When we first had the idea to put on a race in Rumiloma back
in January, we had literally no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We
mentioned the idea at our women’s exercise party and found some definite
interest in the community. We set the original date (for March) and then
started doing our research and talking to people with more experience in race
planning. We quickly realized we were in over our heads, and if we wanted the
race to be a success we would need a lot more time. So we moved the date to
June to give ourselves some time to plan and organize. Well, now its June and
too much time turned into no time at all before we knew it. So the race is on
to finish everything we need to do and get ready for the big event on Saturday,
June 23rd.
Ecuador seems to be in a race craze right now, and we wanted
to join in. Our idea is to bring a race to the people in Rumiloma, promote
exercise and a healthy lifestyle, and of course introduce more people to our centro. The majority of us in the Manna house are
passionate about running, and we want to be able to share this with our
community.
The entire process has been a lot of work, and we hope to
see it all pay off with a successful event. We have spent the last few months
writing lots of letters, talking to the transit police to close the roads and
the Red Cross to ensure the safety of our participants. We have written to
various companies all over the valley to try and find sponsors to help out with
the race costs. We have been turned down by some and helped out generously by
others. We have definitely learned the value of connections during this
process. Something that I love about living here in the valley is the power of
the word vecino. Our neighbor Caesar has
been indispensable in the process of finding sponsors, walking me around
Sangolqui and asking businesses to do us a favorcito and help out with the race. We have also been able
to reignite our partnership with EPV, the cooperativa next door to the centro (our library vecinos), and they are helping us out a ton with event
promotion and inscriptions. A friend of ours, Nolo, hooked us up with a friend
of his in Powerade, who much to our surprise agreed to sponsor our race! We
were amazed that they were willing to support our small race in a small barrio in the valley, but again, there is the power of
connections. We opened inscriptions yesterday with our first runner, one of our
other neighbors, the president of our barrio in Sangolqui. We are extremely anxious and excited
to see how the race turns out, I will be posting more updates as the date
approaches!