you have a voice. let it be heard.: running. running. running.

This weekend I ran in the Marriot Family Marathon (which was really a 5k and 10k race) and am still alive to tell about it! My good friend Julie works for one of the major hotels in the city that was sponsoring the event, and she signed me up knowing that I like to run. It was actually my New Year's resolution to run a half-marathon, but after running the 10k I am ridiculously thankful I didn't start with such a long event. I run about 40 km a week at the gym on a treadmill, but running outside in the heat and humidity left me feeling completely unprepared. Regardless, I finished in about an hour and 5 minutes, placed 3rd in the women's division (the number of women competing is irrelevant. ha), and won a 35,000 won ($35) gift certificate to the bakery at the Renaissance Hotel!

The event was held in the south-eastern part of the city along a stream that flows out of the Han River. It was a really beautiful place to spend a spring morning. I showed up at the race after only sleeping 4 hours the night before (its hard to go to bed early on a Friday night when there's so much going on in Seoul!) and was given a towel, tank-top, and number. Over near the starting line everyone was led in tai chi meets tae-kwon-do warm-up exercises. It wasn't really my style, but "when in Rome..." Shortly after the strange stretching routine ended the 10k runners lined up and were off. As soon as I started moving I realized that it is a hundreds times harder to run on pavement in the humidity than it is to run on a treadmill in an air-conditioned gym. Hmmm...I should have figured that out sooner. Regardless, of the mild heat exhuastion that set in after the 6th kilometer I pushed myself to continue running. I turned up my ipod as loud as the sound would go and zoned out to an upbeat Death Cab song for the remainder of the race. I was too tired to even search for a new song so I kept listening to the same thing on repeat over and over again. When I finally crossed the finish line I was told that I had placed 3rd in the women's division! I was seriously confused because I thought that I was near the end, but it turns out one of the women ahead of me had cut a corner and was disqualified. Asa! More than anything I'm just happy that I pushed myself and finished the race. It was a good day, for sure.