A Grand Excuse to Party all Night,
all Day and the Next Night too

The very first ‘foot race’ of 3 miles was held in Feb­ru­ary of 1963 by its spon­sors, the Coamo Fra­ter­nity of Delta Phi Delta. It was con­ceived as a trib­ute to honor one of the Patron Saints of Coamo, San Blas. Yes, they have 2 Patron Saints whereas most towns have only one. Within a few years, the route was extended to 21.0975 Kilo­me­ters (slightly over 13 miles) and has grown into a race of inter­na­tional proportions.

Con­tes­tants  from over 50 coun­tries have made the ‘Coamo Run’

In fact, in the last 10 years of the 21Km marathon, all have been won by run­ners from out­side Puerto Rico (or the US for that mat­ter). The Men’s Over­all Divi­sion was won this year by 26 year old Patrick Nthiwa of Kenya with a time of 1 hour, 2 min­utes and 50 sec­onds.  He received $8,000 for his efforts, but did not break the cur­rent best time of 1 hour, 2 min­utes, 10 sec­onds. Patrick would have got an extra $5000 had he beat it. His time was the 5th best ever.  There is a sep­a­rate Women’s Over­all Divi­sion with a purse of $8,000. That was won by Ann C. Bererwe also of Kenya. There are addi­tional sub-categories based on age, another for res­i­dents of Coamo, one for res­i­dents of Puerto Rico and an Inter­na­tional cat­e­gory. There is a Wheel­chair Cat­e­gory as well. Medals are handed out in a for­mal cer­e­mony that imme­di­ately fol­lows the Marathon. It cost $20 to enter, $5 more if you wait until the last month before the race to register.

That pretty much sums up the ‘offi­cial’ San Blas Marathon Web site spiel.

I have to say, even when I was in peak form, I could barely hike or ski 13 miles in a sin­gle day, much less run it on foot in 85 degree tem­per­a­tures so I have a lot of respect for those that did. Espe­cially the run­ners older than myself.

Its worth not­ing that a stan­dard sanc­tioned marathon is 42.195 Kilometers.

The Scurvy Dog’s First Hand Report:

First and fore­most, this is THE big event for Coamo. Puerto Ricans from all over the island come to party and watch the race. Many folks stake out their ‘lit­tle’ site along the road weeks ahead of the race with mark­ers and flags of all kinds.  It’s quite col­or­ful.  By race day, there is lit­er­ally no place left to park a car along the marathon route.

Many folks that drove in from else­where, camped out the night before. This is very much a fam­ily event so there were peo­ple of all ages wan­der­ing around. Some have been com­ing to the same place for over 15 years so they are very care­ful to take care of their lit­tle spot. That said, the city was prompt to do clean-up the next morn­ing. I even saw a school bus of kids out doing their part, col­lect­ing garbage. That was sim­ply awesome!

Though there is no for­mally orga­nized parade around the marathon course (of which I’m sur­prised there ain’t one), the locals love to cruise the route show­ing off their rides. I saw pretty much every kind of jeep or ‘jeep like prod­uct’ ever made. Same goes for motor­bikes. Hun­dreds of them… of every size, color and type from Mopeds to Harleys.

Another fix­ture of Puerto Rico are the local DJ’s blast­ing out music and adver­tis­ing from the tops of their trucks or vans with HUGE speaker sys­tems. You can hear these things com­ing from a mile off. I like ‘em. They add to the ambiance that is Puerto Rico (like the roost­ers crow­ing all day long or the Coquis singing at night).

These ‘Boom Boxes on Wheels’ sound like they are right in your liv­ing room when they go by, they are THAT loud.

The half marathon route starts just out­side of town, pro­ceeds through the cen­ter of Coamo, con­tin­ues out into the local coun­try­side and loops back through the down­town area again before fin­ish­ing at the Velo­dromo (a facil­ity orig­i­nally built for the PanAm Games).

Coamo is not a big place, but it is the 3rd old­est town on the island. Pre­dat­ing Ponce on the south coast. The US fought the Span­ish here in 1898 in the last bat­tle of the Span­ish Amer­i­can War, just prior to the sur­ren­der of Puerto Rico. OK, I digress with the his­tory lesson…

The race does not actu­ally start until 4:30PM so seri­ous par­ty­ing is going on, right up ’till then. A cou­ple folks were still stag­ger­ing into the road as the run­ners came by. Not very respect­ful, but in fair­ness, they were the excep­tion… Most locals were off the road to watch and cheer on the run­ners. Our ‘stake-out’ was just after the high­est point in the race. It was a toasty (86F high at 2:30PM) sunny Sun­day (pinch me, it’s early Feb­ru­ary here)… Some of the run­ners were sling­ing sweat with every step. I’m not much of a spec­ta­tor sports type per­son, but I do respect the effort and com­mit­ment it takes to make this ‘Hot Jog’. Maybe ‘Radio Coamo’ can help by encour­ag­ing folks to stay out of the run­ners’ way, once the race starts.  It couldn’t hurt. I lis­ten to ‘Radio Coamo’ at 1450 AM, all the time (yes, I’m try­ing to learn some Span­ish). You could hear it every­where, up and down the road.

It took about 40 min­utes for the front run­ners to pass our posi­tion. They were being lead by a huge escort of Coamo Police on motor­bikes. Pretty impres­sive. Video crews on motor­cy­cles were shoot­ing the run­ners as they went by us. The par­ty­ing moved into full gear once the last of the con­tes­tants trick­led past. It went on until the wee hours of the morn­ing. WooHoo!

I shot tons of pic­tures and some video of this ‘lit­tle’ event. I will post up the video in the near future. I did want to honor the run­ners with some of the shots I took so a sep­a­rate page,

the Scurvy Dog’s Run­ners of Coamo 2010

is up and run­ning.  Its done in basic HTML/CSS so I could add it to this post con­cur­rently (gra­cias Nancy).  The images are not in any par­tic­u­lar order and are really more of a ‘Best Of Shots Col­lec­tion’. The page has over 30 (opti­mized for the Web) images so give it a lit­tle extra time to load.  I was shoot­ing into the sun for most of the San Blas Marathon as can be seen by the forth-coming video. I feel most for­tu­nate, I got the shots I got.

If you can help me add names to the run­ners pho­tos,
I’ll gladly update the “Run­ners of Coamo 2010″ page with them.

All in all, I had a great time! I made a few new friends, was never with­out a drink and had more food than I could pos­si­bly eat.

A Major ARRG from the Scurvy Dog!

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