This morning my alarm went off at 4:50am. Then it went off again at 5:00am. At 5:05am I got out of bed, drank an energy shake, got dressed and listened to my neighbour yell at me to hurry up while I put in my contacts because at 5:30am we were racing. Last night when I asked what time we will leave, she said: "5:30am." I said, "Are we leaving at 5:30 or before then?" and she repeated "5:30am". But it was now 5:20am, and she was banging down my door to hurry up because we should've left already.
Today is a day of celebration here in Khao Yai. I'm not 100% sure why, but I think it's an annual celebration marking the birthday(?) of the first park chief of Khao Yai... or something like that. Anyways, it’s an annual thing for everyone who works in the park/lives in the park. There is a 3k race in the morning and everyone joins in, then there is a scheduled da-gaw tournament all day (think of a cross between soccer and volleyball with a small wicker ball – that’s da-gaw) and everyone is separated into teams based on their work affiliations to compete in the tournament. At night, there is a feast.
In the car on the way to the race this morning, Jambee (my neighbour and running partner) told me not to worry about her, I could run fast and didn't have to wait for her or run with her today. Normally when we train together I run at a faster pace than Jambee and she tails behind a little, sometimes we slow our overall pace for her. Jambee is about 10 years older than me and has never 'exercised' before in her life, but this past year she wanted to join me running and we go together now almost everyday. But this morning I told her, "I'm still asleep and I'm freezing, so don't worry about me running fast." I thought to myself: I will just jog with her as usual.
At 5:28am we approached the starting point of the race where we were met by a swarm of men running towards us. The race had already started - the first round of kids and the second round of women had already left, the third round of men was in the midst of leaving.
Here's what I remember after that:
Jambee ejected herself from the car. Since I was sitting in the front seat blocking her exit from the backseat of the truck, I also was ejected from the car. Then she took off running yelling for me to move faster. It felt like within about 3 seconds we had passed all the men, I assumed in an effort to catch up with the women so I ran fast with her to catch up.
The race was along our usual running route, the road is more like a trail than a road, beat up with gravel patches and pot holes. It was pitch black because the sun doesn’t rise until about 6:15am these days, and I was worried that as I dodged people in the swarm of runners to keep up with Jambee I was going to break my ankles along the road. This whole experience was enhanced by the various people weaving through the mob on motorbikes with cameras, blinding me with flashes as I trailed Jambee. Then I started to realize: "wait, we are in a full on sprint right now."
As I dashed through the darkness trying to hold onto my keys and cell phone, and all the other junk that was still in the pockets of my sweat shirt, that I was still wearing cause I didn't have time to take it off, my shoelaces both came undone and my pants fell down. My iPod fell out of my pocket somewhere along the route, which I didn't discover until about 1 minute from the end of the race (but everyone else knew I dropped it and someone gave it to me at the end of the race, so it was no big deal).
By the time I rounded the corner about to go up a steep, steep hill before the final descent to the finish line; we had already passed all the men, most of the women, and were in the front of the pack passing mostly children. I was gasping for air, straining my eyes in the darkness to see how close I was to Jambee who was not showing any signs of slowing in front of me. I contemplated how to stop and tie my shoes without getting run over by the people now following behind me, and I came across my other friend, Boom, who was jogging slowly and we started the ascent up the hill. Boom stopped running and I kept on, trying to catch up with Jambee – who I could no longer see anymore.
As I began to climb up the steep hill my stamina was deteriorating, and the endurance runner men (who run every morning in the park) came from behind and ran passed me calling for me to hurry up and go faster with them. In a weak effort to not look like a wuss, I tried to pick up the pace and then decided it would be better to walk for a few minutes before I die. Then I started running with a bunch of kids whose parents were riding along beside them on motorbikes. When the kids got tired they jumped on the bikes and their parents drove up the pack and dropped them off to run again.
At this point, the road wasn’t so crowded because most people were behind us, but trucks full of people from the back of the pack were starting to drive past on their way to the finish line which made running awkward again. And as I rounded the corner for the final half kilometer, Boom drove by sitting in the back of one of the trucks, waving, calling out "look how much faster than you I am!"
I have no idea where I placed; no one here cares how "the falang" did only that I participated. So no one told me my time or recorded my completion on the roster, ha ha. I assume I finished somewhere in the top 10 because that's about how many people were standing around when I crossed the line (aside from truckloads of people that got rides along the way). And like a true athlete, I didn’t even look at my watch when I finished…I didn’t even have time to start my timer when we started! … dumma :)
While we stood around and more and more people completed the race, I gasped for water (that was unavailable) and wondered how red my face was after just sprinting 3km unexpectedly. I didn’t even see Jambee finish she was so far ahead. And by the time I crossed the line, she didn’t even look tired! She hovered around the timer table and everyone came up to me to tell me I had dropped my iPod, but no one knew exactly who had it yet.
I looked around and took in all the sights in the darkness of the early morning. Everyone was pretty cheery and excited: kids played with balloons, while the women and girls assembled for snapshots, and the men smoked cigarettes (did I just time travel to a 1970s track meet?). We all got Puma T-shirts that say “Masion.com Casino and Poker” – that’s funny I thought I lived in Khao Yai National Park (pretty sure the park chief just told someone to go out and buy a bunch of matching t-shirts to give out, ha ha).
This past year Jambee and I have gone running almost every day but before she met me, she never ran at all because no one would go with her (so she has explained in the past). Like most people around here, Jambee stopped going to school so she could work when she was around 11 years old (now she is 43). She spends the morning cleaning the bathrooms at the campsite and the rest of the day doing odd jobs around the park helping people. Her kids go to school in other towns, live with their grandparents, and she doesn’t see them often. Though there are other Thai people who live here that run in the park, Jambee is the only female, and people often comment about her running – asking her how she manages to run being “such an old lady” but they are very impressed (they aren’t insulting her).
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Today is a day of celebration here in Khao Yai. I'm not 100% sure why, but I think it's an annual celebration marking the birthday(?) of the first park chief of Khao Yai... or something like that. Anyways, it’s an annual thing for everyone who works in the park/lives in the park. There is a 3k race in the morning and everyone joins in, then there is a scheduled da-gaw tournament all day (think of a cross between soccer and volleyball with a small wicker ball – that’s da-gaw) and everyone is separated into teams based on their work affiliations to compete in the tournament. At night, there is a feast.
In the car on the way to the race this morning, Jambee (my neighbour and running partner) told me not to worry about her, I could run fast and didn't have to wait for her or run with her today. Normally when we train together I run at a faster pace than Jambee and she tails behind a little, sometimes we slow our overall pace for her. Jambee is about 10 years older than me and has never 'exercised' before in her life, but this past year she wanted to join me running and we go together now almost everyday. But this morning I told her, "I'm still asleep and I'm freezing, so don't worry about me running fast." I thought to myself: I will just jog with her as usual.
At 5:28am we approached the starting point of the race where we were met by a swarm of men running towards us. The race had already started - the first round of kids and the second round of women had already left, the third round of men was in the midst of leaving.
Here's what I remember after that:
Jambee ejected herself from the car. Since I was sitting in the front seat blocking her exit from the backseat of the truck, I also was ejected from the car. Then she took off running yelling for me to move faster. It felt like within about 3 seconds we had passed all the men, I assumed in an effort to catch up with the women so I ran fast with her to catch up.
The race was along our usual running route, the road is more like a trail than a road, beat up with gravel patches and pot holes. It was pitch black because the sun doesn’t rise until about 6:15am these days, and I was worried that as I dodged people in the swarm of runners to keep up with Jambee I was going to break my ankles along the road. This whole experience was enhanced by the various people weaving through the mob on motorbikes with cameras, blinding me with flashes as I trailed Jambee. Then I started to realize: "wait, we are in a full on sprint right now."
As I dashed through the darkness trying to hold onto my keys and cell phone, and all the other junk that was still in the pockets of my sweat shirt, that I was still wearing cause I didn't have time to take it off, my shoelaces both came undone and my pants fell down. My iPod fell out of my pocket somewhere along the route, which I didn't discover until about 1 minute from the end of the race (but everyone else knew I dropped it and someone gave it to me at the end of the race, so it was no big deal).
By the time I rounded the corner about to go up a steep, steep hill before the final descent to the finish line; we had already passed all the men, most of the women, and were in the front of the pack passing mostly children. I was gasping for air, straining my eyes in the darkness to see how close I was to Jambee who was not showing any signs of slowing in front of me. I contemplated how to stop and tie my shoes without getting run over by the people now following behind me, and I came across my other friend, Boom, who was jogging slowly and we started the ascent up the hill. Boom stopped running and I kept on, trying to catch up with Jambee – who I could no longer see anymore.
As I began to climb up the steep hill my stamina was deteriorating, and the endurance runner men (who run every morning in the park) came from behind and ran passed me calling for me to hurry up and go faster with them. In a weak effort to not look like a wuss, I tried to pick up the pace and then decided it would be better to walk for a few minutes before I die. Then I started running with a bunch of kids whose parents were riding along beside them on motorbikes. When the kids got tired they jumped on the bikes and their parents drove up the pack and dropped them off to run again.
At this point, the road wasn’t so crowded because most people were behind us, but trucks full of people from the back of the pack were starting to drive past on their way to the finish line which made running awkward again. And as I rounded the corner for the final half kilometer, Boom drove by sitting in the back of one of the trucks, waving, calling out "look how much faster than you I am!"
I have no idea where I placed; no one here cares how "the falang" did only that I participated. So no one told me my time or recorded my completion on the roster, ha ha. I assume I finished somewhere in the top 10 because that's about how many people were standing around when I crossed the line (aside from truckloads of people that got rides along the way). And like a true athlete, I didn’t even look at my watch when I finished…I didn’t even have time to start my timer when we started! … dumma :)
While we stood around and more and more people completed the race, I gasped for water (that was unavailable) and wondered how red my face was after just sprinting 3km unexpectedly. I didn’t even see Jambee finish she was so far ahead. And by the time I crossed the line, she didn’t even look tired! She hovered around the timer table and everyone came up to me to tell me I had dropped my iPod, but no one knew exactly who had it yet.
I looked around and took in all the sights in the darkness of the early morning. Everyone was pretty cheery and excited: kids played with balloons, while the women and girls assembled for snapshots, and the men smoked cigarettes (did I just time travel to a 1970s track meet?). We all got Puma T-shirts that say “Masion.com Casino and Poker” – that’s funny I thought I lived in Khao Yai National Park (pretty sure the park chief just told someone to go out and buy a bunch of matching t-shirts to give out, ha ha).
This past year Jambee and I have gone running almost every day but before she met me, she never ran at all because no one would go with her (so she has explained in the past). Like most people around here, Jambee stopped going to school so she could work when she was around 11 years old (now she is 43). She spends the morning cleaning the bathrooms at the campsite and the rest of the day doing odd jobs around the park helping people. Her kids go to school in other towns, live with their grandparents, and she doesn’t see them often. Though there are other Thai people who live here that run in the park, Jambee is the only female, and people often comment about her running – asking her how she manages to run being “such an old lady” but they are very impressed (they aren’t insulting her).
When Jambee and I first started running, I gave her a special Canada t-shirt from the Running Room that was different from all the other Canada t-shirts I handed out to people around here. It was a shirt “just for training,” I explained, “because we run together.” When I went home to Canada and asked her what she wanted me to bring back for her, she said she wanted running pants like the pants I wear when we run. (Actually, she said if I had an old pair that I don’t wear anymore she would take those, but I told her I would buy her some new pants of her own). Around mid-August, the soles of her Reeboks completely detached from her shoes because they were old and worn out, her husband glued them back on, but they fell off again in September. Even without soles on her shoes, she still kept running everyday with me anyways. So in October I bought her some new Nike trainers for her birthday.
Today Jambee wore her Nike running pants, her Nike running shoes and her Running Room Canada shirt as she zoomed along the route and left everyone in her dust (including me!) in the race today. Maybe she had something to prove to them, or to herself, I don’t know, but whatever her motivation was, she definitely accomplished her goal. Jambee finished the race in 2nd place overall, coming from a late start behind almost everyone else. That "old lady's" got some competitive kick to her that I was not expecting! She was really happy. Everyone was really proud of her. I am sure she will be talking about this for a long time. I'm really proud of her too, I nearly died this morning trying to keep up with her, but I'm very happy she's so happy.
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Comments
I was wearing running tights with track pants over top, so it wasn't that big of deal to me - though others didn't know that and just saw my trackpants down passed my bum! ha ha.
I tied them us tighter once I pulled them up, but then that was just another thing to hold onto as I ran because I had to keep checking to make sure they weren't slipping again after I tied them up :)