Bangkok Marathon 2000
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The only reason I finished this race is because everything went exactly the way it was supposed to, and I had friends to meet me when I got to Bangkok. If I had missed a flight, or had a delay I would have been screwed. I had enough of a layover at each airport (Atlanta, LA, Taipei) to walk around, stretch, and keep drinking water. I got aisle seats so I could get up every now and then and stretch. The time difference actually worked to my advantage. I got to Bangkok at 11:00 am the morning before the race, didn't have time to adjust for the time, but did have time to get registered, eat some noodles, take a nap, and when I got up at 3:30 am to get ready for the race, it felt like 3:30 pm (sort of).
The Bangkok Marathon starts at the Royal Palace, winds out of the city on an out-and-back over an elevated highway (entirely closed for the race!) then turns around and winds through downtown Bangkok back to the Royal Palace (sorry this is a bit vague). The race starts at 4:30 am to help beat the heat. It wasn't that bad, but it took me something like 5 hours to finish, as opposed to 3:47 at Atlanta. (I'll update the Bangkok time when I find it - for a runner, I'm shamefully sloppy about keeping track of my times. My PR is 3:17 at Chicago, 2000.) My friend Jim Barnhart is in the first picture. He and his girlfriend Lee drove me all over Bangkok when I got there trying to find the race registration. (None of the addresses I had were correct or near each other). But we finally found the registration (after guessing it might be at the start), and the race itself was great: well-run, with water, Gatorade, medical aid, every 2K, loads of volunteers. Excellent! They couldn't do much about the humidity, though. There was a power failure along the race course while it was still dark - you'll notice that at 14K mark. The sun was blasting around the 30K mark, but then it clouded over and you'll see that it is actually raining in the last couple pictures. No dalmations at this race, but there were some Thai classical dancers. And that butterfly creature is actually a man, or so I was told. Whatever he was, he was out there cheering everybody on at 5:00 AM.
Would I do two races like this again, back-to-back? No. And you shouldn't either, but it was a fun experiment. I didn't have much to do for a couple days afterwards other than hang out at Assumption University, drink Gatorade, read books, drink Gatorade, drink coffee in the coffee shops, drink Gatorade, and wish the entire two-block radius around Assumption could be picked up and plopped down around the University of Chicago in Hyde Park. It would make it so much more interesting.
These pages maintained, and contents copyrighted, by David Farley,
d-farley@ibiblio.org
