Man-Q: Your Life Style

Today, I completed a full marathon in Miaoli. My plan had originally been to do the half-marathon but through some peer-pressure, I agreed to do what I thought would be impossible considering my current fitness level. It actually turned out to be a great day! We woke up at 4:30 AM to get our free breakfast, which we had been told would be a grand spread, but instead was a pastry and a sandwich with some whole milk, all in a little plastic bag. I ate the pastry. We wandered down to the finish line by 5:30 or so where our contingent of a dozen foreigners were paraded in front of the locals like monkeys. The race was considered "international" because Carrier, a fellow hasher, recruited about 12 other hashers to pretend that they'd just come to Taiwan for the race. It was a little goofy but the whole thing was free too so that was nice. We had a great hotel and free meals and the works. Anyway, at the start line, the only thing I could see in English was "Man-Q" which is apparently some sort of shampoo. I had been told it was an energy gel but I found out the hard way that it most certainly was not.

There were about 7,000 people who competed in the 10k, half-marathon, and marathon. I'm not sure how many people were in the marathon but Jacob and I finished in about 260th place in a time of roughly 3:57. Our goal had been to break 4 hours. Since I hadn't planned on running the marathon, I decided to be Jacob's pacer, although I think if I had taken off on my own, I probably wouldn't have run much faster. The race itself was out and back on a highway. So it was not the most interesting course, but the race went by surprisingly quickly. The weather was perfect: about 55 degrees and drizzling. Had it been a hot day, the outcome of the race would've been a lot different. Jacob and I were able to chat until about the 30K mark. We both started and stayed as relaxed as possible because both of us were not quite sure of how fit we were. Jacob started to hit the wall pretty badly the last 1oK or so but other than that, the race went smoothly. Apparently, we got the biggest cheer of all the participants when we crossed the finish line! We had a ton of people throughout the race saying "Go Go" and "Ja Yo" which is the same thing, but Chinese.

The winning time of the half-marathon was about 1:27, which really is not that impressive, but the winning time for the full was 2:29 which is very respectable. Apparently, the winner won $100,000 NT which is roughly $3,000 US. Well, I hope that's a pretty good summary of the race. I'm feeling very tired right now and my body is very achy. I'm really dreading waking up in the morning because that will be much more painful! I'll blog about the pain if it's significant enough. Ha ha.