One day before the run, resting my legs and having coffee.As I said above, people run for variety of reasons. I am not different from others. I too run to be happy at the end, to reach the feeling of an accomplishment after a long and tiring experience, to forget the reminiscent of the daily stress and of course to sleep well once I close my eyes in the bed. So far, it achieves its targets and when one day running does not any more give me these advantages, I will stop.
At Meze Turkish Restaurant with Turkish guys.Today's run was nice but it wasn't as nice as my first half-marathon in Cambodia. I am not sure what caused the frustration but somehow I felt a bit disappointed with the things or with the chain of unfortunate events. Let me start with the beginning.
Last night was fun. I met with Turkish guys at the Meze Turkish Restaurant in Nha Trang. We had some nice Turkish food and I had a glass of red wine. This is nothing compared to what I ate and drank in Cambodia (2-3 bottles of beer) one night before the run. I didn't eat heavy things as I didn't want to have trouble with my stomach during the next morning. The ambiance was nice, the conversations were full of thoughts, politics, literature and unique life experiences. In order to make sure I will have enough rest, I left the restaurant at 10 pm and went to bed as soon as I arrived at my room. However, my sleep was disturbed with two worrisome dreams.
In the first dream, I woke up at 6 am. Knowing that the race starts at 6:10, I was scared of being late. I hurried wearing my shoes, shorts, race number etc and went out to find only no one is at the start point. One guy with a red T-shirt told me that they are all gone and now I can only run the 10 k because they will start at 6:30. In the second dream, I woke up at 5 am, everything went fine but when I arrived to the start point, I notice that I don't have my shoes. I see some young guys warming up behind the start point with no shoes. They laugh at me and at the same time they welcome me in their group. Although I tell them "I cannot run without shoes, it will hurt my knees terribly", they say "khong co chi" (never mind).
Despite the dreams, I wake up at 5 am as I planned and went to the start point with my shoes. When I got up the bed, I felt a bit sleepy but this feeling disappeared as soon as I left the room and walked in the dark streets of Nha Trang. The streets were full of people, running, walking, stretching. The interesting thing was these people are not going to run any marathon. This is the normal picture of this city early in the mornings. People wake up at 5 am and go to the beach to have exercises till the sunrise. How amazing! How beautiful!
Once I arrived to the start point, time was only 5:40 am. I did warming up, ran up and down to the beach and stretched my legs as much as possible to prevent possible cramps which can bring ultimate pain to my sleeps later on. However, time was 6:10 already when a Japanese guy came to the stage to give his speech. After he read his speech from a paper, a Vietnamese guy came to the stage and he also read his speech from a paper. By the time both finished their talks, it was 6:30 am. Making us late for their nonsense speech -no one listens to them anyway- can be explained by only their invincible ego. I haven't heard an English word although half of the runners seem to me non-Vietnamese and non-Japanese. The only English word came at the end was "marathon" which is probably borrowed from Greek in every language.
Then they told us to get in a queue! I thought they are gonna train us for a military exercise. After we got in queues, they told us to walk back to the start point so we can go backward. Surely we did what we were told. After a few minutes more waiting, the a loud bang suddenly erupted and we started running. It sounds normal to start late if this was a ceremony or some sort of book reading meeting. But starting a marathon 30 minutes late is disastrous! When I come to the point of 3 k, the sun was already rising on my right side and the weather was already hot. If we had started 30 minutes earlier as the schedule suggested, I would be having this heat at 8th k. So this was the first disappointment. We started 1-0 behind.
Second problem was that the organizers did not really try to make sure the runners will be running on a safe road. During the whole run, people with motorbikes came behind me and passed me. They were not the police, they were normal citizens. But the road is supposed to be closed to the traffic for a few hours so that we can run without worrying about what is coming behind us. One can be sure that runners after 10 k become very feeble creatures, it is impossible to respond to the sudden change of direction or speed of a motorbike coming behind us once our legs become full of ants, biting our flesh, once our bodies become full of sweat, pouring down like a waterfall. Besides, the guys on racing motorbikes were supposed to control the roads and make sure that no one enters the road except for occasional ambulance and camera crew car. But they were speeding on the same road! I can swear that some of them were speeding with 100-150 km/h just to enjoy the relative freedom of closed traffic! So no matter how you run, there is a motorbike with a roaring engine right behind you and scares you to death as it might hit you or any other runner on the road if you wanna take over the guy in front of you or if you just want to change your lane! If I wanted to be bothered by the speeding motorbikes, why would I come to Nha Trang to run a marathon. I have them in Phu My Hung too. In fact, I can say that the path I run around my building is safer than the path I ran today.
Third problem -although nobody can do anything about it- was heat. I am not used to run in the mornings. I usually run after 5-6 pm so I can continue running even after the sunset. Running is the morning seems like wasting all day for me. Once you run, you want to have rest. But I cannot have rest in weekdays so I will feel tired all day. This is why I run in the evenings, after coming back from work to empty my mind, to get tired physically for a sound sleep. However, there is no marathon in the world which starts in the afternoon. As far as I know all marathons start early mornings. When I did the half-marathon in Cambodia, I enjoyed it as it was through a nice park and the ruins of Angkor Wat. There was a lot of shade to get comfort. On Nha Trang beach, there was nowhere to hide. The sun was baking my head and sucking all the energy from my calves. I felt almost like a sponge squeezed to nothing in order to produce water! Especially after the 15 k, I almost walked but didn't stop. Thanks to the time I saved in the first half by running fast, my slow run in the second half was not so bad and I finished the race at my targeted time.
There was nothing the organizer can do to cool down the running path but surely they had a lot of things to do at the end point of the race. Unfortunately, there was no any parasols or any large shade either. The runners needed to lay down on the grass in the sun or on the asphalt in order to cool down. There was only one thin shade line which was under the red arch of the race start/end point and it was occupied by the security forces. So the runners are left with the sun and grass!!!
I am finishing the race, behind the guy with white shirt.Realizing that it is impossible, most left the scene for their hotels or homes as soon as they finish the race. Unfortunately, there was no ambiance of celebration or social networking among the runners. It would have been nicer if runners from different parts of the world talk to each other and exchange a few words about their experience. However, doing this in the sun is impossible, especially after a 21 km running process.
No shade around so I used the start point arch as my royal tent. Finally, Nha Trang half-marathon is left behind now. Time to prepare for the next one. It will be in Phuket in June so there is a lot of time to prepare. Let's wait and see if I can hit 1:55 h in Phuket. This time I will be ready for the heat. I am sure pain will never go away but I can manage to keep the suffering at certain boundaries by practice and determination.
