I ran [part of] a marathon

26 March 2016
You may ask why my friends and I decided to RUN
a MARATHON
in BANGKOK
during the HOT,
no HOTTER,
no HOTTEST season--

During the training weeks leading up to the marathon I would've answered "because we're crazy".
On the day of I would've answered "because we wanted to have an excuse to miss Bangkok's only craft beer festival". #stillnotoverit
After the race I'm answering "who cares, WE DID IT!"
Jenna, Ben, Tash and I represented Roomies4Life at the Asics 2016 Bangkok Relay Marathon. (the team name is ironic because the 4 of us have never actually lived together but have been joking about doing so since we met after day 3 of the course-- creepy? of course not!)
Anyway, keeping true to our travel routine, Tash and I realized that race packet pickup was not on the actual day of the marathon but a week earlier (we realized this on the day we needed to pick them up!)-- of course you couldn't pick them up any other day or your team would be disqualified from the race. So now we had to scramble around and get info from our 4 teammates (because apparently picking up someone's race packet in thailand is equivalent to being a co-signor on a mortgage in another country-- please provide your SSN, passport, driver's license, credit card, birthdate, gender, favorite fruit, least favorite hobby, preferred coffee brand, and more, to gain access to a running bib, t-shirt and safety pins-- I shutter to think what we would've had to provide had there been a waterbottle in our race pack :)
Don't you worry, we managed to get the packs at exactly 7:55pm, 5 minutes before the deadline. Woo!
On race day we showed up at the venue 10 minutes prior to the start time-- being early is overrated anyway, right? Not if you're runner number 1 and you have to use the toilet. I walked up to one set of mobile toilets that was supposed to accomodate for the wees of 4000+ runners. Shit.
What's my plan?
I don't speak thai.
Point at my bib. Say "nung runner" "nung runner" and hope someone has pity on me?
Thank god for color coded running bibs.
And then, I was off. For the next hour and 10 minutes, I ran 11 kilometres without stopping (or worrying about having to go to the toilet!) Wooo!
After passing the tracker to my teammate Tash, I had the option of enjoying complimentary milk, thai porridge or a banana. Uumm.. can I have triple the bananas, minus the side of thai porridge? Thanks!
Fast forward a few hours and a few runners later.
Ben was finally on the course. Tash, Jenna and I decided we would be supportive and cheer him on at the finish. We got there 15 minutes before his scheduled finish time, just in case he was early. We were so supportive we even practiced our best cheers on other runners passing by. Hmmm... where's Ben? We decided to snap a few photos to document our supportive team spirit. All of a sudden, Ben shows up right next to us eating triple the bananas minus the side of thai porridge. WHAT??! We missed him crossing the finish! How could that be? We were so supportive! We even had photos proving how supportive we were. Wait, wait, wait a minute. Did Ben really cross the finish line while we were posing for photos?
Well, at least everyone else thinks we're supportive :)
Way to go Roomies4Life, you finished your first marathon in under 5 hours!