Bangkok 1/2 M....A Trip to The City With Friends

Friday afternoon and I had the pool to myself.....which is good because I am swimming with only my left arm these days and I swim in circles. 

Today (Nov 17th) was the Bangkok Marathon, 1/2 Marathon, 10 km and 8 of us were participating in one race or the other....2 first-time marathoners, 3 half-marathoners (myself included) and 3 running the 10 km. We have a nice group of runners and we get together 1-2 times per week after school and go 5-14 km depending on the day and person.

One upside of running here is that water is easily available since there are 7-11s and markets along any route you take. We all travel with money for a taxi home and money for water because we always run out.

There are protests in the city and although I missed the photo of all the police I did get this one of the guards with pretty mean looking guns. Four of us took a taxi down to find the registration place and get our bibs etc. We figured we could check into our hotel and relax a bit since the race starts were early. Marathon was 2 am and half was 4 am.......I was asleep by 8 which I thought was pretty good.

Of course there is a market at the registration.....so funny.

 Hey look, apparently I am not 50 after all!!!

The view from our room...not the nicest part of the city. We were right beside China town and for some reason also in the land of gun shops.

One gun shop after another.

We took a walk on Saturday afternoon to see the start line and they were building full on flush toilets.....okay...so a bucket of water and squat toilets but still, amazing that they excavated for it.

This building was actually a gigantic market. Everything in fairly run down in this area.

.....including our hotel. However, it was close to the start line which was very convenient. 

Jennifer, Caroline (my more consistent running buddy) and me just after Caroline finished running her first full marathon. Jenn and I ran the 1/2 M. SOmeone told me the shirts would be small so I ordered an XL. It was so ridiculous that the guy figured there was a mistake and gave me one that actually fit. It's the white shirt on the left.

The bummer is that we found out through our tracking devices that the route was 19.9 km instead of 21.1 km which explained why our times were all better than we thought.

So, time to plan the next race which will be Dec 15th in the historic city of Ayutthaya which is 1 hour north of Bangkok. It is supposed to be a beautiful race through the city and by some beautiful landmarks.

Good to have support...at 6 am. I wore a hat, completely forgetting that it is dark at 4 am.

Vince was directing our taxi driver home which is always entertaining. It's a gigantic city and the older guys know it quite well...the others are learning.

Vince and a friend took advantage of us being downtown went to the golf mall that is 4 floors of discount golf stores and bought this great purple shirt so he can be seen from huge distances. We came home and went off to find a grocery store that we heard about that does not require crossing 6 lanes of traffic. I rode the whole way there feeling tired then realized I was riding on a flat tire...haha.

Found it....much easier. We buy 90% at the market but every couple of weeks we head here to get things like tea and peanut butter.