Khon Kaen Half Marathon
I groan and roll over, intending to fall back asleep but instead crumbling off the side of the two twin beds that are pushed together in our Roma Hotel room as my alarm clucks. My misery of waking up at 3:55 am in the morning is replaced by excitement as my feet hit the floor. It’s half marathon day!
Danielle, Amy, and I move around like zombies as we pull on our sky blue “Pad Thai Fulbright” t-shirts and lace up our running shoes. I eat a honey oat granola bar. Then deliberate for a moment. 21.1 kilometers is a long way. I eat a second granola bar for good measure. And zip one into my brand new fanny pack.
Oh, I have a fanny pack! This is the extent of the running nerd that I am. Yesterday, at the registration expo, I found my dream fanny pack and spent 300 baht on it. It’s cushiony, sleek but roomy, and, after great deliberation between the different colors, it is electric blue.
I strap my newfound gear around my waist, inserting an ID and 100 baht just in case.
“Are you bringing your phone for music?” Danielle asks me.
“No,” I say decisively, “I really want to feel the race.”
Danielle shoots me a look that says what type of crazy wants to feel over 21 kilometers of running. She decides to bring her phone and headphones.
We meet the others in the lobby around 4:30, and, by the grace of good luck, the free race songtow pulls up within seconds.
The weather is cool and breezy — something my Isan friends exclaim repeatedly is unprecedented for the region. I shiver a little in the airy t-shirt as wind rushes through the sides of the songtow. The city is still blanketed by darkness, but the hundreds of runners brimming with adrenaline seem to light Khon Kaen up with energy.
Our first stop upon arriving at the race site is Santa Claus. What would a running event be without a little Christmas spirit? We take a brief moment to dance around with Santa and his cohort. Then we notice, to our surprise, hundreds are already lined up at the starting line.
Amy and I make a beeline to the toilet. Well, not exactly a beeline considering we have no idea where said toilet is, but, after a couple broken Tinglish conversations, we find it. And “it” turns out to be a trailer of toilets with no lights — did I mention it is still pitch dark out — I enter one of the cubby holes, pull down my stretchy shorts and blindly pee over what I’m hoping is the toilet but probably is the floor.
We collect Ariel and head for the start. I do a five-minute jog to loosen my legs. Honestly, I don’t feel the need to do more of a warm-up because I figure with over an hour of running I’ll get warmed up along the way, and I’m not sure how much extra fuel my legs have in them. I join the others, and we excitedly chatter as the Princess begins her race five minutes before the rest of us.
And then the race starts. Road race starts, especially long ones, are so different from the cross-country race starts I dreaded in college and high school. The latter feels like an all out sprint complete with jostling, strategy, and a high risk of spike to the shin.
On the other hand, this half marathon starts with the people around me lurching forward like a giant slug. When I finally reach the official start line the people around me are moving at what could maybe be called a slow jog.
I begin weaving my way through the crowds. When I mentally laid out my race, I told myself I didn’t want to put in any effort the first two kilometers, simply letting adrenalin carry me forward. In reality, most of the first two kilometers feels less relaxed and more like a game of Frogger, dodging from side to side of the road making my way forward. I don’t feel any energy expended because I’m focused on the maze laid out before me. As the crowds melt away, I get in a groove. And then I start to cry. Because I mean who doesn’t cry when she’s running her first half? I just feel so excited that this is happening for a number of reasons. Then I give myself some tough love, “Pull it together, Wilson. Tears slow you down.”
Kilometers drop down quickly. For that reason, I decide midrace that I appreciate races being marked in km rather than miles much more.
At one point during the first half of the race, I notice a group in front of me wearing matching black shirts.
“Oh how cool, they did matching shirts just like us!”
I also notice that they’re running perfectly in step with each other, hmm. As I’m running past I realize the reason they’re matching is because they are running with the Princess, and my jaw drops. I feel a little nervous because we didn’t go over what to do when running past the Princess of Thailand in a half marathon during Fulbright orientation. But mostly I’m just excited she’s a runner too.
After passing her, I realize I haven’t seen another woman in a while and wonder where they all went.
We continue onward until the turnaround point. The course is difficult to enjoy for the first half because a good portion is out and back, and it is a series of rolling hills. Every time we start to go downhill, I mentally go, “Oh shit, this is going to hurt on the way back.”
Somewhere around kilometer nine, I ponder the fact that I’m going pretty fast. This worries me, so I tell myself, “Well, you can always slow down.” But I realize I don’t want to slow down.
At the turn around, I get excited because it’s just a jaunt home now, and I pick up my pace passing a few people and leaving the crew of men I had been running alongside.
The one awesome factor of the out and back is being able to see the other Fulbrighters and cheer for one another. In retrospect though, I think my “Go Meg!” was a bit less of a cheer and more of a deflated whimper.
The second half is fun. There is Thai music, dancing, and the sun is UP. At one point, I high five an entire marching band of high school boys, and I do a little midrun dance with a group of cheering university students a couple kilometers later.
For the final maybe five kilometers the half marathon and marathon courses joins the 10K course. Initially, there is clear separation between the half/marathon and the 10K side of the road, but at about 4 km to go, that distinction grows fuzzy. And the 10Kers, running at a much slower pace at this point in their race, present a set of obstacles similar to my first couple km. Only I’ve finally been granted my prerace wish and really am feeling the race now. Weaving around bodies is making me dizzy and adds fatigue. A biking race volunteer notices my exhaustion and darts in front of me calling out for 10Kers to get out of the way. He clears my path for about a kilometer, which is all that is needed to get by the thickest crowd of the 10K.
On kilometer 18, a nice woman joins me. Well, I don’t actually know if she is nice since we don’t exchange much more than synchronized breaths. She pushes me until she darts in front of me, reads my race bib, and declares, “Oh you’re younger than me. I don’t need to beat you. Go ahead.” My brain is a little O2 shot, and I don’t realize the implication of what she says. So as she slows down, I slow down with her. She yells at me, “Keep going! Yes, go!” Simple instructions, thank goodness. I obey the command, leaving her behind.
My last two kilometers are the fastest ones — and they feel hard but manageable. When I turned the corner to the final maybe 200 meters toward the finish, I think to myself, “Maybe I should kick. Do people kick in half marathons? Can my legs kick right now?” The guy in front of me is kicking, so I take that as an indication that maybe I can do it too. So I sprint past him, clicking off my one hundred baht watch from the Sunday Night Market with an official time of 1:40:36.
When all of us Fulbrighters have crossed the finish line, we hit the food tent hard. Run hard, eat hard, am I right? Two servings of pad thai, cocoanut juice, several donuts, and a Thai omelet with rice later, I feel back to homeostasis.
Rain pours down and most of the crew goes back to the hotel. As the second wave of us is about to leave, I check the results. It turns out I won second place in my age group and I get an award! I tell the sopping wet group to go back without me because the race workers tell me that it will be a while before they hand out the results and they look relieved. After meeting a race worker who did a Fulbright at University of Michigan and collecting my award, I head back to the hotel for the longest hot shower ever followed by a cold beer. Pure happiness mixed with exhaustion.
