"Make sure you're up" my dad said, "We leave in a half hour."
I stumbled to the bathroom, splashed cold water in my face, and then threw on some warm running clothes.
I glanced out the window. Yep, the forecast was correct; extremely cold and lots of rain. In fact, rumors said it might even reach 2 degrees Celsius (35 F) in the city!
"Well, this should definitely be an interesting day" I thought, not knowing how interesting it would be...
At about 4:45, we were all in the van. Marcy, my mom, Shin, Benjamin, Joel and I were doing the 1/2 marathon, my dad, Danielle and Jean-Raymond were doing the 10k, and Emily, Melissa, Patrice and Tracy were doing a fun run (3k). I was just shivering with excitement ... and probably the cold, haha! Fumbling in the dark, we tried to pin our numbers on our shirts, and tie the scanner on our shoes. We all jumped out of the van and joined half of Taiwan (so it seemed) ... there were SO many people. Literally thousands of people all lined up behind a giant starting line. We quickly joined the mass crowd of runners decked out in plastic raincoats. Before we knew it, the countdown finished and we were off! Well, we then started tiptoeing/jogging in place until we got to the starting line with thousands of others.Benjamin was close behind me as I tried to run to the side and pass the massive crowd. We ended up staying together the whole race.
"This is like an obstacle course!" He commented once. "Haha! Your right!" I said while a I jumped over a puddle, dodged a few people, ran around a thrown raincoat, and tried to avoid running into anyone. We continued running in the dark and rain for a while, just trying to get ahead of the multitude. After a few kilometers, it cleared up a little and we could run our pace a little easier and not have to worry as much about running into people. In the beginning, my nose and fingers were just connected icicles to my body, but soon enough the running warmed us up a bit. The plastic raincoats everyone were wearing littered the side of the road.
"Oh! There's the Grand Hotel." I pointed. "I wonder how long we've been running. I haven't seen any signs yet."
Just a few minutes later, we saw the poster which read "6k."
"So, we run 6 kilometers in a little less than a half hour."
We continued to run as the sun slowly peeped behind the shadowed mountains. It was also really cool to see the city below as we ran over an overpass.
We continued just running and running and only 'stopped' to grab a cup of water or energy drink, swallow, toss the cup to the side, and continue running.
"Oh, look up there." Benjamin motioned to me. "Looks like we have to run up that big hill."
"Ugh." I hate running uphill. The uphill run was the last 1/2 marathon I had run. This one was supposed to be flat. :/
It wasn't too bad, but was very tiring. After about 13k, I was starting to lose my energy and get a bit tired, but we ran on. At one point we saw Marcy and my mom running as we were headed in the opposite direction (there was a turn).
"Hi!" we waved to them.
"Oh great."
"What?" Benjamin turned to me.
"Oh, just one of the pins holding my number just came unclasped."
I spent the next few minutes trying pin it back without jabbing it into me.
It started to get colder as we ran in the opposite direction with the wind on our wet faces.
I was very grateful for the water stop when we had only 3 more kilometers to go. I quickly downed the refreshing drink. I noticed there was a symphony playing for us.
"Wow that's nice."
I didn't think about it too much because by then, I was just trying to keep myself going.
"I'm... so...tired!" I panted.
"Me... too." Benjamin answered.
"Just keep running. Just keep running. I'm almost there. Just 2 more kilometers!" I told myself.
We were planning on picking up our pace at the last kilometer, but when we got there we only had enough energy to just keep going.
"It's so close... but so... far." I gasped between breaths. What seemed an eternity later, we rounded the last bend and we could see the giant finish line.
"We can do this!" we said as we picked up our speed (I don't know how we did. The only reason I think I did was because whenever I see the finish I get a spurt of energy so I can just be done, haha!)
"Let's finish together" he suggested, so I grabbed his hand, lifted them up and then, YES!!! We finished!
Then out loud, "We did it! We did it!"
I stumbled forward and collected my medal and towel. I dropped down on the wet grass and then laid down. It was too bad no one was there at the end for us, but just a few minutes later my dad and Danielle came over. They had finished the 10 a little earlier and had come to see us.
"Good job! You did it." My dad congratulated. "There serving some hot ginger tea over there if you want some."
"That sounds good. I'm not cold yet, but I know I will be. Ugh, but you'll have to help me off the ground."
He did, and Benjamin and I went to get some tea.
"Let's go to the finish line a look for the others!"
I agreed and we walked to the sidelines for them.
"Is that them?"
"Oh, never mind."
(A little later...)
"There they are! Right there!"
We shouted and Benjamin waved his towel in the air to my mom and Marcy as they came into sight.
"Jia yo! You're almost there!" I encouraged. Soon they crossed the finish line. We decided to a wait a little to see if one of our other runners would come. Soon, we gave up and went to join the others. We stood around for about an hour after finishing and I was absolutely freezing! I couldn't stop shivering and chattering. My shoes to my knees were soaked as well as most of the rest of my body. As we started looking for the others, I could hardly walk. It was incredibly painful. I was walking like a penguin for two days afterwards, lol!
The walk to the van seemed an eternity away, but finally we jumped (well, more like slowly eased ourselves inside) the warm van.
We joked that our next run would probably be in a Typhoon, because each run is crazy. The first one was straight up a mountain, this was in record coldness, so the next one might as well be in a typhoon!
A little later, we found out that I had won 5th place in my age group! I was super excited. I would have even won some money, but apparently there weren't enough people in my age group. Out of those thousands of people, I would think that would be more than enough, but that's okay. :p I was elated that we had made our goal as well! We were under two hours; 1 hr, 57 sec. to be exact.
As we were waiting in the van to pickup the 3k runners, Danielle was talking on the phone with her sister who was still on the mountain."Really?"
She hung up the phone and squealed, "It's SNOWING on the mountain!!!"
We all immediately looked out the window and sure enough, you could see the mountain dusted with snow.
Yes, you heard me right. It actually snowed on the tropical island of Taiwan. I know. Wow. It was the coldest it had been in over a decade.
The Taiwanese were hilarious. After we were all cleaned up from our race, we drove up the mountain to celebrate with hot soup and hot chocolate. On the way, we saw tons of cars who had purposely piled snow on their cars and put little snowmen on their wind shields! It was pretty funny. There was a lot of traffic too. It seemed like everyone in Taipei wanted to see the snow and take picture. Can't blame them. We did too!
(On a sad note, we heard a couple days later that over 80 people had died from the 'extreme' cold weather. It was mostly because their bodies weren't used to the cold, and just didn't wear enough. Probably a lot of homes don't have heaters either. Anyways, I've been keeping their families in prayer)
So, pretty crazy day, don't you think? :)
