Run Across Haiti day 1

Strava stats: 32.5 miles, 2400′ climb

Day one is in the books. 34 miles, maybe 3000 feet of climb mostly at the end. I’m guessing the GPS tracked a bit short so this is probably accurate.

One word for today: INTENSE!

Wow, that was crazy. The first mile was calm, but as soon as we turned off the coast into Cap Haitian… cars and people and motorcycles.

And the motorcycles were INSANE! Sometimes 4 people plus all their wares for the market for the day. The motorcycles never let up. They would swerve at you quite often if you were on the road. And sometimes you had to be – there were no shoulders!

Here’s a video I took when I made it through the madness:

And another that Joe took:

Also, I had assumed that with a 34 mile run, we’d leave the city and hit some rural sections. And while there were less people later on, there were actually homes the entire way. (Homes is being a bit generous to many of them.)

We passed through a couple of smaller towns and market areas that were INTENSE.

Here are my favorite shots from the day. I didn’t take many of the people – didn’t want to intrude. But you can see both the natural beauty and the poverty and chaos.

Here’s one the race crew took of me:

I came upon this amazing church hymn:

Families washing their clothes in the river:

(Some of those are out of order!)

We stayed at a huge open air school house for the rest of the day. A lot of locals came and hang out – we had a soccer game (I chose not to play – last time I played I lost an ankle!)