About 2 months ago I did a race: The Saemungum Marathon. A friend took photos and she just put them up on facebook--so I stole them (quiet giddy-ily, I will admit).
The Saemungum Seawall is one of the prides of Gunsan (my little city). They basically made this huge walkway into the sea and enclosed the sea so that they could turn water into land. They built a whole industrial zone on the new land. It is pretty impressive (sort of, if you are into that kinda thing). But it is one of Gunsan's pride and joys. (It actually is kinda funny because a couple of the cities on the sea all claim that the Saemungum is their pride and joy. It's all very disputed).
The Marathon was located on the seawall. It didn't make for a really interesting run--we ran on a 5 mile strip of flat road with ocean on each side. But it was an international run so there were people from Kenya, Seoul's Ms Marathon Runner Queen (I didn't know there was such thing as a "Ms Marathon Runner") and they had some fun entertainment.
One thing I distinctly remember from the run though was the smell. The first 1.5 km had restaurants on each side of the run--or maybe fish farms or something. And the smell was gag-worthy. Dried fish. Euck! The way out it wasn't so bad because I wasn't exactly in need of oxygen yet, BUT when returning it was awful. You had to take in deep lung-fills of toxic air. Ewww!!
One of the funny things about the race was that it was televised. The Wednesday after the race (it was on Sunday) my gym teacher came into the teacher's office during his break time and proceeded to tell the WHOLE office that he had seen me on tv. (For the record, this is the 3rd time I've been on TV!!!: Bird Festival, Orientation Week in Seoul, and this!!!) His story telling was highlighted with a re-enactment of me running. NOT my proudest moment as he huffs and puffs in place with exaggerated arms and legs wheeling.
I only have one thing to say to Mr Song: I did my first run of the year (That's right, it was a dry run--no practice--not my smartest move) in 32.44'!
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