We made it!!! 20 km total and uphill the whole first half. But it was beautiful and well worth the journey. I was the only one who power walked it, everyone else valiantly ran and some did quite well placing in the top 135 of ~550 runners. The winner of the full marathon was a Tanzanian who ran it in about 2h18min. The snows of Kilimanjaro were there indeed but thinning according to a local friend of a friend who summits regularly as a tour guide. According to Inconvenient Truths, there will be no snows of Kilimanjaro in ~10 years. Despite thinning snows, the mountain was a true jewel. We did plenty of celebrating afterwards as can be witnessed by our Kilimanjaro beers.
The first night we stayed in Tanzania we were in the mountains of Kilimanjaro, up a ways in a far away village about an hour and half from Moshi. These were some children near where we were staying that we played with. I think this was the first time anyone showed them how to run a wheelbarrow race. You can see who won!
