Istanbul Marathon

There are two bridges that span the Bosphorus and I live right between them.  The one to the south (although Turks would be hard pressed at any time of day to tell you which was south was) is called the 'old' or 'first' bridge.  It lights up beautifully at night with changing colors and patterns.  It is also the one which hosts the begining of the Istanbul Marathon: "The only marathon to start on one continent and end on another."  Marathon day is the only day that the bridge is open to pedestrians and after the serious runners (marathon (42.5 km) the 15k and the 8k races start) get started, they open the bridge for the 'fun run' and un-timed, un-ranked 5k which starts 1km behind the runners and stops suspiciously close to the the end of the 8k run for it to really be only 5km.  It was possible to register for the race or fun run at booths all over the city the week before, but I signed up to chaperone another residential life event.  I was excited about this until I found out we had to be at the bridge gate at 6:30 am to get the bus to the bus which would take us to the start.  Who needs sleep anyway?

I talked Joe into getting the Gursel to pick me up at the bottom of the hill after picking up the students, so I was down stairs and ready at 6:40... for a 7am pick up.  Really guys?  Fortunately I was in contact with Jack to know that they were still coming, just slow.  Ok, we are on the Gursel on the way to Taksim where the city busses are waiting to take every one the other side.  Since it is first thing on Sunday morning and there is no traffic, we arrive at Taksim at 7:30 to chaos.

This is our group, It is fuzzy because it was so low light.  But we were fuzzy to, so it is appropriate.

  There are two sets of buses, which we work out are for the runners and for the walkers (us).  We make our way across the square to where the walker's busses are lined up and Joe runs into some friends of his from the summer program at RC.  They are still waiting for some one and they need to get coffee, can we wait for them for 5-10 minutes?  Sure, no problem.  The kids get simit, Jack gets water, we chat, it isn't raining (yet) and 20 minutes later we get frustrated that they are not back and finally get in line for the bus.  It was startling how orderly the line was for the bus.  Turks dont respect most lines or queing opportunities, but here they did.  Joe's friends meet us while we are in line and the line progresses. 

I should take this opportunity to mention that we got such an early start for a 9:30 start time because they close the bridge so the runners can have it to themselves.  The race starts at 9 and they close the bridge at 8.  We got on the bus at 8:07.  Well, let me amend that, Jack, Justin, Ulkem and Joe's friends get on the bus at 8:07, the last bus, according to the cops fascilitating this transfer.  As we pull off, there is Joe with the 14 kids on the sidewalk waving.  What can we do?  Our driver wends his way around and down and eventually across the second bridge (duh, the first bridge closed 7 minutes before we got on the bus) and eventually makes it to the back of the start where folks are congregating for the fun run.  We text Joe, did you get on a bus?  How is it going?  He replies, (paraphrasing) 'our idiot bus driver doesn't know where he is going, it is trying to cross the first bridge!'  and 'Every 100 meters there is a cop telling him he can't go that way, he must stop, but he just keep on going.'  Eventually, they made it to the front of the marathon starting line.  I can just imagine the scene: a thousand runners getting ready to start, and a city bus comes nose to nose with them and a bunch of high school kids get off.  They made their way back to behind the start and actually got there before us.  We met up with about 30 minutes to go before the start of the walk. 

Another very crowded bus unloading right after we arrived

Simit, a bagel like bread food, covered in seaseme seeds for 1TL

Ponchos for sale, and braided rope
to show support for your favorite team.

This was still 15 minutes before the start, but we did start pretty close and already it was very crowded.

Every country has their porta potties.

I didn't end up getting one of these,
 but I did find one on the ground later

We did a pretty good job of staying together before the start, but once we got going there was really no way.  I got held up because I tried to catch one of the Turkish flags that the politians were throwing from their bus, but Jeremy and Ulkem were kind enough to wait for me and we walked together.  It was cold and misty, but the rain didn't start until about half way across the bridge, or about 10am.  There were folks selling water, ponchos, braided ropes indicating sports teams, and umbrellas as well as simit (a harder, bigger version of a bagel) and even some folks selling hot tea by the glass. 

The second bridge.

As we walked, we were coraled to the center of the bridge, apparently this is a major suiside spot, which is why the bride is closed to pedestrians most of the time and there have been people who wait for the marathon day for their opportunity to jump.  I felt a little bad for the volunteers who were trying to keep people away from the edges of the road way (let alone the walk way beyond it) when people just wanted to get a good picture of the Bosphorus or the second bridge.

This volunteer was trying to keep people like me from taking pictures too close to the edge.

I am bummed I missed turning around to see the welcome
to Asia sign on the other side.

It took about an hour to cross the bridge and looking back on it, it was till filled with people.  The number I was issued for the fun run was in the 90,000s.  Since numbers for the fun run were free, I am sure there were more issued than used, but there were plenty of people without numbers.  Even if they started with 10,000 so that all runners would have 5 digits, that still means there could have been 80,000 registered people crossing that bridge that day.  We were not super at the front, but there were a lot behind us too. 



You can see that the bridge is still packed all the way back.



Close up of people coming off the bridge.

It took another hour (all in the rain) to get to Besiktas to the end of the run.  I am not a fast walker, but I dont think it would take me 2 hours to walk three miles...  At the end there was a guy passing out flyers listing the places we could get our race packet.  They do not give out t-shirts to everyone who signs up, or even shows up, you have to finish to get your packet.  That is cool, and we finished knowing that.  What we didn't know was that we couldn't just pick up our packet at the end point.  All we got there was the list and a stamp on our bibs to prove that we got to the end (or at least our number did). 

We followed the black line for the fun run.

Jeremy and Ulkem were off to find a hot breakfast and I wanted to find Marshalls house in Ulus, so we parted ways agreeing to figure out the t-shirt thing later.  We walked together as far as the funicular and I got on to go up the hill back to Taksim.  I had planned to take a bus from there, but there were no busses running.  They closed not only the bridge, but a bunch of other roads as well, so all public transport that runs on the streets was out of wack.  I was left with no choice but the metro.  I knew I could take the metro to Levant and take a taxi to Ulus, but I am not a fan of the communication needed to take a taxi.  Jeremy suggested getting off one stop earlier so that the taxi would be facing the right direction, and when I got out of the Metro I found a bus stop instead of a taxi.  I got on the third bus to stop there, asking 'Ulus?' on my way in and I was set. 

I figured out where to get off when I saw the Gormet Garage sign in Marshall's neighborhood.  He had suggested checking for cream of tartar there since they have the biggest spice wall of any grocery store he had seen.  I went in (in jeans, a beanie and soaking wet) to find a few shoppers and a dozen of so workers.  They had a deli counter with many tasty and fancy looking items and I went down stairs, but all they had was wine.  A woman was following me, I am not sure if it was because I looked lost, or I just didn't look like I belonged.  But I was not able to communicate that I wanted Krem Tartar sucessfully.  I did come back up stairs and eventually did find the massive spice wall Marshall mentioned.  It did have more choices than any other I had seen, including baking poweder (which contains cream of tartar in the US, but it is unclear if it does here or not) which I hadn't seen anywhere else.  But alas, no cream of tartar.  I left, despondant and made it to Marshalls, where I warmed up, met his cats, ate lunch and played a game of scrabble with Marshall and Keeley, who was already there and Jack, who came later, but took over Keeleys position in the game.

Jack was a bit ahead during the walk and made his own way to Marshalls.  He had also gotten the stamp of completion at the end of the walk, but he was more persistant and actually found somewhere to pick up his packet.  (not that it was easy).  He showed us the certificate of walking across the bridge, the t -shirt (which wasn't all that impressive since the sponsor's logos were larger than the event logo) and the metal on a ribbon.  It was pretty cheaply made, but metal, and with no sponsor logo, it was the best part.  Jack was willing to share his packet, but I held out, I wanted to get my own.  So today (Tuesday) I met up with Justin who had found one of the addresses on that list to be pretty close to school.  We took a cab up to Ulus looking for a Sports Center.  The cab driver didn't know where it was, none of the people the cab driver stopped to ask knew were it was (which is not to say that some of them didn't quite confidently point in one direction or another).  We got out of the cab and asked five more people.  We even went into the mall and asked the consierge to look it up on google maps (which Jeremy had on his phone) before we gave up and decided that either it didn't exist or it was a mistake on the list.  Apparently the name given might have been the name of a bus stop, but the phone number given is that for a bus station...  I have given my number to Jeremy so he can try another spot that is closer to where he lives and may hopefully beable to get both of our packets.  And I walked home through Ulus, Arnovutkoy, into a grocery store and home to eat leftovers from Sunday and write this up.