50th San Blas Half Marathon of Coamo

The party of the decade! Or… Why stay in San Juan when you can be here, the center of the Universe?

This was my 3rd San Blas Marathon.

The 1st post in 2010 featured a lot of photos and a video of the runners going by from a fixed vantage point. The 2nd post in 2011 featured tons more shots, a map of the route and a video of the route shot from the roof of my SUV. It turned out to be very popular on Youtube.

It gives you a real sense of how big the ‘all day’ party is.

This year’s 50th Anniversary post will feature tons more photos and video of each runner as they ran by. Well, most of them, we did not get ’em all. And the little VadoHD was only good for about an hour and 20 minutes before it pooped out. The video will also feature traffic from the ‘impromptu’ parade from earlier in the day.

That video will be featured here in a few days. It takes a while for me to edit down almost 3 hours of clips. So this post is about everything else.

The weather for the day was broken overcast, but no real chance of rain. I got a good bump on my tan for the time I spent outside.

This is the middle of the dry season in PR. Things are starting to dry up and turn brown from a lack of rain. Especially on the south side of the island where we are.

Kind of funny.. it did rain some on Monday, the day after. I was glad for that.

Party, Party, Party!

Folks from all over PR as well as from the mainland come to check out the San Blas Marathon. Runners are from all over the World. There was even a guy from Cuba this year.

Some locals stake out ‘their’ spot days, even weeks before the main event. In fact, I saw the first of the home-made markers before New Years, this year. Many show up on Saturday and camp out overnight.

The main presentation was staged at the Velodromo (the local stadium) on Saturday night. The carnival rides from last weekend’s event were now relocated here. Fireworks finished off the night’s activities. We tried to attend it last year, but it was too crowded for us and the stadium lights made shooting the fireworks sort of disappointing, so we skipped it this year. We could still hear the fireworks going off from our place.

The Velodromo is also where the Runners finish the race and receive their awards on Sunday evening.

The partying on Saturday night was sooo intense, we got no sleep to speak of.

You would have to see it (and hear it), to believe it. It IS only once a year (thank goodness). Otherwise, it’s pretty quiet the rest of the time. We could hear music from pretty much every direction, homemade fireworks exploding, horns honking and horses clomping up and down the road until dawn. I kid you not.

The guys camped on the road above our place have been staking out their little spot for the last 12 years. They live in Villalba.

It’s an annual ritual for them, like many others.

I got up early on Sunday so I could water my plants (since I was already awake) and get on with the day’s activity. All my batteries were charged and good to go.

The Parade of San Blas

The circus that is the Parade is an informal affair. Simply folks taking their rides out for a spin along the Marathon route. Cops were deployed along the road by 8:30AM. The local traffic picked up shortly after that.

At one point, the Queen and Princess of Coamo’s Fiestas Patronales came by. They even had their own little entourage.

Though it’s not the official T-shirt, I got a good shot as these guys were driving by and then he tossed me the shirt. A special thanx to POA’s Furniture.

ARRG!!!!

I’ve seen some pretty cool stuff in the 3 years I’ve been here.

Too many kinds of motorbikes to list and tons and tons of Jeeps. Old and new… Classic cars, VW Beetles, fast cars and SUV’s without doors. 4 wheelers or 4 tracks as the locals call them, are also very popular. Most 4 tracks are not licensed for use on the road, but the Cops often ignore that little issue on Saturday night and Sunday.

It’s sort of like controlled mayhem out there.

Don’t get me wrong, Cops are everywhere along the route. Hundreds of them. Most folks seem to maintain a sense of civility throughout the whole thing. By one estimate, there are over 150,000 people spread out along the 21 Kilometer route. I bet it’s more than that.

The ‘Parade’ lasts until the Cops block off the road about 1:30PM.

At that point, it becomes a local community event. Neighbors are playing dominoes, kids on bikes are messing around in the road, teenagers looking for friends and lots and lots of music, food and drink.

It don’t get any better than this… I swear!

I took this opportunity to walk down to where they moved the 15 KM marker. It was only about 300 feet from where I normally set-up to shoot. In that brief walk, I was offered no less than 3 plates of food and 4 beers!

Too bad I was working the event.

There was a lot of activity off the road as well. Check out the cool choo-choo made from a lawn tractor and plastic barrels. How neat is that? Then there were the guys pushing around ‘Helado’ ice-cream carts. They were everywhere.

Later, after most of the runners had passed by, I did break down and try a local favorite… Whiskey and Coconut water. I could not pass up trying something new, thanks to our neighbors across the street. Though I prefer Rum, it was pretty good. Me thinks the drink they gave me was more Whiskey than Coconut water.

It complemented my huge plate of rice and gandules, roast pork and chicken.

Then there was the Race!

The race does not start until later in the afternoon.. 4:30. They do this so the runners don’t melt under the hot sun while trying to trudge up and down the hills and curves. That’s the reason it’s only half an official marathon… the heat and the hills you have to cover. Here’s a link to me MAP.

Media was in full force this year with crews working all aspects of the route.

I scored a good shot of a news helicopter overhead and the official press crew truck as it went by. Note that only one in the bunch, had a camera aimed at anything. To be fair, they are shooting into the sun along our part of the run and they were pretty far ahead of the leader. The front runners were being tracked by cameramen on motorbikes, shooting off the back. A common trick for this type of event.

It took the frontrunner, Geoffrey Mutai of Kenya about 47 minutes to get to where we were at the 15Km mark. He had a good lead at that point. The hills at the 13Km and 14Km mark tend to slow everyone down.

I have to admit, when he went by, he made it look easy… like it was no big deal.

Though there were several runners behind him, it took another 30 minutes before the bulk of the runners made it by.

Most of the runners had cleared our spot before the sun started to set at about 6:30. The Guaynabo City Joggers Club were out in force this year. They were a particularly cheerful bunch. We have a few good shots of them, both on this site and on the Facebook page.

I had to keep moving my VideoCam as the sun set to avoid the hard light. It shut down just as the sun set.

About 7:15, the last of the runners came by. It was pretty dark at this point so I tried to use my flash, but I was not really set-up to do that. Now folks were tearing down their sites for the trip home.

By 8PM it was all over… WooHoo!!

The dedicated 50th Annual San Blas Runner’s Photo Page is live and well..

We have a second page of just photos taken of the runners. You can see it as a link, HERE.

We do not have shots of every runner, but most. Names were added to the ones we could identify. UPDATE: There is a 3rd page of runners with names and a few more shots of the locals from earlier in the day. You can get to it from a link at the bottom of the 2nd page listed above.

A special thanx to me First Mate for contributing a bunch of shots and building the 2 extra pages for me. She did manage to get a good one of the COAMO Letras runners.

Remember- Go see the video of this parade of visitors .. maybe you’re in it.