Running Around Town

My running partner and I no longer have a weekly rendezvous, now that Jip and I have moved to another part of town, but we still motivate each other by email. Recently he and I and 10,000 of our closest friends ran a 10K race in honor of UN Day.

Road races Thai style turn out to be well-organized affairs, starting at the coolest times of day and ending with free rice soup for everyone. The gun went off for this one at 6am. I had no idea beforehand about what my finishing time would be. When I train these days, I only pay attention to minutes, not distance. I’m also not used to keeping track of my splits in kilometers. I’d assumed that the rising sun and my advancing age would mean I would fade fairly quickly.

But when I got home I did some calculations and figured out that my pace was faster than I’ve run in about twenty years. I give credit to Dan, who claims his time was a personal record. Our results either mean that our partnership is working magic, or that somebody measured the course wrong.

As a warmup for the 10K, about three weeks earlier I ran without Dan in the annual Bangkok midnight run. I was drawn to it because it was short, and because it supports a good cause, an AIDS hospice at an upcountry temple. A few days beforehand, I headed out around 11pm for a training run, telling myself that I needed to understand real time conditions.

The night watchman at our place thought I was nuts, but it was fun to see who else was up and around at that hour. No other runners crossed my path, but more people than I expected were walking and playing and cleaning up around the streets. Back at the apartment, I figured I’d take a dip rather than wake Jip with the shower. Trouble was, all the lights were off at the pool. I wasn’t sure where the edge left off and the water began.

You guessed it. Big splash. Soaked shoes. Giggles from the watchman.

Dan asked, when I told him the story, if I had thought I was preparing for a midnight triathlon instead of a simple road race.