and the sky remained heavily overcast for the entire race so it made the conditions more bearable than if we had to run in full sunlight. For the last few miles we had to compete with the congested city traffic to get to the finish line but the race officials and traffic police made us feel very special by stopping the traffic at the busy intersections and giving us right of way. By now it was tempting to walk rather than run but having the traffic held up for you made you feel obliged to at least try and look like a marathon runner instead of someone just out for a Sunday stroll. With a forced smile and feeble wave of thanks to the traffic enforcers we continued to the finish line.

We all caught up at the finish line while waiting for the last of the Flyers to complete the marathon and then took a “Finishers” photo in front of the Capitolio building. Flyers Paul and Cassie Nelson also joined us in this photo. From there we walked around to El Floridita, which is the supposed birthplace of the Daiquiri. The bar was packed to the rafters, complete with a life-size bronze statue of Hemingway sitting at the bar. We soaked up the great atmosphere – and the daiquiris!

We all met up again for a lovely celebratory dinner that night in a quaint restaurant called Dona Eutimia in the trendy Old Havana restaurant precinct. We again enjoyed lovely meals at a very reasonable price, just like at the other restaurants we had visited during the weekend. Our meals generally worked out to be about $25 per head, including alcohol, which was very reasonable considering we were dining at some of the best restaurants in the city. But the best part was probably the fact we could enjoy the great company and food without the distraction of cell phones!

After a busy weekend of sightseeing, marathoning and restauranteering (I know they aren’t real words but they should be because we do them all the time!) this would be our last night together in Havana before splitting up the next day and starting the long journey home. As always, I’d had a fantastic time catching up with fellow Flyers and running a marathon in another amazing destination on the other side of the world. Cuba may not be the easiest place to travel to but they put on a fantastic marathon weekend and it was well worth the effort!

-Amanda B