The Stuff One Sees at the Beach

So, I went to the beach this weekend...by myself! First of all, that never happens and second, it was divine. I had a purpose, aside from entertaining my inner beach bum: I had signed up for the Energizer Night Race being held in Viña del Mar, Chile, with the super odd distance of 8.2 km. I don't know how they came up with 8.2 but whatever, 8.2 it was. And of course, since it was a trip I planned all by my lonesome, the logistics got confuzzled and I ended up going on Friday and coming home on Sunday for a Saturday night race (don't ask). I chose to see the glass all the way full on this one!

So, Friday afternoon, I took myself and my (rather heavy) duffle bag (only 2 nights, come on) to the bus station. Call me a nerd, but I was excited about taking my first "real" bus trip (a two hour bus ride might not seem like a real bus ride but trust me, it was). I actually enjoyed taking the subway downtown, trying to find the correct terminal (second time's the charm, apparently), trying to get on the wrong bus about 5 times, watching all the back-packers, wincing at all the screaming kids, marveling at amount of luggage people lug on a bus, etc. The bus ride itself was fairly boring - I'm guessing because I...fell asleep... and have no idea if anything exciting happened or not. And then, of course the bus arrived and there was a new terminal to inspect and tourist-trappers to ignore and a bed & breakfast to be located (absolutely recommend: amweinberg.cl). All awesome. I got checked in, dropped off the infernal duffle (note to self: time to invest in one of those cool backpacks), and headed to the mall to pick up my kit.

So, first of all, normally, I'm a walking GPS, but that mall dominated me. I could't stinkin' find the Nike store to pick up my kit!! It must have been quite a sight, the solitary gringa roaming the passageways with a confused-changing-to-swearing-in-symbols-under-my-breath expression. Turns out, it was in a "new addition" on the other side of the road and...grrr...saving grace, Starbucks, with a really cool Lego store above it. And the kit was good for a few laughs - one of the sponsors was Banana Boat and they oh-so-thoughtfully provided a nice can of sunscreen...for a night race...but whatever... And then I took myself to the beach for a lovely stroll in the sunset. :)

Saturday dawned grey and cold...dude, it's summer and I was at the beach...not once did "cold" enter the equation... Anyhow, I found my way to, you guessed it, the other Starbucks, conveniently located on the beach #biggrin and #itdoesntgetanybetter. I had on a very light sweater over a tank top and decided it would be grand to walk about five miles along the beach. I really really wanted to run but was trying to conserve my strength for the blistering 8.2 km I would experience that night. I got fearfully and wonderfully sunburned on the way back (idiot, the sunscreen was for the day of, not the actual race!). And here are some interesting things I saw:
*a solitary soul playing bag-pipes on the beach (no lie)
*some VERY unfortunate mullets
*electric blue jeans and a rainbow-striped shirt...on an old dude...wow
*the Divine Elvis aka the homeless guy wearing a red choir robe and playing a drum set mounting on a shopping cart
*a true albino
All of it = awesomeness!

And then...the race... I love running, and normally I like to run alone. But I have learned that participation in races is sort of a group thing. It would appear to be way more fun "with" rather than "without" friends (note to self: work on this for the next one, deadline 1 April). Well, to clarify: the stretching and hanging out for two hours before the race would be way more fun "with". The actual running part I'm still okay with doing by myself...although it would be nice to see a friendly face coming into, say, km 7.6 or something. It really was a fun race...everyone had head lamps and there was no illumination on the course... and it was at the horse track, so it was a couple big loops through sand and grass and whatnot. And very few women passed me, and I actually passed a bunch of guys, so that rocked too.

And that was it, except for the total lack of taxis and the slightly panicky walk through Viña at midnight by myself, and the freezingness of the night for which I was ill-prepared, and then I went to sleep and got up and went to Starbucks and said good-bye to the beach and got back on the bus and came home. How's that for a 5-star weekend! (And I had some pictures but they're lost in email-landia. Maybe I'll get back to it. Probably not, though.)