Running Update

My new running partner is Fritzner Phanor. He's 22 years-old and has been living at the orphanage since he was 13. He was one of the first boys I befriended when I moved down to Haiti and we've been inseparable ever since. Throughout these last four months, I've worked with Fritz every morning Mon-Fri, doing public health training and teaching him about various testing, treatment and preventative methods regarding several diseases endemic to the area. Now that he is comfortable with the material, we've started a public health team of five older boys from the orphanage who we are teaching to become public health workers that will go out into the villages and do outreach. I do the lesson plans and Fritz teaches the class. He's great with the guys and gets them excited about the material. He's committed and passionate about his work and the difference he's making. Sponsored by a hospital in Maine, he's been granted the opportunity to attend a lab tech school where he can get the medical training he's been longing for. All of the children at the orphanage see him as a role model, a great soccer player and an overall good guy. It was obvious that he was the perfect person to run this marathon with me.

Training is going great! Last Sunday, we did our first 18-mile run. We started at 5am to avoid the midmorning sun and were amazed at how much faster and comfortable we were. However, by 6am, we were already running in 80 degrees. The course I took us on included 2 miles of rocky road, 1 mile of dirt path, 12 miles of paved road and 3 miles up a mountain road. We finished in just under three hours. I assured Fritz that there are no mountains at the marathon, nor will we be running in the same 90-95 degree weather that we're used to running in here. "We're working extra hard so that the real run won't be nearly as intimidating as it seems," I would tell him. We're running about 45 miles/week with Mon & Fridays off for cross training.

I've got running trails mapped out all over the area so that depending on the day and mileage, we take a different course. Some are muddy and rocky while others are nearly all paved. I like to save the paved road for our long runs on Sundays, mainly because it is the same surface we'll be running on for the marathon but also because it is not easily accessible and requires us to run 2 miles down a rocky road with tons of potholes and difficult terrain before we can reach it. It's not worth the trouble if we're running just 6-8 miles on a regular day.