The Layman’s Anecdotal Guide to Running in Ecuador

Reading: 1493 by Charles Mann

Two years ago if you were to have asked me if I enjoyed running, I would have scoffed at and called you crazy. After years of competitive horseback riding and spending eight-hour days in the saddle, running was my trainer’s ultimate punishment for a horrible ride. So, it would be all too cliché to say that I came to love running while finding myself serving in a developing country.

Embrace running the trails

Instead, it happened during the three months prior to coming to Ecuador. I was seeing a guy who was training for a marathon, working a part time job as a sales clerk and had nothing better to do with my time than drink beer while worrying how I was going to survive the next two years of my life without IPAs. (My horse was injured and it was hellishly cold—bars are a great substitute for the barn.) Plus, one of my equestrian friends from college, who was serving in Senegal, had warned me that riding would not be an option while in Peace Corps. She advocated expanding my yoga practices, the boy suggested running. For some reason, the boy won.

By the time I made it to training in Tumbaco, my need to be obsessively involved in something had prevailed and I was hooked. As in, I have stopped pouring of Eventing Nation riding forms and now subscribe to Runner’s World emails. However, all of you who do run know that running in Ecuador is completely different than running in the States. Thus, I present you with the Layman’s Anecdotal Guide to Running in Ecuador. 

Para ser una machona...

Reading: Homeric Hymns

The clothes line off my balcony

I often joke that I could never been an Ecuadorian housewife. Half of that is due to an intrinsic part of my nature that is not cut out for being any type of housewife, be it an American, British, Ecuadorian, or Nepalese one. The other half is due to the fact that if one was to make a list on all the typical duties of an Ecuadorian woman towards her family, I would grossly fall short.

Here in Ecuador there is a term for such a woman—machona. I am not sure if there is a textbook definition of this term, but if there was it would be something like this:

machona
noun
a girl who is considered to be a tomboy, marked by the inability to:
• cook standard Ecuadorian dishes with perfection, e.g. seco de pollo and rice
• maintain a respectable and clean house
• care for children in a motherly and nurturing way
• properly dress herself to the local standards of acceptable style 

Given that loose definition, I am probably in violation of all four criterion. But I think it is safe to say that my two worse offenses are my inability to cook (and eat for that matter) rice and my inability to wash clothes by hand.