Road Racing in Georgia (edited and shared with permission)

This race report from a friend was precious, so I asked permission to share it after editing: On April 22, 2012, the US Embassy, in partnership with the Mayor of the city of Rustavi, Georgia, Red Bull, the US Marine Corps, and a random Georgian beer company, held the first annual Rustavi half marathon. Georgia is a wonderful, beautiful, hospitable country with warm, friendly people and delicious food. They are also very much a "we have no idea what the f*** we're doing or where the hell we're going, but my god we are going to get there as fast as we can" sort of culture. The people also drive like complete lunatics and there are a lot of aggressive stray dogs (we got approached by several such canines on our most recent trail run). We were pleasantly surprised. The race was very well-run - the course was well-marked and the police did a great job of controlling the traffic. There were a few dogs, but they just sat there and barked, looking rather confused to see hundreds of people running. That's right pooch, humans hunt in packs, too! They didn't have electronic timing chips like you would in a US race, so instead they just marked our arms and legs with magic marker and stuck post-it type labels on us, which of course fell off after about 100 feet. They also had kids with different colored markers at the two turnaround points who would mark you as you ran by so they could check at the end and make sure people did the whole course. Georgians have no concept of this thing called "pacing." There were 200-300 people in the race total, and when the race started just about everyone SPRINTED and I mean SPRINTED the first mile. After the first mile I was still way back from the head of the pack. I didn't sweat it though because I knew exactly what was going to happen. After the first mile it became a killing field of dejected, gasping Georgians keeling over on the side of the road. As I passed them, a lot of the Georgians used an interesting technique to try and keep up. As I would overtake them, they would do an all-out sprint for about 100 feet, stop and hunch over, panting, wait for me to catch them, then sprint ahead again. They would repeat this 4-5 times before coming to the realization that this was not a viable race strategy. What was also rather amusing was peoples' irrational fear of the cold, even though it was not cold. This is something I feel like you only see in the former Soviet Union. It was around 72 degrees F, yet a lot of the Georgians were running in sweatpants and sweatshirts, many with another layer on top of that. Maybe all the Khachapuri messes with their metabolism or something. But a few brave souls did take the polar opposite approach and were running nothing but these tiny red Gucci-looking briefs that said "Georgia" on the a**. I got the chance to chat with a 19-year old Georgian who was a very strong runner - he came in fifth and he was telling me how he is signed up for a few triathlons in Turkey later in the year. I asked him how he does his bike training with all the crazy driving, and he said he is in a club and they always have someone in a car with flashing lights drive directly behind them to shield them from traffic. Pretty good idea - sometimes I wish we had when we ride near home. There is a full marathon every September in Kazbegi, which is a beautiful city waaaaayyyy up in the mountains on the border between Russia and Georgia. Flights to Georgia aren't bad and Americans can enter the country visa-free. You guys should do it.