Antalya’s version of the Boulder Bolder takes place in early March. Most people do the 10k, but there are 20k and 42k options as well. This year seemed like perfect temperature for running — cloudy and cool. I watched.
I didn’t know in advance what the route was so I was a bit surprised to find thousands of runners coming by in the morning just a block from my house. Yep, just like in Boulder. I wonder where all these runners are hiding the rest of the year. I don’t often see anyone running in Antalya even though there are super parks strung out along the coast that seem like they’d be great for running.
Most of the people I knew who participated in Runtalya were friends from Ankara. Banu, Deniz, Pınar, Ateş, and Sabiha all came, and with them was Asya who I hadn’t met before. Asya speaks very good Turkish. She’s been living in Ankara for four years, but the surprising thing to me was that she’s never taken a class. She has studied extensively and intensively on her own — oh, self-motivated! She’s Russian so like me doesn’t have the advantage of previous knowledge of an Altaic language.
Ateş and I were lazy. We cheered everyone on at the finish line, but I wasn’t too ashamed to join the finishers in celebrating with a beer. Banu and Deniz ran the full marathon and impressively finished in just over four hours, putting Banu in 6th place in her category. Wow, tebrik ederim.
Sabiha spent the weekend handing out bright yellow bandanas from her Ankara mountaineering and travelling group, Gezginder. Here she is passing one off to the men’s half-marathon winner:
