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Hsinchu Marathon.

What a fabulous day! A day of friendships and achievements, a day of sunshine and frolics, of humour and a fair dashing of pain. Thanks must go to Steve and Alex, the Hsinchu Massif, who organised a brilliant city marathon that boasted coastlines and beaches, paddy fields and country lanes and not a monstrosity of an Expressway in sight. Thanks also to all the people who helped direct the runners and give out water and run errands for McDonalds (?) and yoghurts and Supao and beer. I know full well that this is not an easy job, and giving up your Saturday to provide this invaluable help was immensely appreciated. Thanks also to Andy for writing a great account of the day, a runner’s perspective very refreshing indeed. And, most of all, congratulations to all those who ran, cycled, walked, wailed or swam. In particular to those who completed their first marathons: Steve, Steve, Andy and Colin. Well done! You really made the day unforgettable.

I’m unsure how to do justice to a day like this. So many people made the effort to come, so many people have their own account of the day, with the ones they shared it with, that I’m ill-equipped to provide a rounded documentation. I believe I barely saw Neil all day, which also makes it a little difficult to tell you about him. Though I’d have no qualms betting that he was as entertaining and full of energy as he always is.

We woke early and the wonderful Steve soothed Neil’s and my early morning grouchiness with bacon sandwiches and cups of tea. I was evidently still asleep throughout the trip to the train station but through bleary eyes do recall seeing quite a bunch of people all kitted out in sports gear, limbs randomly spread about the station plaza, doing something called warming up. I was already hot at is was pretty sunny and, instead, attempted to greet such fabulous friends as Charlotte and Andy, if only just to take my mind off the fact that I’d stupidly promised Neil to partake in the act of running. His theory was that I couldn’t accompany him on this month-long saga, this epic adventure of marathons and kilometres, without running a single step myself. I didn’t see why not, but agreed to run a kilometre with him. And that was all I would do. I wanted to enjoy my day. I knew I had to neither measure nor navigate. And I knew if anything went wrong today, it wouldn’t be down to me.

The sun was shining, the birds were singing and the whole crowd were spirited and looking forward to the day ahead. No doubt some with greater apprehension than others. I’d say some weird looks were flashed our way by the commuters that surrounded us, especially after Alex started off the marathon in a smoky gunfire of banging firecrackers. And so we began. Running with Neil today let me introduce his Shane FC teammates: Hsinchu Steve, Colin Gough, Andy Campbell and Tommy “I’ve already run a marathon back on day one” Maubourgne. We also have Steve of the Celts, a rival but less good football team in Taipei, and Kiwi Chris, who has the same middle name as Tommy but read day four instead of day one. And, Charlotte, Andy Mos Morris, Rachel, Candice and myself who will be running between one and ten kilometres each before retiring onto bicycles (actually, it’s only me who will only attempt one kilometre. The other girls are far fitter and more determined than I who can barely spell stamina, let alone possess any). And, last but not least, Amy, who is the first female to attempt a marathon throughout this trip. I don’t know if that’s because girls are far more sensible than boys or not, but we really are rooting for her.

As we commence, I pretend to be confident about the thousand metres that lie before me like an impassable abyss. Neil is running with me. Andy Campbell and Mos are close by and the banter’s boinged between them like a tennis ball. I don’t attempt to say much, conserving my energy, and take some solace in the fact that Alex (organiser of the day) is looking as stressed as I’ve ever seen him. I understand the anxieties that come with being responsible for a runner or a two. Alex is responsible for more than ten today. Will anyone get sunstroke? Will anyone dehydrate? Will anyone get lost? Will anyone… die? The other runners have gone ahead. I’m thankful not be left alone, though feel like I’m slowing the pace. So much time passes that I finally break my promise to myself that I won’t ask about the distance. “Neil, how far’s left?” Neil spots Alex and shouts to him, “Al, mate, let us know when we reach the first kilometre.” Swear word, I think. We’re not even at the first kilometre? I’m shattered. As it turns out, a ploy was underway and Neil had sneakily masterminded tricking me into running already four kilomteres at this point. I’m so annoyed with him I could scream, but cannot deny a sense of achievement that I would have never expected was creeping in. Neil and Andy went on ahead, and Mos felt sorry enough for me to stay at the back. I promise Mos I’ll run with him a little further and we have a great time catching up and discussing the madness of what Neil’s done in comparison to the minute task I’m nearly dying over. Charlotte’s looking like a world-class athlete and everyone else seems to be enjoying themselves. Of course, we’ve only run six kilometres. It really is just the beginning.

Mos’s encouragement and refusal to let me stop finally burn away into meaninglessness as I see Andy, Alex’s flatmate, with the car. That shining silver object, seats within, wheels without, looked as delicious to me as a doughnut does to Homer Simpson. I couldn’t resist. “I quit.” As I head to the car, Andy tells us we’ve run eight kilometres already. Mos fires up like a volcano. “Two kilometres left, Alice! You can do it. Don’t quit now!” Unable to say no to Mos, whose patience and words of encouragement were the only reason in the world that I was still running, we continue on. And, thanks to Mos’s refusal to give up on me and Neil’s stubborn insistence that I run, I completed ten kilometres and felt like a dream. I guess Neil’s right. Though the scale of what we are doing here is monumentally different, there’s no feeling like achieving something you have pushed yourself to do. As we sprint-finished to meet the waiting others, they applauded. I could only look at them and think, “You’ve got another 32 kilometres to go. What!?”

As the Steves, Amy, Chris, Tommy, Andy, Colin and Neil went on, the rest of us hired bicycles and rode the next ten kilometres through a pretty park and down to the ocean. The bicycle paths there were busy with people enjoying their Saturday. Some kind of bird-watching competition was taking place and every so often one would be forced to jam the rusting handlebars dangerously to the right or left to avoid hitting some squatting ornothologer with a bicycle. The baking heat of the day, however, was only mildly eased by the wonderful views and at 20km some casualties occurred. But still looking strong we had Colin who was pretty quiet but wearing a look of determination, Andy, who had taken to wearing an ice-pack on his head and Hsinchu Steve, who discussed with Neil the benefits of Bengay. Bengay, or Benus Gayus as we hilariously call it, has been like honey to Neil’s muscles over the month. But what is this? Steve has some other tube which, he boasts, is only available on prescription. “Tonex’” he tells us, rubbing the cream into his shins and calves, “for dislocated shoulders.”

Some runners rest, some continue, some ride their bicycles round the paddy fields. MacDonalds is ordered and devoured. The lazier among us soak up the sunshine and watch the people who mill around all about us. The final 10 kilometres lead us back to the city so those of us who have been lazy must once again mount our bikes to return. As Chris, who had run on ahead earlier and felt the rigourous toll of attempting two marathons in a month is returned to us on a police motorbike, I wonder how I too can get picked up by a copper and avoid riding my bicycle back. Andy suffers a pretty serious hamstring injury and is obviously in pain for the last ten kilometres or so. Encouraged by Neil and absolutely incapable of giving up, Andy tells me that this is “100 per cent willpower, zero per cent legs.” And his perseverance pays off as we are reaching the end. With the 42.2km mark in sight, the runners burst forth to finish their first marathons. We’re all very proud of them and sit a while, as foreigners are wont to do here, drinking cans of Taiwan Beer with red faces.

And now, as the rulebook says, it’s party time! Our fabulously cool organisers have arranged a trip down south, a few miles past Hsinchu, to Jhunan, where there’s a beach and a bar called ‘The Spot’- the owner has agreed to host our little gathering. I’m a little apprehensive. I know what the beaches of the north are like and there’s usually a lot to be desired. But the beach here is wonderful. Soft sand, palm trees, windsurfers carving their way across the ocean. It’s far beyond what we all imagined. And ‘The Spot’ is a friendly bar straight out of Koh Pha Ngan where reggae style activities take place and surf style dudes hang out. With our discounted kegs of beer we are soon all on the way into a sun-frazzled, alcohol-fuelled descent into silliness. I shall summarise that now, but first a thank you to the staff at ‘The Spot’ and all their customers who donated NT3000 to Neil’s charities.

So evening highlights include:

Awards Ceremony: Afront a vast pink sky down on the beach, medals (yes, real medals!) were presented to those who participated today. Speeches, applause, and circles of solid gold glittered in the last rays of light that day, boasting “I ran the Hsinchu Marathon 2008″.

Westie: (Of course). Well into the depths of the evening, Westie lies asleep on one of the tables a little way away. As we have rooms at ‘The Spot’, I lead him to his bed and wish him goodnight. He puts down his crutches and back pack, turns and follows me back outside. He must be rejoining us, he must have woken up a bit. But he heads straight back to his table, sits down, head in arms, and falls right back to sleep again.

Matt: Unfortunately for everyone else, only Kyle, Zand and Kevin were lucky enough to see the incident with Matt and the train. But we all found it hilarious anyway. The four lazybones didn’t do any running and just headed to meet us for the after-party (very wise, I think). As they arrived at Jhunan station and alighted the train, perceptive Kyle realised something was wrong… “Hey man! Where the hell is Matt?” he must have thought to himself in his American accent. From the platform, Kyle called Matt from his “cell phone”: “Hey man! Where the hell are ya?” Matt replied that he was in the toilet. Though he probably said “restroom”. “No way man! This is our stop dude! Get off the train! Get off the train!” In a panic, and without time to wash his hands, Matt vacated the “restroom” to find the train pulling away and his friends beginning to shrink into the distance. Without a second thought, the voice of Kyle repeating in his head, “Jump off the train, jump off the train”, Matt opened the door and jumped. Off the train. Jumped. And for reasons unfathomable, he failed to choose the side where the platform was. He must have jumped six feet down onto the tracks. No doubt he had the comfort and sympathy of his friends to fall back on, though, for some reason, I can only imagine the three of them, on the platform, doubled over with laughter.

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