Ayutthaya Races

Our little running group, The Ramkhamhaeng Runners, picked up steam and although we didn't have a lot of people running together on a regular basis, we did manage to have about 20 people taking part in an even in Ayutthaya which is about an hour away. It is also one of the ancient capitals of Thailand and has it's fair share of temples and pagodas.

Of course there is a market and we had to bypass it and check things out on the way to pick up our race kits.

No market pictures except this one....random.

Here's the whole gang.

 

A smaller group.

 Caroline ran the full marathon last year and this year took on the 10 km while pushing Riley who is 4 years old.

 

All I heard is that she was blowing by many people and making it look easy.

 

My consistent running buddies, Colby and Darcy. They were training for the half-marathon and I was training for the full. On weekends, I would start my run  earlier than them and then finish of with them in the light which made it way easier then running alone.

 

The end of their race. This sums up our group...friendly competition (with oneself)

 

 Dan and I were the two who were running the full marathon....Kay had to drop out 3 weeks prior due to injury which was sad.

 

That's Kay and Marc-great supporters.

A 4 am start means dark so we essentially ran a half marathon in the dark followed by one in the light.

 Dan coming in a full 45 min earlier than expected! That's his wife Alis jumping for joy and the rest of the gang beside her cheering him on.

I came in 45 min after Dan but was amazing to have so many people cheering.

 

The entrance by a mother/daughter team. Here's daughter, Sarah who also, along with her husband makes the first few weeks of moving to Bangkok so easy. They are problem solvers extraordinaire.

 

 And here's mother, Cookie. Retired from the US, came to visit her daughter and next thing you know she was teaching.

 

Another mother/daughter, Gretchen (MS director) and her 7 year old. 

 

 

 First timers.

 

My biggest and favourite fan!

Post race meal of deep fried dough dipped in sweetened condensed milk. The glass has warm soy milk with a ton of sugar. Interesting.

 

I won the 50+ women's category. Yeah!!! I am impressed by the women who take up running since it is slowly becoming part of the culture. It was mostly men running the longer distances.

More winners. Jennifer (1st in women's 1/2 m), Kaitlyn (4th in women's 1/2 M), and me.

 

Dan, Alis and their daughter, Sara won the family fitness award since they all ran. They won a fabulous suitcase so I guess it pays to stay fit.

Two random pictures.....here is my friend and neighbour, Alis and her cute little girls.

 

Vince and I on our way to the Christmas formal dance. We usually wear helmets and he usually drives with his eyes open...haha.

Class trip to Thongsomboon club with Grade 7

Each December the Middle School (grades 6-8) split up and go on a trip called Explore The Kingdom (ETK). This experience is to help with team building friendships although I think the original goal was to get to know Thailand a bit better. In essence, the 250 students and teachers head into the countryside for 3 days.

I was responsible for organizing the grade 7 trip and we immediately ran into the difficulty that the place they usually go to was closed. Khun A and Khun B (sounds like a Dr. Suess title) are two brothers who run an amazing outdoor camp for kids called Pang Nam (or something like that) but due to some issues (they didn't actually own the land they were on?) they had to relocate. So, for this year we head to a new place called Thomsomboon Club which turned out to be an antiquated fun park with a theme of the wild wild west....and in American West. Kids slept in Teepees, Chuck wagons....everything you can imagine.

Well, the amazing thing about MS teachers and kids is that we can pretty much have fun wherever we go and whatever we do. With the exception of one broken leg, we faired okay and have lots of stories to tell. The broken leg also involved an ambulance ride at 140 km/h with sirens blaring and lights flashing for 1.5 hrs. I was one of the adults (the other was Thai which makes sense) on the ride and figured that if you are going to travel at high speed it might as well be in an ambulance.

Here's the main entrance.....I have to say that they did serve up an amazing latte!

To give you an idea, this was the Luge run.

 

The start is a little scary. Instructions are....use both brakes. Later in the day it was 7 teachers, no brakes careening down the zigzag pathway.

 

The only way up is using the "Sky Fox" which was just about as slow as the old Mont Joye chairlift but not as cold.

The local pig added to the Wild West theme.

 

There was a lot of property and nice to be in the mountains. We had to take the wagon each day to the rides etc.

 

Lots of roaming horses.

 

I still don't know what this was.

  

Stuck on the chair lift.... I guess we likely upped their capacity by 700% and tripped a few breakers.

 I'm not sure how it happened but somehow I ended up in the "Rolling Ball" which was really against my better judgement. Kaitlyn (Ethics teacher) and I were strapped in on opposite sides of an inflatable ball and pushed over the edge.

 

You roll down this hill that feels like it goes on forever! I thought I was going to die and screamed the whole way with eyes tightly shut.

 

Made it!!!

This sums it up.

 

A few leftover ride tickets led to some fun on the ATV's. That's Kristy, Alis, Kaitlyn and myself)

Alis on the ATV.

 

What a great way to finish up the year! Lots of laughs and a few more bizarre experiences.

 

Lop Buri monkey festival

Well we decided to take a taxi to Lop Buri last weekend to see the monkey festival. We had heard several good things about it so we got a few friends together and made the trek on Friday night. On Saturday we wanted to see some of the old ruins of the one time capital of Thailand.  There was many reminders of the old walled city but the majority was overrun by these monkeys.

 There were quite a few of these creatures around the site and they were quite friendly. Of course if you let them, they will want to play on you.

 

It was called a monkey feast and every year the local gather food and prepare food for the monkeys. So this is just one the monkeys who was first to the feast.

Well we sure did see a new meaning of Thai message monkey style. It seems this guy is living right as it receives a grooming before the big feast.

Of course all this food makes even a monkey thirsty and instead of the ready avialble water supply this monkey prefers his Pepsi. Even though it says EST on the cup that is the local Pepsi company in Thailand.

Well we did see some nice old ruins as well. This was the administration building back in the day, were the local elders who ran the village were housed.

Once we were done monkeying around, we wanted to see the Sunflower fields. We had heard that there was some very beautiful sunflower fields with a hill backdrop. The sunflower fields are likely used to make sunflower oil as the highest yeild commodity. I guess there was some money in these fields as we noticed the army was present for their marches. They all said hello as they walked by, certainly a very friendly army.

 

Of course a nice stroll through the fields yielded some very beautiful photos to remember our visit..

 

Another day in Thailand..