Seoul Marathon Race Report 2009

I have been surprisingly casual about this race and have actually trained less for it than any other marathon I had done. I signed up for it to ground me a bit in a familiar place as I returned to the place where I was born. Last night, I was Cranky McCrankington (poor Jen got the brunt - sorry) and I suspect a bit of it was the upcoming race although that really is a blip in the other things that were swirling around and poking me.

This morning, I woke up before the planned wake up call and ate the bagel I had picked up from Starbucks along with some of Starbucks' newest product - Via, their instant coffee that is actually pretty good! Then we got on the subway and headed to the race start. Jen goaded into trash talking the Kenyans while waiting at the subway....

There was about an hour before the race was supposed to start and we found refuge in the office building lobby where I had picked up the race packet the other day. The whole place though smelled like my grandmother and not her Lavender perfume. No, the stinky icy hot kind of stuff she would wear to try to relieve her arthritis pain. Apparently the Koreans scoop that stuff up by the vatful. Not only did they thoroughly apply the stuff to their legs before, but there were people throughout the course wearing aid uniforms who would slather athletes with it at a moment's request. It made me a little nauseous after a while and if I do not smell that stuff again for a long time, it will be too soon.

Every race has its bathroom drama and this one was no exception. I got in line for a porta pottie carefully standing in line for the ones marked with the pink girl sticker. When I opened the door, there was a bit of a surprise as it was simply a hole with some sort of step up. It was too late to back out now so I did my best to squat (thank you Jerome for making me do all those squats) and I managed not to fall in. My second trip, I used the one they opened in the office building for us and noticed the men did not follow the gender guidelines as well and were hogging both the men's and women's bathroom. I am still trying to figure out which will win the worst pre-potty award. The squat or sharing the 2 stall women's bathroom with very very very gassy Korean and Japanese men...

Then it was time to get herded to the start and I was assigned to the E group. AKA the foreigner, old, slow and/or female group. The start seemed to take forever and of course, there was not a lick of English spoken over the loudspeaker so there appeared (to me) to be many false starts. There were a lot of calls and answers and I gamely participated in each one thinking that finally, we can get moving and stop freezing. But no dice and then I heard someone singing and really hoped it was the Korean National Anthem. It was but even that did not get things moving because I learned later that they put a lot of time between the A and B group and the rest of us. Finally we were off and Jen even managed to find me in the crowd and shoot a quick movie.

I set out to do a 5:30 km pace and had a tough time hitting it at the beginning when things were so crowded. I finally did my share of shoving and broke loose a bit to get in a good rhythm. At the halfway point, I was really feeling pretty good and decided that I might even be able to qualify. It is always a bad idea to re-set goals halfway through a race but I figured I would give it a try.

Of course that led to me fantasizing about all sorts of things beyond qualifying. Winning my age group...being invited back next year as an honored guest and unfortunately on and on. The next slight hill fortunately shook me back to reality and I went back to my goal of keeping my km pace.

Near the end, I really thought I was going to make it but I had done the math wrong and had 1 km to go and did not have much time left. We entered the Olympic Stadium and had to run most of the lap around the track and I really busted it (thought about last mile, Kimchee Mile thanks Ruth) but slid in 22 seconds too late to qualify. And of course win my age group or be invited back as an honored guest or be carried off on every one's shoulders...

I have no idea when the official results will be in but I have my finish time at 03:51:21 will call it good. Thanks everyone for your great energy and I took you all with me during the race!